phd story books

Should you be reading for pleasure in graduate school?

Think you only have time to read text books in grad school? That’s what I thought too. You have more time than you think. Your future self will tell you so (trust me). The 5-15 hours and $8-$35 it will take you to read any of these books will pay itself back in time and earnings many-fold throughout your student life and in your first job offer after graduation. Invest in yourself and reap the benefits later.

Don’t set out to read all these books at once. Order 2-3 to start and read them in small doses. Take the day to think about the pages you just read and how they can apply to your life. After you see the changes manifest, come back and find a few other books to continue your journey to becoming your best self.

Follow the links below to have these books in your hands in a few days with Amazon. These are referral links, which means that purchasing these items through these links results in a small percentage of the sale helping to support this blog at no cost to you. We appreciate your support so we can continue putting out helpful content and reviews to help you find the best tools for your research!

* Reminder: Prices on Amazon fluctuate and there are new, used and eBook versions. Follow the links to check the most current prices.

Books to improve your academic writing skills and research output:

How to write a lot: a practical guide to productive academic writing by paul silvia.

This book won’t make you a better writer. It’ll make you a more prolific one. By focusing on good writing habits and drawing clear boundaries between writing time and personal time, you’ll start to turn the excruciating blank page process into a series of small measured successes.

The 2 nd edition includes new sections for advice on grant writing and fellowship proposals, making it a favorite book of many post-docs and new faculty. He also deconstructs every excuse you could ever make for not writing, relying on binge-writing and otherwise procrastinating.

If you follow the advice in this book you should expect benefits to your mental health and work-life balance because you won’t always “feel like you should be writing.” Try it!

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Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

A bestselling classic about the writing process, writer’s block and the internal obstacles in the writer’s mind. Not specifically about graduate school or academia but is included in this list because it is so highly recommended in the writing community.

The title refers to a short story from her childhood about writing a paper about birds. Like the “How to write a lot” book above, this one encourages a steady and consistent process taking small tasks one at a time. You won’t find a lot of advice about how to write well in this book.

This is written for anyone who struggles with anxiety, perfectionism and paralysis when staring at the blank page and blinking cursor. It’s more of an introspection to ease your nerves with a few exercises to help you get started.

Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg

A unique book that can help snap you out of typical academic writing mode “…thus the present findings elucidate a novel method for exploring the behavior and interactions of…”

Almost poetic. Almost rhythmic. Straight to the point. The author explains in free form the fallacies and illusions of forming sentences and getting them onto the page. This will force you to re-think your mental process resulting in better sentences and better papers.

The end of the book covers examples of common sentences and calls out the superfluous wording, re-writing it with only the essentials.

Ever had trouble fitting a personal statement into two pages or a proposal into six pages? This is the book for concise and punchy writing. When you can convey more information than your competition, you gain the edge.

Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis by Joan Bolker

If you’re lacking motivation, struggling to get started every day or are completely overwhelmed by the massive task at hand, give this book a look. It doesn’t offer any real advice on the details of a dissertation but instead aims to instill confidence in the reader. The author guides you through setting daily page goals, storing ideas and getting something…anything down on the page each day. Essentially a personal confidence coach for writing, applicable to more than just a dissertation.

The Scientist's Guide to Writing: How to Write More Easily and Effectively throughout Your Scientific Career by Stephen B. Heard

A little-known but well-reviewed book on how to improve your science writing. This one also discusses the writing process but with a focus on structuring the story of your paper to clearly convey your experiments, results and conclusions. He often takes a whimsical tone that makes it a fun read. The author breaks down the structure of a scientific paper and the functions of each part. He also dives into the details on submitting, revising and coauthoring scientific papers. This is perhaps the most detailed guide to scientific writing in this list and the advice is reinforced with specific examples.

If you’ve ever written a critical literature review, you probably identified a handful of authors whose papers were just more enjoyable to read. This book can help you become that author. This book also makes for a great gift for a grad student about to dive into first-author writing.

Writing Science: How to Write Papers That Get Cited and Proposals That Get Funded by Joshua Schimel

Great technical writing tells a story. If you’re wondering how experiments and data can be framed as a story, then this book is a must-read for you. This is one of the best books for writing fellowship proposals, research proposals and research grants. Dr. Schimel comes from a biology background but his experience on major government funding agency panels has given him the insight to know what gets funded.

I thoroughly enjoyed the way the author breaks down classical story structure and relates it to the segments of a strong research proposal. Don’t skip the exercises; they are the most valuable part of this book. He’s exceptionally good at exploring these ideas at all levels, from the macro to the micro, and I came away with a much clearer picture of how to write a cohesive and multi-level proposal.

It’s an easy weekend read that you should approach with a highlighter a notepad ready. If this one book helps you land even one grant, it will be paying itself back roughly 1000-fold.

The Literature Review: Six Steps to Success by Lawrence Machi

I took a chance on this book before writing my literature review for qualifiers. We eventually published the review to a major journal in my field and it’s gained over 600 citations in the first 4 years! There’s definitely some great advice in here that helped guide me toward writing a well-received paper.

Starting your literature review is the hardest part. It feels like a daunting task without a clear path to success. This book helps break down each step in the process into achievable goals supplemented by strategies for efficiently and effectively approaching each one. The few hours spent reading this book will be paid back to you in saving time researching and writing later. It will help save your sanity and reduce anxiety approaching your first literature review.

I recommend this book specifically for graduate students in their first two years of a Masters’ or PhD. It can easily be read in an afternoon but should be used as a reference throughout the process!

Books to more clearly convey your research data to the reader

These three books below by Edward R. Tufte completely revolutionized my approach to creating graphs, figures and tables in both journal articles and conference presentations. I attended one of his full-day seminar courses around the country where Dr. Tufte works through the failures of that status quo in data presentation and showed gorgeous and enlightening examples of how good it can be.

I strongly believe this book series is the key reason why some of my journal articles have been so highly cited. Authors tend to cite papers that clearly convey a point and are more likely to reproduce figures that can stand on their own without wordy descriptions. See for yourself the difference these can make in your research career!

Beautiful Evidence by Edward R. Tufte

This book highlights innovative examples of data visualization spanning hand-drawn 17 th century charts to computer-generated “big data” presentation that will open your mind to forms of data visualization outside of your standard color-coded X-Y plots. The author also details strategies for identifying cherry-picked data and being a keen observer fraudulent data presentation.

This book is also the best gift for graduate students and post-docs on this list, making for a perfect coffee table book after fully reading through it.

Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte

This book walks the reader through a huge range of first-class graphical data representations and shows how each is well-suited to presenting the data at hand. Dr. Tufte makes you think about how different data types are structured and how those structures can guide you to the best methods of presentation.

The data visualization here is often layered so that your first glance gets the main point across but a closer examination unveils rich multi-dimensional data by cleverly using colors, shapes, sizes and alignments of objects and axes. These are the skills that create an ultimate, self-supporting figure for a journal cover or a winning poster that will hang for years on the walls of your institution without needing you there to explain it.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte

A timeless classic on data visualization that dives into the nitty gritty of optimizing your charts and figures. Tufte contrasts excellent charts with horrendous ones to point out bad habits that you may not know you have. He teaches you about efficient design and layout of plots, from the ratio of ink that makes up your data to how one should effectively use tick marks on the axes or box plots around your data groupings.

This book may at first seem outdated, but the principles inside do not change. If you want to truly master the art of effective data visualization, this book can’t be skipped over.

Books to increase your productivity and focus in grad school:

The miracle morning.

I’m not exaggerating when I say this book thoroughly changed my life. I reached a point where I was physically and mentally exhausted halfway through each work day and realized I was not cognitively performing at the level I needed to be successful. Within a few days of implementing this, I felt a noticeable change in my energy, mood and motivation each day at work. I only wish I had picked it up in graduate school. My research output probably would have doubled simply from the changes to my mood.

The premise is fairly simple. Hal Elrod was recovering from a near-fatal car accident that left him physically and mentally impaired. He took the six most popular morning routine practices (exercise, reading, journaling, visualization, affirmations and meditation) and started doing all of them every single morning before starting work or any other responsibilities. Over time, he refined the timing and intentions around each practice and started sharing it with friends. It eventually exploded by word-of-mouth and he decided to write this book to share the technique with the world.

