• Question: what is a phd

    Asked by anon-205647 to Russell, Kathryn, Jose Angel, Gabriel, Affelia, adeliegorce on 4 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Russell Arnott

      Russell Arnott answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      So right now at school you have to learn all subjects. When you go to secondary school, you can start to choose which subjects you can learn and which ones you can drop; for example in Year 8, you might get to choose which language (French, German, Spanish) you want continue learning. As you go into Year 9, you get to choose your “Options” – here, you get to drop subjects you don’t enjoy / are no good at / not interested in and focus more on the subjects you want to continue with. For example, you can choose which humanity (History or Geography) you want to do.
      Depending on how well you do at your GCSEs, you’ll go on to choose just 3 subjects to study at A-Level at college (for example, I did Maths, Geography and Art).
      From there, you can then choose to study just one really specific subject at a university that you might be interested in. I always liked the ocean so was able to use my Maths and Geography to go on to study Oceanography. I spent 4 years at university studying all aspects of the ocean.
      During your time at university, if you find a certain thing that you’re REALLY REALLY REALLY interested in, you can go on and do a PhD – this is another 4 years at university and you’ll study just one tiny thing in a lot of detail. At the end you’ll be the world expert at that thing and you can put Dr in front of your name so everyone knows that you’re clever 😉

    • Photo: Gabriel Gallardo

      Gabriel Gallardo answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      Hey there!
      In your PhD, you’re basically trying to answer a question which no one has ever answered before. You spend a few years reading up on your subject, talking with other people, and maybe designing experiments, all so that you can figure out the answer to that initial question.
      You usually have a supervisor who will guide you through your project. Unlike your schoolteacher, your supervisor doesn’t have all the answers, but he/she might have ideas to help you find them out for yourself.
      In the UK, a PhD will take 3-4 years, but in other countries it might take longer.
      When people see that you’ve done a PhD, they’ll know that you’re probably pretty smart, that you know how to ask good questions, and that you’re very hard-working. 😉

    • Photo: Kathryn Boast

      Kathryn Boast answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      It’s a qualification that teaches you how to do research. At the beginning you might never have done any real research before, so the scientist in charge of you will help lots. Then as you learn how to ask the right questions and do the right experiments to answer them, you get more and more independent. Hopefully by the end you have got the hang of it and can do research on your own!

    • Photo: Adelie Gorce

      Adelie Gorce answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      A PhD is the last stage of university studies: after 4 years at the university, if you still want to learn more then you can continue for another 4 years, in PhD! It is a bit different from school because you almost don’t have class, you work all the time on a project you picked with your supervisor, and learn about it by yourself, by reading, and with his/her help. Most of the time you study a very precise subject and after the 4 years you’re the person in the world that knows most about it! It’s very exciting, isn’t it? After a PhD you can become a professor or go work for a company.
      PhD means “philosophy doctorate”, and after you graduate from it, you get to be called “doctor”, how cool is that? 😊

    • Photo: Jose Angel Martinez-Gonzalez

      Jose Angel Martinez-Gonzalez answered on 5 Mar 2019:

      It is difficult to define what a PhD is. I think my colleagues have made some good definitions of it.
      In my case, it was a period of time after the university degree where I could start doing research myself, with the help of some supervisors (who are university professors) who guide you so that at the end of that period you will be able to do an investigation on your own.
      It is true that, at least during my studies at the university, I learned to research, to follow a protocol (recipe for how to do a scientific analysis) but it is in the PhD when you can apply the whole process, proposing a hypothesis, design of the experiment, data collection, data analysis, discussion of results, planning of a new hypothesis, design of the new experiment …
      For me, the important thing is not what it can mean, but everything you have been able to learn in that period and how you can apply it to other completely different problems.

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