The various stages of PhD candidates

A few years ago, I started supervising a group of PhD candidates: two joined the same large research project, another one joined shortly afterwards on a scholarship (different topic though), and I also co-supervised a few PhD students at other universities on similar topics. Now, that project has wrapped up and I am not actively involved in funded load testing researchanymore, and one by one, my PhD candidates are finalizing their theses, preparing for their defenses, or already submitting chapters. It’s been exciting, of course, seeing their work come together, watching them grow into independent researchers, and supporting them in crossing the finish line. But it does make me think about what is coming next for me.

With most of my PhD candidates at the end of their trajectories, and only one new PhD researcher starting out, I’ve suddenly found myself on the other side of a cycle. For the past few years, supervision was always a juggling act: weekly meetings, paper drafts, conference submissions, feedback loops. Now, many of those loops have closed. My Friday mornings that were back-to-back supervisions meetings are oddly quiet (OK, please don’t all start to book me for meetings on Friday mornings now please).

Adding to this shift is the nature of the funding landscape I’ve navigated in recent years (you must all get bored of my many posts about writing proposals and trying to get more funding). While I’ve had success in securing projects in recent years, they’ve been coming with postdoctoral research positions and these have been shorter projects. It also means I haven’t brought in new PhD students on my funded projects for a while.

Reflecting on the various stages of the PhD, I’ve seen my candidates move from the tentative early days of “figuring things out” to confident articulation of complex arguments. The beginning is all about learning: how to plan, how to structure your time, how to survive the inevitable dips in motivation. Then comes the long middle stretch of experiments, literature reviews, small victories, and occasional setbacks. And finally, the last leg: writing, re-writing, and preparing for the defense. Each phase requires a different kind of support as a supervisor; and as students grow, so does the nature of that relationship. It’s rewarding to see how they develop their own voices and research identities over time, and how each of them are planning for different next steps.

Now, with many students wrapping up, I find myself reflecting on how supervision is also seasonal. I would have hoped to start a new PhD student every year, for continuity of my research and supervision, but funding cycles have not aligned well with this plan. It’s time for me to find new projects, to write proposals with PhD positions included (and finally get one of those proposals funded, pretty please?), and to start thinking about the next generation of doctoral researchers.