Yes, you’ll have to wake up a little earlier. Ideally you set aside one hour to do all six practices but with practice you can get most of the beneficial effects in less than 15 minutes. The book isn’t completely necessary to implement this – you can read enough about it online. But by all accounts, you’ll have a much higher chance of follow-through if you purchase and read the book as I did.

I started the practice a few months ago and used my “reading” time to read this book a few pages per day. Starting each morning with this book was essential to helping me refine the other five following practices and approach them with intention for maximum benefit.

Most days I squeeze in all six practices. Some days it’s only four and on some weekends only one or two. The key is to keep trying and don’t miss on two days in a row. The extra time spent in the morning comes back to me in productivity and focus throughout the day.

I can’t recommend this book enough for anyone whose workday is self-driven and self-structured like a typical grad student research life. Read it sooner rather than later and witness the profound effects it can have on every aspect of your life!

The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future by Ryder Carroll

Have you heard of Bullet Journaling? It’s a method invented by Ryder Carroll to design your life and live intentionally that in a few short years has spawned a global movement and thriving community. It helps cut through the unnecessary “busy” tasks to focus on what matters. The technique can be done in any standard notebook but involves quite a bit of symbols and shorthand one must learn to truly gain the full benefit.

This book is the comprehensive how-to guide recently written by Ryder. For added effect, he includes how this method can help to de-clutter your life and bring you greater peace of mind. If you’re a “BuJo” newbie, this book will take you from novice to professional in a few weeks of practice.

The technique can have a profound effect on productivity and design of your research tasks to cut through to results you really need. Research has so many moving parts from experiments to data analysis to writing and publishing that this method is incredibly well-suited to keep track of. You might want to pair the book with this symbol stencil and journal bookmark if you’re not already familiar with the technique.

Fun reads for any scientist or engineer:

Skunk works: a personal memoir of my years at lockheed by ben rich.

A popular and highly-rated classic about the top secret “Skunk Works” engineering projects at Lockheed Martin that helped win the Cold War, written by the head of the division for two decades. It covers the pinnacle of high-pressure, high-stakes ultra-secretive engineering projects and the technological game of chess that the USA was playing with the Soviet Union in the 1970’s and 1980’s. It includes anecdotes and testimonials from high-ranking government officials and pilots on revolutionary projects like the SR-71 Blackbird, F-116 Stealth Fighter and U-2 spy plane.

This book is an enjoyable and inspiring read for any grad student who has a true passion for problem solving and cutting-edge technology. The reader will also take away valuable lessons for managing technical projects and teams of scientists and engineers to achieve nearly impossible goals.

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The Martian by Andy Weir

This is our all-time favorite book that any scientist or engineer will enjoy reading. For such a technical book, it’s got an incredible plot yet isn’t overly dramatized (except a little at the end). No other fiction book has captured this much popularity while running through exact calculations, estimations and scientific principles just to keep someone alive. You’ll be rooting for Mark Watney and inspired by the idea that your technical knowledge could one day save your life.

Looking for gift ideas for a grad student or researcher?

We've further curated several collections of our own inventions depending on the type of researcher you're looking for. See these more niche collections below for more ideas!

9 Unique Gift Ideas for Scientists

Gifts for Professors and Grad School PIs

Unique Gifts for Graduate and PhD Students

Gifts for Chemists and Chemistry Students

Gifts for Scientists and Engineers

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The 7 Books Every PhD Student Should Read

By alex wakeman.

Let’s be honest. If you’re nerdy enough to be doing a PhD, you probably love a good book. Whether you’re looking for entertainment or advice, distraction or comfort, the seven listed here can each, in their own way, help you through your frustrating but uniquely rewarding life of a PhD student.

Isaac Asimov – I, Robot

“1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”

The Three Laws of Robotics. Simple. Elegant. Watertight. What could go wrong? These three, now legendary rules are printed on the first page of ‘I, Robot’ then are immediately followed by a series of masterful short stories in which Asimov dismantles his seemingly perfect creation before your very eyes. With ‘I, Robot’ (and many of his other works) Asimov displays dozens of ways rules can be bent and circumvented. As it turns out, a lot can go wrong.

In some ways, this collection of short stories about misbehaving robots acts as a training manual for one of the most essential skills any PhD student must develop: discerning truth. Has that experiment proved what you think it proves? To what extent does it prove that? Are you sure? You might be convinced, but will everyone else at the conference see it that way? At first glance, Asimov’s Three Laws seem like a pretty good crack at a clear and concise system to prevent anything from quirky, metallic shenanigans to an anti-organic apocalypse. Are you sure about that? Look at them again, have a think, test them as vigorously as you would any real-world proof. Then go and read ‘I, Robot’ and find out how wrong you were.

Sayaka Murata – Convenience Store Woman

You could probably be doing something better with your life, you know. Most people doing a PhD are a pretty effective combination of intelligent and driven. You almost certainly got a 1 st or a 2:1 in a bachelor’s degree, probably a masters. Someone with this profile could certainly find a career with a starting salary above the RCUK minimum stipend level of £15,285 a year, likely one with a much more concrete future ahead of them as well. For most people it doesn’t make a lot of sense to do a PhD; it’s a huge investment of time and energy directed towards a very specialised end. But there are plenty of good reasons to do one as well and if you’re currently working on a PhD you are probably (I sincerely hope) aware of one of the main ones: it’s fun. It really can be fun, at least for a very peculiar type of person. But, of course, it’s not a particularly normal idea of fun. Most people have had their fill of learning by the end of school, or at most university, and it can sometimes be tough convincing a partner or family member that this genuinely is what you enjoy, despite the dark rings they’ve noticed forming under your eyes.

Keiko would probably understand. She feels a very similar way. Not about PhDs or learning, making novel discoveries, or changing the world for the better; but she does feel a very similar way about her work in a convenience store. She enjoys everything about the convenience store, from the artificial 24/7 light to the starchy slightly ill-fitting uniforms, it provides her with enough money for rent and food and she wants for little else. Murata presents us with a tender and often hilarious portrait of a woman attempting to claim agency over her own, unique way of living, and convince others of the simple joy it brings her. If the average PhD student is twice as strange as your typical person, then as a PhD student you have twice as much reason to follow this proudly comforting story of an atypical person and her atypical interest.

Viktor Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning

Suffering is relative. It is certain that I will struggle with my PhD. I am still in the early days of my studies, but I am aware that studying for a PhD is likely going to be the hardest thing I have done with my life so far. In all the interviews I had for various funding schemes and DTPs, not one failed to ask a question that amounted to: “How will you cope?”. But at its worst my PhD still won’t cause me to suffer nearly as much as Viktor Frankl did. Don’t think I’m recommending this book to remind you to ‘count yourself lucky’, or any similar nonsense; Frankl isn’t concerned with pity, or one upping your struggles, he just wants you to feel fulfilled, even in the worst moments when nothing’s going right and you’re starting to doubt if you’re even capable of completing a PhD.

The first half of ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ is a stark, sometimes unpleasant autobiographical account of Frankl’s time imprisoned in various Nazi concentration camps. But the difficulty of the subject matter is worth it for the fascinatingly unique perspective of the author: Viktor Frankl was one of the 20 th Century’s foremost neurologists. The first-hand experience of one of Europe’s blackest events – viewed through the lens of a Jewish psychiatrist – could quite easily paint a rather bleak and hopeless image of humanity. This, however, is not the case. Instead, Frankl uses the second half of the book to explain in layman’s terms the psychological basis behind his biggest contribution to his field: Logotherapy. Frankl emerges from the immense suffering of the holocaust to clearly and kindly encourage us to find meaning and joy in all parts of life. Far from being a depressing read ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ is instead likely to leave you feeling inspired, cared for, and capable of getting through whatever nonsensical data, failed experiments, and frustrating failures your PhD might throw at you.

John Ratey – Spark!

We’ve all had times in our lives when we felt that we couldn’t afford to exercise, when life is just so overwhelmingly occupied, there’s too many important things going on. At some points in your PhD, when you feel too busy to take a break, see friends, or cook a proper dinner, having a go at the ‘Couch to 5k’ certainly doesn’t look like it’ll be getting any of your valuable hours any time soon. But after several decades of researching the human brain, Professor John Ratey is here to argue that you can’t afford not to exercise.

