How Should I Approach my PhD?

00:00:00.000 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:00:03.280 | All right, moving on.

00:00:06.280 | We got a question here from Andrew.

00:00:08.640 | Andrew says, I'm starting a PhD.

00:00:11.240 | How would you approach a PhD knowing what you know now

00:00:14.680 | regarding deep work, et cetera?

00:00:17.400 | Andrew, assuming you're looking for an academic job,

00:00:23.360 | assuming that's why you're doing a PhD,

00:00:26.160 | care a lot more about the research topic right now.

00:00:29.600 | When you're very new, you've got to think,

00:00:33.280 | where is there heat right now just beginning

00:00:36.240 | to emerge in my field?

00:00:37.760 | And I want to be working on something like that

00:00:39.800 | with the best possible people who are

00:00:41.360 | helping to develop that field.

00:00:43.440 | I underestimated this, I would say, in my PhD program.

00:00:45.840 | I didn't think about it.

00:00:46.560 | I just said, I'll deal with the job market

00:00:48.120 | when I deal with the job market.

00:00:49.320 | But really what you want to be doing,

00:00:50.860 | if your goal is to get an academic job,

00:00:52.520 | is to say, I want to align myself

00:00:54.080 | with someone who's doing something very hot right now.

00:00:56.400 | Because here's what's going to happen

00:00:57.900 | when I enter the job market.

00:00:59.320 | They're going to say, we want whatever

00:01:02.080 | your advisor's name is.

00:01:03.800 | And then the response will be, well, she's not available.

00:01:06.480 | She already has a job.

00:01:07.600 | They'll say, all right, well, can we

00:01:08.400 | get basically like a clone of this person who also

00:01:10.840 | knows how to do that work?

00:01:11.880 | Like, great, who is her student?

00:01:13.360 | Let's get that person instead.

00:01:14.840 | That's where the really good job offers come from.

00:01:17.440 | That's what opens up options.

00:01:18.640 | So care a lot about what research you're working on.

00:01:21.720 | And then get in the habit of working on research

00:01:23.680 | every single day.

00:01:24.760 | I'm going to suggest the first three hours of every day.

00:01:27.200 | The first three hours of every day,

00:01:28.880 | you're reading stuff relevant to a paper, article,

00:01:32.160 | or essay you want to write, or you're directly writing

00:01:36.040 | a paper, article, or essay.

00:01:37.880 | So three hours a day, every day, you're always doing work.

00:01:40.600 | That adds up.

00:01:42.760 | Produce, produce, produce.

00:01:44.240 | OK, so align yourself with the hottest topic you can.

00:01:48.720 | Someone who's doing great work on a field that's emerging

00:01:52.160 | really makes such a difference.

00:01:53.440 | We really underplay topic.

00:01:54.920 | Research topic is so important on the job market.

00:01:59.480 | It's not just, here's a generic talent.

00:02:01.760 | It's like, we're hiring for this topic.

00:02:03.400 | And then B, three hours, three hours every day.

00:02:06.480 | And also, in your writing, don't do what I just did,

00:02:08.680 | which was enumerated one, followed by B.

00:02:12.120 | That's the type of stuff that's not

00:02:13.640 | going to go well in your article for whatever academic journal.

00:02:19.160 | All right.

00:02:19.680 | He's getting his PhD in film studies.

00:02:22.080 | Yeah.

00:02:22.560 | And I was wondering what your thoughts on even

00:02:25.480 | on that film study kick with books and stuff.

00:02:28.800 | Yeah.

00:02:29.320 | Do a lot of people have PhDs in film studies?

00:02:32.760 | No, but it's a department at a lot of universities,

00:02:36.640 | but not every university.

00:02:37.760 | So it's not as widespread as English or something.

00:02:41.360 | But film studies is a great example.

00:02:42.840 | I mean, basically, in film studies,

00:02:44.320 | you need to be aligning yourself with an emerging framework

00:02:48.360 | or critique that seems to have a lot of heat around it,

00:02:50.680 | is what I would say.

00:02:51.840 | And then you need to start reading all that and writing

00:02:54.080 | in that as early as possible.

00:02:55.840 | Align yourself with someone who's

00:02:57.200 | doing really great work with that new framework

00:03:00.080 | or type of critique and master it.

00:03:02.280 | And you've got to be doing reviews and essays

00:03:07.120 | pretty early on, is what I would say.

00:03:10.400 | Yeah, film studies would be cool.

00:03:12.200 | Yeah, I read that textbook.

00:03:13.000 | It's a complicated field, man.

00:03:14.560 | Yeah, that's why I was curious.

00:03:15.880 | Yeah, it's all complicated.

00:03:17.840 | I mean, it's like any other field, I think, right now.

00:03:21.360 | So there's theoretical frameworks that get popular,

00:03:26.320 | and then they infuse lots of different fields.

00:03:28.720 | Like film studies is very susceptible to that.

00:03:30.720 | So whatever is big at the time-- so if we were talking 15 years

00:03:35.160 | ago, you're going to get a lot of post-colonial theory

00:03:38.200 | or queer theory.

00:03:38.960 | And now there's a lot more specifically

00:03:41.720 | postmodern critical theory subsets

00:03:43.840 | that are really injecting themselves through film study.

00:03:46.560 | So probably what you should do in film studies

00:03:48.920 | is look to an emerging theoretical framework that's

00:03:53.040 | generating a lot of heat in another major field that

00:03:56.320 | hasn't yet made it to film studies

00:03:57.840 | or is just making it there, and then be one of the people

00:04:00.240 | that helps usher it in.

00:04:01.200 | That's a pretty sure path to academic jobs.

00:04:06.120 | All right, Andrew.

00:04:06.840 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:04:10.200 | (upbeat music)

How Should I Approach my PhD?

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