I don't know - now what?
Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash
Spoiler alert - you will feel like you don’t know things very often during your PhD!
Don’t be discouraged though - it’s all good!
It took me a bit to realise that the PhD will be the hardest thing I ever do, and that I will constantly be learning, every step of the way. And very often, I won’t know stuff.
What do I do if I don’t know something?
First of all, don’t panic!
Ask someone. Ask someone from your cohort, your school, a specialist on your topic - and connect online with other PhD students and researchers. You will not believe how many people will be willing to help you if you reach out - and don’t hesitate to do it. They will most probably need to ask you something too some day!
ChatGPT it - or Google it : ) You cannot believe how many things you can find via AI. One day, I put into ChatGPT Can you please tell me how to write a successful abstract for a conference and it gave me the most beautiful and understandable plan for writing one. I felt like until then I had no idea if I was writing abstracts the right way and guess what? I needed help. Be careful though not to ask them to write it for you. Plans and structures are ethical to ask for.
Find a course or video. I use a tool called Praat to analyse speech I have recorded and I always need help with it. I have found numerous videos to help me use it, from beginner ones to advanced. There are so many people who create videos and courses, very often for free, to help all of us in our PhDs!
Talk to your supervisors. Sometimes we feel afraid to admit that we don’t know things in front of our PhD supervisors. Guess what? They know it already. And they are willing to help - if they are good ones. And if they aren’t good ones, you can find advice on that here. But that’s another topic : )
And read, read, read : )
No matter what, don’t be afraid to admit you don’t know something.
The Music Highlight
Very often during your PhD, you will feel like being out of touch ; )
And here is a great track by Hall and Oates!
This is a fantastic post, Vicky! Thank you for these insights. Just the other day, I was discussing this with someone. I realised that in my PhD experience (now in my 10th year) that I have not ever asked for help. Instead, I spend hours, days sometimes, struggling to figure something out. Maybe it's something simple in Word or maybe it is a new concept I am trying to learn and write about and I cannot understand it. Those in my cohort, however, always reach out to me for help. I welcome that. I feel honoured that they look to me for the assistance, that they trust me for it, and I absolutely stand by them and help them. It never occurs to me to reach out to them, though, and that is what I was musing about the other day. I think the issue for me is feeling that I would be an enormous bother to others. Maybe others struggle with that, too?
These are excellent tips for everyone in any field, Vicky! Thank you very much! I will make sure Maggie and Nikolas also read this!