I’m sure it isn’t a great revelation to you that exercise is vital for your physical health, but ‘Spark!’ instead implores us to think of exercise as an essential activity for our brain. With an abundance of examples from modern publications in psychiatry and neuroscience, Ratey explains the effects of regular exercise on the human brain. Better memory, improved problem solving, better pattern recognition, longer periods of focus, reduced procrastination and improved mood; I struggle to believe there’s a single human being who would not benefit from every one of these and the countless other benefits discussed throughout the book. But for PhD students, whose work is especially dependent on the functioning of their brain, the effects are potentially even more transformative. You wouldn’t dream of mistreating the expensive lab microscope. You’d never work with equipment that had been left dysfunctional due to lack of care: why treat your own brain any differently?

Hermann Hesse – The Glass Bead Game

PhD students are students. Sometimes this is painfully clear, sometimes it is easy to forget. But nevertheless, learning is at the centre of a PhD and learning is a two way-street. There is no learning without teaching, even if the learner and the teacher are the same person. ‘The Glass Bead Game’ is a novel about learning and teaching, it is a realistic portrait of two sides of the same coin, simultaneously superimposed upon one another.

The story takes place in an imaginary European province in which experts, scientists, scholars, and philosophers are allotted unlimited resources and are permitted to follow any interest or whim to their heart’s content. In many ways this place may sound utopian compared to the current state of academia, so ruthless in its limitation of funding, and so stringent in its selection processes. Yet this is not a utopian novel. But neither is it a dystopian one. Hesse somehow manages to create a world that feels genuine and authentic, despite its fantastical premise. Though he uses the extreme concept of a country entirely focused on pedagogy to explore the nature of learning, this extremity never becomes fanciful with regards to the positives and negatives of such a way of living. Rather than leaving the reader with a melancholic longing for a fantasy world where the streets are paved with postdoc positions, the realism of ‘The Glass Bead Game’ is more likely to help you find a balanced appreciation for life in academia, better able to accept it’s many blemishes, and in doing so more able to appreciate it’s many joys.

Plato – The Last Days of Socrates

A PhD is a doctor of philosophy. As PhD students we are all therefore philosophers-in-training. We are learning how to ask precise questions, and how to answer them in a convincing, conclusive manner. We are learning to fully understand the nature of evidence and proof, to recognise when something is proved and when it is not. The word itself comes from the Greek ‘philos’ (loving) and ‘sophia’ (wisdom), an apt description of anyone willing to spend several years of their life researching one extremely niche topic that few others know or care about.

Although the Classical philosophers arrived long before any concept of scientific method, and they often came to some conclusions that now seem laughable, a small understanding of their world can do a lot for any 21st century philosopher. This book in itself won’t come to any ground breaking conclusions that haven’t been long since disproved, or better communicated, but it’s place in this list is earned as an essential introduction to the history of asking questions. At a time in which more and more people are recoiling from the influence of experts, this story of a man being put on trial for asking too many questions remains as relevant as it was 2,000 years ago. And ultimately, this book would still earn its spot on this list solely as the source of the famous scene in which Socrates insists that the only reason the Oracle named him the wisest of the Greeks, was because he alone amongst the Greeks knows that he knows nothing – a statement that may haunt and comfort any PhD student, depending on the day.

Walt Whitman – Leaves of Grass

Perhaps you’re wondering how a book of 19 th Century poetry is going to help you be a better PhD student. Unlike the other entries on this list, I will make no claim to its ability to help you think better, nor will it help you ask better questions, nor make you feel more justified in your choice of career path. ‘Leaves of Grass’ will not help you be a better PhD student in any way, because you are not a PhD student, you are a human being, and that’s enough. Not only is that enough, that’s everything. To Walt Whitman there’s nothing more you can be. It is quite easy for your view of the world (and therefore your place in it) to become narrowed. You spend all day working on your PhD. All, or most of your colleagues are doing the same, perhaps many of your friends as well. But your PhD is not your life. The success or failure of your research is not you. The accumulation of three Latin characters at the end of your name is not an indication of value. If you are to read any of the books that I have recommended here make it this one and there will be no problem over the coming years that you will not be prepared for, not because it will guarantee your success, but because it will assure you that whilst there are trees and birds and stars and sunlight there doesn’t need to be anything more – anything else that comes out of each day is a welcome (but unnecessary) add-on. Whatever happens during your PhD, whether your thesis changes the world, or all your plans come to nothing, or you drop out halfway through, or you take ten years to finish. Just be you, be alive, be human, and know that that’s more than enough.

Published by Alex Wakeman

View all posts by Alex Wakeman

5 must-reads for doctoral students

January 11, 2016

The decision to pursue a doctoral degree can be exciting and scary at the same time.

Good preparation will ease the path to writing a great dissertation. Reading some expert guide books will expand your knowledge and pave the way for the rigorous work ahead.

Capella University faculty, doctoral students, and alumni recommend these five books for doctoral students in any discipline.

1. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler

âOne book fundamental to my doctoral education that my mentor had my entire cohort read, and which I still recommend to this day, is How To Read a Book , which discusses different reading practices and different strategies for processing and retaining information from a variety of texts.â â Michael Franklin, PhD, Senior Dissertation Advisor, Capella School of Public Service and Education.

Originally published in 1940, and with half a million copies in print, How to Read a Book is the most successful guide to reading comprehension and a Capella favorite. The book introduces the various levels of reading and how to achieve themâincluding elementary reading, systematic skimming, inspectional reading, and speed-reading.

Adler also includes instructions on different techniques that work best for reading particular genres, such as practical books, imaginative literature, plays, poetry, history, science and mathematics, philosophy, and social science works.

2. Dissertations and Theses from Start to Finish by John D. Cone, PhD and Sharon L. Foster, PhD

This book discusses the practical, logistical, and emotional stages of research and writing. The authors encourage students to dive deeper into defining topics, selecting faculty advisers, scheduling time to accommodate the project, and conducting research.

In clear language, the authors offer their advice, answer questions, and break down the overwhelming task of long-form writing into a series of steps.

3. Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day by Joan Balker

This book is recommended for its tips on compartmentalizing a large project into actionable items, which can be helpful when working on a project as mammoth as a dissertation. Balker connects with the failure and frustration of writing (as she failed her first attempt at her doctorate), and gives encouragement to students who encounter the fear of a blank page.

She reminds dissertation writers that there are many people who face the same writing struggles and offers strong, practical advice to every graduate student. Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day can be applied to any stage of the writing process.

4. From Topic to Defense: Writing a Quality Social Science Dissertation in 18 Months or Less by Ayn Embar-Seddon OâReilly, Michael K Golebiewski, and Ellen Peterson Mink

As the authors of this book state, âEarning a doctorate degree requires commitment, perseverance, and personal sacrificeâplacing some things in our lives on hold. It is, by no means, easyâand there really is nothing that can make it âeasy.ââ

This book provides support for the most common stumbling blocks students encounter on their road to finishing a dissertation. With a focus on a quick turnaround time for dissertations, this book also outlines the importance of preparation and is a good fit for any graduate student looking for support and guidance during his or her dissertation process.

From Topic to Defense can be used to prepare for the challenges of starting a doctoral program with helpful tools for time management, structure, and diagnostics.

5. What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast: A Short Guide to Making Over Your Morningsâand Life by Laura Vanderkam

According to author and time management expert Laura Vanderkam, mornings are key to taking control of schedules, and if used wisely, can be the foundation for habits that allow for happier, more productive lives.

This practical guide will inspire doctoral students to rethink morning routines and jump-start the day before itâs even begun. Vanderkam draws on real-life anecdotes and research to show how the early hours of the day are so important.

Pursuing a doctoral degree is a big decision and long journey, but it also can be an exciting and positive experience. Learn more about Capellaâs online doctoral programs .

What's it like to be a doctoral student?

Learn more about the experience, explore each step of the journey, and read stories from students who have successfully earned their doctorate.

Explore The Doctoral Journey >>

Can I transfer credits into a doctoral program?

January 8, 2020

What are the steps in writing a dissertation?

December 11, 2019

The difference between a dissertation and doctoral capstone

November 25, 2019

Start learning today

Get started on your journey now by connecting with an enrollment counselor. See how Capella may be a good fit for you, and start the application process.

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Tress Academic

#100: PhD success stories that motivate!

October 12, 2021 by Tress Academic

It’s celebration time in the Smart Academics Blog office, as we mark post #100. On this special occasion, we want to put the success of some of our previous students centre stage! Here, we’ll celebrate five researchers who successfully completed their PhD. We hope that reading their stories will help you to move toward your own PhD completion. What they have to say is highly motivating and encouraging, and all five share their advice on what they would do differently in hindsight—there are some lessons to learn here!

Light the candles on the cake! Today, the Smart Academics Blog has its 100th birthday! No, it’s not 100 years, but today we release blog post #100. We’re immensely proud of it and we’re grateful for the supportive feedback we’ve received from many of our readers.

When starting the Smart Academics Blog two and a half years ago, we wanted to create a forum where we could share experiences from our daily work supporting young academics in their career development. We decided to write one weekly article about a topic that helps PhD students, Postdocs, Early-career researchers, etc., to develop their life and career in academia. Get a full thematic overview of all posts with our free Ultimate Smart Academics Survival Kit !

Sharing tips, checklists, and many “how-to”-guidelines and practical advice that you can apply in your life as a researcher is at the heart of what we post on the blog. What we share are strategies and techniques that we know will help you in your academic life. If something works for the students on our courses, we bet it’ll work for you as well. In this spirit, we’re also convinced that sharing a successful experience motivates others to move forward.

Therefore, this post is all about sharing success. We asked a few of our best students to share their personal PhD success stories with you. We wanted them to share what it meant for them to gain a PhD, how it felt when they completed it, how attaining their degrees has changed their life, and how they felt we supported them in getting there. Finally, we asked them to dish out one piece of advice for you regarding what they would do differently during their PhD in hindsight.

The stories of our students—passionate, dedicated, engaged, recent grads—made us very proud. We hope that sharing these stories with you will boost your motivation to keep up the good work and keep moving ahead towards PhD completion.

Success story #1: Maria-Elena Vorrath (PhD), Geosciences

“The best experience in my PhD was when my first paper was cited because it gave me the feeling that my research brought significant information to the community. After teachers had doubted my abilities in natural science and lecturers criticised my ambitions to go into academia, holding the PhD certificate in my hands was a big win.

My PhD time helped me find out what I really want: No more talking, I combat the climate crisis! Luckily, my degree enables me to find science-based solutions which may have a measurable effect on atmospheric CO 2 concentrations and global temperature.

The courses from Tress Academic helped me to shape my scientific profile and gain a valuable tool box of skills during and after the PhD. They also helped me to handle several crises and not lose confidence in myself during hard times.

If doing my PhD again, I would take more time to study and practice methodologies in related fields, and I would definitely be more confident in saying ‘no’.”

Currently, Maria-Elena works as a Postdoc at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research researching olivine-dissolution in high-energy marine environments as a possible carbon dioxide removal method. Contact her at [email protected] on Twitter , LinkedIn or ResearchGate . She’s engaged in the CDR Mare and Carbon Drawdown projects.

Success story #2: Vasileios Pefanis (PhD), Climate Scienc e

“I am Vasilis and I recently completed my PhD in Physical Oceanography. After graduation, I had the chance to enjoy a long holiday in my home country, Greece, and dispel all the stress from the last year. I believe that pursuing a PhD teaches you how to work in a structured way, overcome setbacks and foster your problem-solving skills. At the moment I’m looking forward to using this skill set to do meaningful work in a research-related role in the industry.

What helped me the most from the TRESS ACADEMIC courses I attended was the guidance on coping with the challenges of the PhD and efficiently managing my time. It was also very valuable to see that the challenges I was facing were very common among PhD candidates. My advice to other PhD students: If you’re experiencing a conflict with supervision, try to effectively deal with it as early as possible, otherwise the problem will remain. If there is no improvement, know that replacing your supervisor is an option.”

Currently, Vasilis is on a job hunt in the industry. You can find him on LinkedIn . Find out more about his research in this recent paper on Amplified Arctic Surface Warming and Sea Ice Loss Due to Phytoplankton and Colored Dissolved Material .

Success story #3: Anu Susan Sam (PhD), Agricultural Economics

“The best experience from my PhD? My father was immensely proud and happy that his daughter was working towards a PhD. Unfortunately when I obtained my degree, he was not in this world anymore to see his daughter’s success. So I dedicated my PhD degree to my father. I know if my father would be with me now, he would be the happiest person to see my PhD degree.

Completing my PhD degree has brought many positive changes in my personal and professional life. I became a more organised and disciplined person. In 2015, I attended two courses of TRESS ACADEMIC : (1) Coping with the challenges of a PhD and (2) How to publish in peer-reviewed journals. Both courses helped me a lot, and I am very thankful to Bärbel and Gunther. The first course helped me to organize my whole PhD period efficiently, work accordingly, and successfully finish my PhD on time. The second course changed my writing style. It helped me write my articles in a very professional way. Since 2016, I have successfully published 7 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, and three are currently under review.

When looking back, I always feel that I should have had a proper work-life balance. The key to a healthy PhD is an effective work-life balance. It is very essential to have pauses and breaks during your PhD to avoid burnout. These breaks and pauses help you to enjoy what you do rather than seeing it as a liability.”

Currently, Anu works as Assistant Professor in Agricultural Economics, Regional Agricultural Research Station (Kumarakom), Kerala Agricultural University, Kerala, India . Contact her at [email protected] or be in touch with her on LinkedIn or ResearchGate . Her latest paper is on flood vulnerability and food security in eastern India .

Success story #4: Janosch Michaelis (PhD), Atmospheric Science

“I am very satisfied with my time as a PhD candidate. It started well since I quickly got into the research topic and experimented with the computer model that I used in the upcoming years. After six months, I attended Bärbel’s course on coping with the challenges of a PhD. One thing I remember from it was that the timeline you face during a PhD has lots of ups and downs. Sometimes things take a bit longer, and other things can go by quicker than you think. For me, the PhD process was not a straight horizontal line until the end. At a certain point, repeating the model experiments again and again was not really fun anymore. What helped me most when these rather frustrating times showed up was to talk about it with other people.

Moreover, I realised that postponing regularly reporting your PhD progress to your supervisor(s) or your thesis committee doesn’t make things better, and in fact worsens your situation. I know that there are some PhD candidates who seriously struggle building a good relationship with their supervisor(s)—fortunately, mine all supported me a lot—but having a regular exchange with the supervisor and talking about your PhD situation really can bring a positive change.

Two other things I’ve really enjoyed during my PhD time: the experiences I had during an expedition in the Arctic, and as a PhD representative at my institute. Both boosted my motivation. From a more technical point of view, Gunther’s publishing courses have also helped me a lot, especially with structuring the process of writing research articles.

Finally, I am just happy and thankful that I got the opportunity to pursue a PhD in the discipline I have been fascinated with for a long time. But for now, I am also really happy that I don’t wake up every morning to face the fact that there is a thesis that still needs to be written … :)”

Currently, Janosch works as a postdoctoral researcher on atmospheric processes in the polar regions. Find out more about his PhD thesis at or watch a German summary on YouTube . Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter and ResearchGate .

Success story #5: Jakob Belter (PhD), Sea Ice and Climate Physics

“Finishing my PhD meant a great deal to me. I had set the goal to finish it within the three years I had available, and achieving it was a great feeling. The next day, I definitely woke up with a smile on my face, but it took a while for it to really sink in.

I think the biggest change was that I proved to my colleagues that I could get stuff done when necessary. Yes, I could do it! My research is strongly based on field work, and finishing the PhD really opened the door for additional field work expeditions for me, and I was rewarded with more responsibility during those expeditions.

I know that the TRESS ACADEMIC courses provided me with a lot of knowledge and insight that I use daily without even realising it. But there are two things in particular that I remember: One is the ’to do list’ tool ToDoist , which was introduced in the PhD course ‘with Bärbel. I took the course during my first month as a PhD student and started using the tool right away. It helped me structure my work, and I also realised how achieving tasks (even small ones) motivates and pushes you (I still use it every day).

The second course that really helped me was ‘How to present at international conferences’. This course in particular highlighted how important it is to tailor presentations to the audience you are addressing so that people really engage with your work, and provide feedback and start discussions that help develop your project. Giving good presentations is a process, but this course really highlighted the key ingredients of a great presentation. It was a great feeling to present my work in my PhD defence and know that I nailed it!

What helped me most during my time as a PhD candidate was never forgetting what my goal was. There is always a lot of work, and much of it is unrelated to your own project. At some point, you have to start saying ’no’ to this other work and focus on what gets your PhD project to the finish line. I was lucky enough to have a great work environment, and colleagues that helped me stay on track. So I wouldn’t have done anything differently, but I highly recommend to others to keep the focus on YOUR project!”

Currently, Jakob works as PostDoc at the Sea ice Physics section of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research . Contact him at [email protected] .

Congratulations!

Big shout-out to Maria-Elena, Vasileios, Anu, Janosch, and Jakob (and many others)! You made it! The dream of waking up to a PhD project that is completed has come true. No more lonely weekends in the lab because an experiment has to be finished, no more sleepless nights because your supervisor doesn’t like your paper draft, and no more unnerving questions from friends and family as to when you’ll be finished with your degree! You’re done with the PhD! It’s over! And you’re the living embodiment of something that many PhD candidates find hard to imagine: there is a life after the PhD! It’s worth heading for! And it’s fun too! Go for it!

The Smart Academics Blog is here for you, and for all others with academic career goals. We love supporting you! As a special bonus for this 100th edition of the blog, we’ve created THE resource sheet f to help you navigate the Smart Academics Blog: The Ultimate Smart Academics Survival Kit! It shows you immediately where on the blog to find advice on publishing papers, planning your PhD, writing the dissertation, dealing with mental health issues, presenting your research, searching for an academic job, or how to become an efficient researcher. The Ultimate Smart Academics Survival Kit —free for you to download, so you don’t miss out on good advice. Enjoy!

P.S. Do you have a PhD or publishing success to share? Why don’t you write to us at [email protected] !

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Photograph from Maria-Elena Vorrath by David Hummel. Cover photo by Vinicius Wiesehofer on unsplash.com

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The Ultimate Guide to Doing a PhD

Have you ever considered doing a PhD, but have no idea where to start? Or are you doing a PhD and feel like you're losing the plot?Deciding to do a PhD is going to be one of the most impactful choices you'll ever make. It's a multi-year commitment that can really shape your career and your life. Yet as important as the PhD is, there's not much collated information about the process as a whole: this is where this book comes in!It explores every aspect of doing a PhD from application to graduation, and the whole mess in between. There are chapters on the motivation to do a PhD, the application process itself, questions around workload, time management, mental health, (peer) pressure, supervisor (mis)communications, teaching, networking, conference attendance, all the way up to publishing your thesis, and preparing for the next steps. And no, the next steps don't necessarily mean continuing to work in academia. This book addresses both career pathways, whether leaving or staying in academia, equally.This book aims to take a PhD student or prospective student by the hand and outline the entire PhD process, answering every question you might possibly have along the way.

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The PhD Start Up Guide

Publisher : Jononi Publication
Publish Date : October 18, 2016
ISBN-10 : 0236547851
ISBN-13 : 2547810321560

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‘I’m a liar. I’m a thief. I’m capable of almost anything.’

A woman in a dark type and long blond hair.

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The girl on the cover of Patric Gagne’s new book, “Sociopath: A Memoir,” looks out impassively beneath uneven bangs, lips pursed in a way that suggests there’s trouble behind the mask, like the time she stabbed a grade-school classmate with a pencil or, as she grew older, broke into houses and stole cars.

An unapologetic confession or perhaps a warning comes a few pages inside: “I’m a liar. I’m a thief. I’m emotionally shallow,” Gagne writes. “I’m mostly immune to remorse and guilt. I’m highly manipulative. I don’t care what other people think. I’m not interested in morals. I’m not interested, period. Rules do not factor into my decision making. I’m capable of almost anything.”

That bold declaration leads one to wonder about the veracity of a memoir written by a confessed, if charming, part-time fabulist: “I’m not a perfect messenger,” Gagne said during a Zoom conversation while sitting in front of a bookcase in a house in a city she asked not to be identified over concerns that others with mental disorders might contact her. “I know my stories are true, but I also know not everyone is going to believe them.”

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Gagne’s tale is a map of psychological discovery and illicit tendencies. Published by Simon & Schuster, the new memoir traces the life of a girl who grew into a woman trying to understand her sociopathy, which today is often labeled as antisocial personality disorder. Gagne knew early that she was different, fighting an apathy that could spark an anxiousness that provoked destructive outbursts. She mimicked the emotions she lacked to fit into a world where novels and films tended to depict sociopaths as violent and soulless transgressors treading the fringes.

“Lying kept me safe. I was sliding under the radar,” Gagne, 48, said in the interview, estimating that as many as 15 million Americans may be sociopaths. (In an overview of Antisocial Personality Disorder, the Cleveland Clinic states that it “affects an estimated 1% to 4% of adults in the U.S.”; 4% of the current population is about 13.7 million Americans.)

“There’s nothing inherently immoral about having limited access to your emotions,” Gagne added. “Not all sociopaths are dangerous criminals. They’re not going to be easy to spot. They’re not going to be stereotypical monsters. You could be sleeping next to one. You could have, in fact, birthed one.”

A master of interior disguise, Gagne is married with two children and has settled into a well-to-do conformity. She is a former therapist with a doctorate in clinical psychology. Her years-long mission has been to, as she puts it, demystify and humanize a condition that has been “misappropriated to cover all manner of sin.” She has learned to navigate the contours of love, empathy and other feelings even as in her younger days she felt the “cunning genius of [a] subconscious mind” — like a jazz composition of loose rules and shifting structures. She became less interloper than practiced assimilator.

“I find neurotypical people fascinating. You guys are like ice skaters. All of these colorful emotions,” said Gagne. “These little things you do. I could watch it all day. I don’t want to be an ice skater, but I really find it fascinating. In much the same way that neurotypical people find me fascinating. I’m not envious of it. But you guys have more pieces on the chess board than I do.”

Gagne said she is grateful not to possess some of those pieces, notably guilt and shame, which she sees in her Catholic-raised husband. “It seems,” she said, “like a very heavy and unnecessary burden.”

But she can telegraph moods. In 2011, when she was working as a therapist, she wrote and acted in a skit for the Groundlings comedy troupe. It was titled “Resting Bitch Face,” a phrase her sister whispered to her in high school whenever Gagne’s face slipped into a sociopathic gaze. That inspired the sketch about a hiring interviewer whose alternating expressions of smiles and scowls unnerve a job candidate played by Nate Clark.

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“I enjoyed working with her, but I wouldn’t characterize Patric as the warmest person,” said Clark, a writer and independent creative director, adding that Gagne was open about her sociopathy. “The ‘Resting Bitch Face’ sketch came from her personal experience. That makes good comedy. Her writing was always very self aware. She had intelligence and a lot of different experiences. I don’t think she cared what people thought of her. She had a unique point of view.”

The daughter of a music industry executive, Gagne lived in Florida before moving to Los Angeles to attend UCLA. Her impulses flared. She’d break into a house and sit in the quiet — stealing nothing — and then vanish into the night, her apathy jolted by an unlawful act that would calm her brain. She stole cars, joy riding for hours and later returning the vehicle, sometimes putting gas in the tank, a consideration she called a “karmic adjustment.” It was, in her telling, the thrill she craved, which was easily found in a city accustomed to reinvention and experimentation.

“In L.A., you can be anybody you want,” she said, remembering how people responded when she told them she was a sociopath: “They’d say, ‘Tell me more. Oh, let me hear about that.’ Everyone in Los Angeles, I think, has a streak of darkness. Certainly, that can be used negatively but also positively. Anyone and everyone who is a ‘misfit’ can find their place in Los Angeles. That was really true for me.”

She attended classes at UCLA — later earning a PhD from the California Graduate Institute of the Chicago School of Professional Psychology — and after graduation worked as a talent manager for her father’s company. The memoir offers an evocative glimpse of the music business, but, like much of the book, relies on pseudonyms, composite characters and long stretches of reconstructed conversations. The prose moves and the dialogue is sharp, but as in the case with Max, a star musician whose real identity is withheld, Gagne expects more than a degree of trust from the reader.

Kirkus Reviews noted that “the narrative itself, which relies heavily on conventions from the romance and thriller genres, has a markedly fantastical quality, and what emerges often seems to favor vivid storytelling and self-aggrandizement over honest introspection. . . Though the book is marketed as a memoir, it reads very much like a work of fiction.”

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Gagne said her intent was to protect the privacy of characters by not naming them, noting the flashes of criminality described in her story. “I’ve lived a very colorful life, and in the editing process, the more colorful stories rose to the surface,” she said, adding that the original manuscript was about 200,000 words. “I can understand how someone reading this might have that opinion where this just seems to fit together too perfectly.”

Publishers Weekly commended Gagne’s honesty and introspection. It praised the memoir as “courageously candid and sometimes shocking,” calling it a “no-holds-barred self-portrait [that] offers an illuminating glimpse at a mental health disorder long shrouded by shame.”

The book is most insightful when Gagne struggles to clinically define herself and how to relate to emotions she didn’t have or could only interpret or approximate. Her frustration is enveloping but she is a tireless investigator. She consulted psychology textbooks, journal articles and other research, including conversations with therapists and professors, but for years her essence appeared elusive. She writes: “While I could easily identify with most of the traits on the sociopathic and psychopathic checklists, I was only able to relate to about half of the antisocial ones.”

Unlike a psychopath, Gagne did not have brain abnormalities. With the help of counseling, she realized she was a sociopath, although she notes that there is not a “singular definition” for the term. She believed that most people like her could learn to control their impulses. In an interview, she said that early on she discovered how to repress violent urges, knowing that if she didn’t she would be outed as different and become a “walking red flag.” Today, she said, she has no desire to hurt people but must reign in other compulsions.

“It’s my internal philosophy,” she said. “If you act out, your family, husband, that part of your life will suffer but the sociopathic side that gets off on these things will benefit. Which one do you want to pick? Nine times out of 10, as much as I would like to get away with these occasional destructive acts, I will choose this life I have chosen to lead. You have to make sacrifices.”

These California memoirs will get you thinking about writing your own

Much of the story tracks the often tempestuous relationship with her husband, David, a technology consultant. They met when she was a girl at summer camp and reconnected years later in Los Angeles. His was an enduring love, even as revelations about her disorder, including urges to break into houses, multiplied. “Why do you have a lock-picking kit?” he once asked her. David often felt irrelevant — that he cared about the relationship and she didn’t — and wanted things she could not give. Over time, and, again, through counseling, she said, their bond deepened and they had two children.

“David’s ability to accept my sociopathic symptoms,” she writes, “was nothing short of life-changing for me.”

But Gagne said her emotional detachment can complicate family life. It can also provide clarity and not let feelings get in the way of solving problems. When asked if her children — boys ages 8 and 13 — sometimes hoped for more emotion from her, she said: “They probably do. But I have worked really hard to give them the space to tell me things. Sometimes they say, ‘Mommy, I want X, Y and Z from you. Can you try and give me that?’ and I try.”

Gagne writes in the memoir that when her first son was born, “I was not overcome with emotion. I didn’t get the profound surge of ‘perfect’ love I’d been promised. ... I was unable to connect with my feelings — I was furious.” She later writes that she told her child: “‘You have a weirdo for a mom, babe,’ I said to him. ‘So I can’t promise your childhood is going to be entirely normal. ... But I can promise that I will never put you in danger. You will never be safer than you are when you’re with me.’”

It is not always easy. Life, with all its calibrations, turns on unpredictable things. Gagne’s X bio is at once matter-of-fact and slightly fantastical: “David’s wife. Mother of dragons. Writer. Doctor. Sociopath.” She said she has come far from the 9-year-old with uneven bangs on the book’s cover, the one who secretly stole a barrette from a friend’s hair, was once transfixed by Blondie, and would later quote Oscar Wilde — “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”

But she still relates to that long-ago child: “I see myself in her. I know that stare. I know what you’re thinking, kid. I gotcha,” she said. “I’m also filled with compassion for her. ... No one empathizes with a kid who doesn’t experience the social emotions. Nobody empathizes with the sociopath. I had to use my own sociopathic experience, my own lack of that empathetic experience, in order to create it. No one is empathizing with me. However, I can empathize with that little kid.”

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Phd candidate ‘multilingual books as cultural brokers in the sixteenth century’.

As part of an interdisciplinary PhD programme, the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON) is hiring a PhD Candidate for the research project ‘Empowering Individuals, Opening Cities: Multilingual Books as Cultural Brokers in the Sixteenth Century’. This opportunity is funded by the administrative agreement between the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) and the Dutch universities.

As a PhD candidate in this project, you will investigate the role of multilingual books printed in two sixteenth-century cosmopolitan European cities, Antwerp and London, in empowering individuals from various social groups to navigate their multilingual societies. Multilinguals books enabled individuals to familiarise themselves with other languages and improve their multilingual skills. Several sixteenth-century cities were thoroughly multilingual places where encouraging competence in multiple languages was key to economic success. For many, strengthening their language skills was vital to fully participate in city life, with London and Antwerp standing out as the stage for this evolution of multilingualism because of the high degrees of literacy in these two cities.

In multilingual books, typically the same text was printed in two or more languages, with one language on the left and the other on the right, or one underneath the other. This project seeks to find out what the producers (authors, translators, printers) of multilingual books in Antwerp and London intended to achieve by making multilingual books available for larger audiences, and what their various strategies were with regard to the design and the texts held in the books. The project also aims to uncover how individuals benefitted from multilingual publications and how the use of these books shaped their language learning. Therefore, the research question of this project is as follows: How did multilingual books, as produced by printers in Antwerp and London, empower individuals from different social groups to flourish in a multilingual society?

The project will exist of three closely related parts:

The project will first pay attention to the design and paratexts of multilingual books.
Then, the literary texts held in the books will be studied.
Lastly, actual reading experiences and uses of the books will be addressed.

Because both London and Antwerp were known for their affordable multilingual books and high degrees of literacy, this combined approach will hopefully lead to a new understanding of language knowledge dissemination in different social strata and different milieux. By unlocking the full potential of multilingual books printed for large audiences, the project thus aims to uncover multilingual practices that shaped European cultural identities in the past, and to contribute to addressing the challenges of multilingualism in Dutch society today.

Your responsibilities include:

conducting a research project on the research topic mentioned above;
completing a dissertation within four years;
developing a publication record, which also includes public outreach (to be discussed with the other members of the research team);
presenting your research at (inter)national conferences (to be discussed with the other members of the research team);
contributing to organising impact activities around the project, such as public lectures and workshops for the general public (to be discussed with the other members of the research team);
by mutual agreement: teaching within the Bachelor programme in French language and culture, Celtic languages and culture and/or other Bachelor’s degree programmes in TLC.

Your qualities

Do you have knowledge of at least two foreign languages besides English and/or Dutch (or do you have the will and ability to achieve a B2/C1 level in these two other foreign languages during your PhD)? And do you have a passion for exploring multilingual literature in the sixteenth century from different perspectives (book historical, literary historical, social)? Then we encourage you to apply for this position! You will have the opportunity to develop your research skills, collaborate with a dynamic team of dedicated researchers and make a valuable contribution to interdisciplinary research and teaching. There are also a lot of opportunities to put your own spin on the research project.

In terms of knowledge and experience, you have:

a successfully obtained (Research) Master’s degree in Medieval and/or Renaissance Studies or a related field, such as Comparative Literary Studies, Book History or Cultural Studies (with a specialisation in Medieval/Renaissance literature and/or book culture) by 1 September 2024;
a strong research interest, demonstrated by the ability and ambition to work with sixteenth-century books and texts in different languages and the desire to develop yourself in the domains of literary analysis and material bibliography;
good written and oral skills in English and/or Dutch, or the willingness to develop yourself in these languages further during the PhD up to C1/C2 level;
written and oral skills in preferably French and another foreign language besides English and/or Dutch, or the willingness to develop yourself in these languages during the PhD (up to B2/C1 level);
the willingness to teach at Utrecht University (in French, English and/or Dutch).
a position for eighteen months with the prospect of an additional contract up to four years after positive evaluation;
a working week of 36 hours and a gross monthly salary between €2,770 and €3,539 in the case of full-time employment (salary scale P under the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO NU));
8% holiday pay and 8.3% year-end bonus;
a pension scheme, partially paid parental leave and flexible terms of employment based on the CAO NU.

In addition to the terms of employment laid down in the CAO NU, Utrecht University has a number of schemes and facilities of its own for employees. This includes schemes facilitating professional development , leave schemes and schemes for sports and cultural activities , as well as discounts on software and other IT products. We also offer access to additional employee benefits through our Terms of Employment Options Model. In this way, we encourage our employees to continue to invest in their growth. For more information, please visit Working at Utrecht University .

A better future for everyone. This ambition motivates our scientists in executing their leading research and inspiring teaching. At Utrecht University , the various disciplines collaborate intensively towards major strategic themes . Our focus is on Dynamics of Youth, Institutions for Open Societies, Life Sciences and Pathways to Sustainability. Sharing science, shaping tomorrow .

The Faculty of Humanities has around 7,000 students and 1,100 staff members. It comprises four knowledge domains: Philosophy and Religious Studies, History and Art History, Media and Culture Studies, and Languages, Literature and Communication. With its research and education in these fields, the Faculty aims to contribute to a better understanding of the Netherlands and Europe in a rapidly changing social and cultural context. The enthusiastic and committed colleagues and the excellent amenities in the historical city centre of Utrecht, where the faculty is located , contribute to an inspiring working environment.

The department of Languages, Literature, and Communication has a staff with a variety of backgrounds, skills, and views. As a department, we are committed to support our staff and their development and we foster various forms of interdisciplinary collaboration and team-based teaching and research. In our department, we study a wide range of languages and literatures. We welcome colleagues who can further strengthen the diversity of perspectives and backgrounds in our department.

As a PhD candidate, you will be part of a dedicated research environment, which is part of the ICON research group in the department of Languages, Literature and Communication (TLC). The project connects to the sector plan themes Talen en culturen and Erfgoed en identiteit , as it investigates the important intersections between material (printed books as physical objects) and immaterial (languages and texts) cultural heritage, and the contribution of multilingual printing to the creation of multicultural city identity. The project is also embedded in the UU strategic themes Institutions for Open Societies and Dynamics of Youth , teasing out the significance of knowledge of languages in the sixteenth century in order to navigate a multilingual society, to gain access to institutions such as universities, public schools and city halls, and to develop participatory citizenship. The primary supervisor Professor Arnoud Visser is involved in various research projects on textual culture in the Renaissance. The project leader and co-supervisor Dr Rozanne Versendaal has experience in research and teaching on the dynamics between text and the multilingual printed book in the Late Medieval and Early Modern period. Co-supervisor Dr Natalia Petrovskaia is a specialist in the study of interlingual textual transmission in the Middle Ages. The research team is completed by Professor Haidee Kotze, who works on the modern implications of multilingualism and translation in educational contexts, and who supports this project in advisory capacity.

More information

For more information, please contact project leader Rozanne Versendaal (Assistant Professor of French Literature and Culture and co-supervisor in this PhD project) at [email protected] .

Candidates for this vacancy will be recruited by Utrecht University.

As Utrecht University, we want to be a home for everyone. We value staff with diverse backgrounds, perspectives and identities, including cultural, religious or ethnic background, gender, sexual orientation, disability or age. We strive to create a safe and inclusive environment in which everyone can flourish and contribute.

Are you interested in this position? Send via the 'apply now' button:

your motivation letter;
your curriculum vitae;
an example of a scientific text written by yourself, such as your (R)MA thesis or a published or unpublished scientific article. Please upload under the heading 'Master's thesis';
a short statement of intention (max. 500 words), in which you specify your first research ideas for this project, such as which books and languages you would be exploring as a PhD candidate, and an outline of where you would be taking this project. Please upload under the heading ‘Academic transcripts’.

The starting date of this position is latest 1 September 2024.

The application deadline is 26 April 2024.

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She Lied, Cheated and Stole. Then She Wrote a Book About It.

In her buzzy memoir, “Sociopath,” Patric Gagne shows herself more committed to revel in her naughtiness than to demystify the condition.

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An illustration in shades of orange and brown shows a close-up of a hand holding an open makeup compact. Reflected in the round mirror is the lower portion of a face, with unseen fingers painting on a smile with lipstick that exceeds the outlines of otherwise expressionless lips.

By Alexandra Jacobs

SOCIOPATH: A Memoir, by Patric Gagne

That Patric Gagne is a sociopath isn’t news. She wrote about it for The New York Times’s Modern Love column, which led to a deal for a book that I have just hurled across the room like a discus, and an extensive pre-publication interview with my colleague David Marchese.

Gagne seems also to be afflicted, or blessed, with hyperthymesia, a.k.a highly superior autobiographical memory : a rare condition publicized in an old “ 60 Minutes” segment featuring the actress Marilu Henner.

How else, unless Gagne was concealing a small tape recorder on her person since childhood (not out of the question, of course, for a sociopath) does she recall decades-old dialogue in such precise detail? And incidentally, how come so much of that is rat-a-tat banter suitable for a corny ’90s rom-com?

“I’d kill myself if everywhere I went, people knew who I was,” Gagne, who in young adulthood follows her father into the music business, tells a flirtatious rock guitarist to whom she’s confided her sociopathy.

“Instead of killing other people, you mean?” he replies.

The ostensible goal of “Sociopath,” as the memoir is titled in dramatic Sharpie letters on the cover, is to address exactly this sort of misconception, to destigmatize an oft-misunderstood personality type. Most of Gagne’s kind are not murderers. She argues that sociopathy is a spectrum disorder, like autism, affecting “millions,” though there’s no source for this number; citation in “Sociopath” is not footnotes but excited “flipping” through library books.

Other than stabbing a “neighborhood terror” in the head with a pencil when she was in second grade, flinging a glass pitcher at a wall and occasionally clawing herself in frustration to the point of bleeding, Gagne has tended to be more creepy than violent in her transgressive behavior. Relief from a certain temperamental blankness has come, she writes, by breaking into other people’s homes and joyriding in their dubiously borrowed cars.

“The silence of a structure that has just been broken into is unlike any other,” the author writes, adding with unnerving humanization, “It’s almost like the house can’t believe what just happened and has gasped, taking all the air with it.”

Gagne tells of stealing and stockpiling trivial objects, like a pair of Ringo Starr’s glasses when she was a toddler, and as an adult a Statue of Liberty key chain that she used to signal to her watchful then-boyfriend, David, when she’d done something “unorthodox.” (David, no saint, also joined her for sex in the empty houses.) Gagne mulled filching a life-size ceramic tiger from Hugh Hefner’s office during a party at the Playboy Mansion, but settled for a notepad.

Some people crash weddings for the free food and drinks; she sneaks into funerals, strangers’ grief washing over her like a spa cleanse. There’s an elaborate subplot about Gagne stalking a woman named Ginny who’s trying to extort her father, the revelation that causes the obviously enchanted guitarist to do a “spit take.” (Spit takes being about as common in real life as rimshots.)

Indeed a large swath of “Sociopath” is devoted to Gagne’s ability to succeed amid the “dark magic” of the music business, which, we’re reminded, tends to attract difficult personalities such as that guitarist (she dubs him Max Magus), for whom she may or may not be leaving dependable David.

You’ve heard the phrase “has no chill.” Gagne portrays herself as all c hill: a “blond, ferret-toting Wednesday Addams,” as she writes of an upbringing stressed by divorce and a move to Florida.

Her younger sister, Harlowe, nicknames her Captain Apathy, drawing a cartoon of a masked superhero. (Somebody dial Mattel!) Like Diana in “A Chorus Line,” Patric feels nothing — happiness and anger in brief spurts, maybe, but not empathy or remorse, a syndrome she likens to bad eyesight.

She does, however, curse an awful lot, sometimes in ALL CAPS. One woman is dismissed as a “basic bitch” and worse. Repetition and weather reports (“the breeze whistled its approval as I approached the sports car”) blight the narrative. And when Gagne, now a clinical psychologist and married mother of two, writes of her longing for incarceration (“a short stint in lockup sounded interesting”), one wishes someone had gently placed a few more studies on her library pile.

Sociopathy is no longer indexed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Gagne writes, replaced by antisocial personality disorder, several criteria of which don’t resonate with her. She guards her medical identity like a ceramic tiger, scornfully labeling a messy record-label executive named Jennifer a “fauxciopath.”(A term the author is attempting to trademark .)

I have little problem with “Sociopath” as a porthole into the unusual mind of one woman — albeit a smudged porthole; she admits to changing names, dates and details. It’s when Gagne swerves the wheel of that purloined auto into the scholarly realm, speeding through the psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley’s 1941 seminal work on psychopathy, “The Mask of Sanity,” and topics like cognitive behavioral therapy, that sweat begins to bead on my boringly neurotypical forehead.

Those Sharpie letters proclaim a Ph.D. in clinical psychology , but since her dissertation is not available online, nor referenced by other scholars, “Sociopath” is venturing out into the hot media lights uncomfortably alone. This is an important topic, treated too flightily: begging for peer review, not book review.

SOCIOPATH : A Memoir | By Patric Gagne | Simon & Schuster | 368 pp. | $28.99

Alexandra Jacobs is a Times book critic and occasional features writer. She joined The Times in 2010. More about Alexandra Jacobs

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How to Get a Phd: A Handbook for Students and Their Supervisors

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How to Get a Phd: A Handbook for Students and Their Supervisors 3rd Edition

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ISBN-10 033520550X
ISBN-13 978-0335205509
Edition 3rd
Publisher Open Univ Pr
Publication date January 1, 2000
Language English
Dimensions 5.25 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
Print length 235 pages
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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Open Univ Pr; 3rd edition (January 1, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 235 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 033520550X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0335205509
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
#51,701 in Education (Books)
#58,856 in Higher & Continuing Education
#367,250 in Unknown

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Estelle phillips.

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Amor Towles flashes new skills in ‘Table for Two’

The celebrated author of ‘a gentleman in moscow’ and ‘the lincoln highway’ adds a collection of stories to his oeuvre.

For all of Amor Towles’s literary strengths, he hasn’t shown much interest in character transformation. America’s favorite Russian patrician, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, begins “ A Gentleman in Moscow ” in a similar frame of mind — whimsical, unbothered, “a natural-born host” — as he ends it. Duchess, the urbane rascal in “ The Lincoln Highway ,” fails to learn a single lesson despite the world’s insistence on teaching him.

This is less a slight than a simple observation of a style — and one that comes with perceivable benefits. Most notably, Towles’s characters hit the page like fully sculpted marble: frank in their behavior, obdurate in their morality and, by and large, very good-looking. In his newest work, “ Table for Two ,” a collection of six short stories and a novella, Towles thrives at the crossroads of form and technique. There’s not enough room for a character to really mature in 30-odd pages; luckily, Towles doesn’t need them to.

The collection’s title derives from the nature of its conflicts, most of which culminate in heated one-on-one conversation. These stories are straightforward in action but resolve at subtle ethical angles, and they come divided into two geographical sections: “New York” and “Los Angeles.” “The Line,” the opening story, takes place in post-revolutionary Moscow but concludes in “the middle of Times Square, where the street signs flashed, the subway rumbled.” Delivered thus to Towles’s stomping grounds — he worked for about 20 years at a Manhattan investment firm and still lives in the city — it’s in the Big Apple where the five other short stories remain.

Pushkin, the protagonist of “The Line,” stays in New York because he spent all his savings on four-course ocean liner dinners while his wife lay sick in their cabin. “Oh,” she thinks at the American passenger terminal, “how sweet had been the notion that her husband had been transformed; that after decades of aimlessness, he had proved to be a man of purpose and imagination; and that her judgment in marrying him had not been so misguided.”

If “The Line” shares DNA with “A Gentleman in Moscow,” the next story, “The Ballad of Timothy Touchett,” is an early high point that finds the author in uncharted territory. Towles, unlike many novelists, has not cast writers in primary roles. Enter Touchett, “his bachelor’s degree from a well-regarded liberal arts college firmly in hand,” set on becoming “a celebrated novelist.”

Alas, the aspirant’s literary heroes — William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Fyodor Dostoevsky — have led lives of wondrous adventure. Dostoevsky had even “been put on a train and shipped to the actual Siberia.” Touchett’s parents, meanwhile, “hadn’t even bothered to succumb to alcoholism or file for divorce.”

“Oh, what crueler irony could there be,” Towles writes, “than for the gods to infuse a young man with dreams of literary fame and then provide him with no experiences?”

Towles writes a writer quite well, forcing Touchett into a Faustian bargain involving vintage books.

Simultaneously, Towles cautions his peers against drawing too close to their source material. “Like parents,” he adds in an aside, rapping his knuckles on the fourth wall, “authors have no business attempting to relive their glories or redeem their sins through the lives of their creations. Authors must learn to stuff these burdens in their kit bags and lug them up the trail themselves.”

Towles largely skirts the “trail” of that most famous tête-à-tête: marriage. For a collection titled “Table for Two,” with a wedding ring featured prominently on its cover, these stories aren’t as conjugally inclined as one might imagine. In “Hasta Luego,” we’re told of “the compromises of marriage,” which “govern when, what, and how you eat.” But the marriage at stake, after a horrific day of airplane travel and some late-night shenanigans at a hotel bar, belongs to someone other than the protagonist. The same goes for “I Will Survive,” where we find a 68-year-old second husband lying about his squash schedule.

Towles’s work has always focused on the interior, and not just the rooms of gilded Russian hotels. He’s interested in what makes people tick. And he’s most interested in the desires of those with material surplus, the purportedly worry-free: The Yale Club makes multiple appearances; we meet “a ten-year-old boy dressed like T.S. Eliot.”

“No one is born pompous,” Towles reminds us, as if excusing his subject matter. “To attain that state requires a certain amount of planning and effort.”

“Table for Two” comprises Towles’s first published short stories, but he has said that he “honed his skills” in the medium, and it shows. The only place where “Table for Two” falters is in the novella that closes it, “Eve in Hollywood.”

“Fine-figured, with sandy hair, elegant and self-possessed,” the Eve of the title is Evelyn Ross from Towles’s “Rules of Civility,” who here arrives in Los Angeles after a breakup in New York. “Eve in Hollywood” has strengths — it’s a winsome portrait of early Los Angeles circa “Gone With the Wind” — but it lacks the breezy impetus that makes the shorter pieces fly. Elaborate backstories are introduced to paper over a couple of plot points, and despite drama involving scheming paparazzi, the tone can sometimes feel cloying. (“How does one fend off the influence of a summer day? You start by serving tea at three in the afternoon.”)

By this point, however, “Table for Two” has more than delivered. This collection is not just spare pieces to tide readers over until Towles’s next novel. It’s a worthwhile addition to his growing oeuvre.

Eric Olson is a writer and critic based in Seattle.

Table for Two

By Amor Towles

Viking. 451 pp. $32

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As part of an interdisciplinary PhD programme, the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICON) is hiring a PhD Candidate for the research project 'Empowering Individuals, Opening Cities: Multilingual Books as Cultural Brokers in the Sixteenth Century'. This opportunity is funded by the administrative agreement between the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) and the Dutch universities.
One of world's earliest known books expected to fetch more than $2.6m
One of the earliest books in existence is expected to fetch upwards of $2.6m when it goes up for auction later this year.. The Crosby-Schøyen Codex, which was written in Coptic on papyrus in ...
Interview: By the Book with Ada Limón
Margaret Atwood explains the book's enduring appeal. The actress Rebel Wilson, known for roles in the "Pitch Perfect" movies, gets vulnerable about her weight loss, sexuality and money in ...
Book Review: 'Sociopath: A Memoir,' by Patric Gagne
The ostensible goal of "Sociopath," as the memoir is titled in dramatic Sharpie letters on the cover, is to address exactly this sort of misconception, to destigmatize an oft-misunderstood ...
Book-Ban Campaigns Hit 4,240 Titles Last Year: Here Are the Top 10
A Nobel Prize-winner's debut novel and works about race and gender were among the books most targeted by ban campaigns last year. "Gender Queer," an autobiographical graphic novel written by ...
How to Get a Phd: A Handbook for Students and Their Supervisors
A fantastic book that has completely changed how I view the PhD process: lots of clear guidance from the authors on how, and how not to get a PhD. Being a part-time PhD student means you miss out on so much of the networking and other help you would otherwise get (it's no surprise that 70% of part-time students fail to submit).
Book review: 'The Familiar' by Leigh Bardugo
Review by Charlie Jane Anders. April 8, 2024 at 7:30 a.m. EDT. (Flatiron) Leigh Bardugo has made a career out of writing about oppressed people who wield uncanny powers. Those concerns loom large ...
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Advertisement. "Table for Two" comprises Towles's first published short stories, but he has said that he "honed his skills" in the medium, and it shows. The only place where "Table for ...

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