The road to a doctorate is long, arduous and paved with abandoned scholarship. Examine your true motivation for wanting to earn a phd and how the degree makes sense within your larger plan. Despite the obstacles, people stay in doctorate programs because they enjoy learning for learning's sake. They relish the opportunity to tackle intellectual problems and explore new areas of knowledge. For some there is the added appeal of taking time out from the traditional job market as you pursue what you love. But if it's your ambition to become a professor you should be aware that the phd track is no guarantee of a life in academia.

Many phd students hope to find a tenure track position at a good college or research university after graduating although others do pursue satisfying careers outside of academia. Many phds have to settle for temporary or non tenure track teaching positions, which can be just as demanding as full time work but without the salary. Be prepared to follow jobs to colleges on the other side of the country or to adjust your career expectations. Unfortunately, it doesn't tend to be financially rewarding, at least not in the short term. Most phd students live on their earnings from teaching and research assistantships or other low paying employment.

Graduate courses are far more rigorous than those you took as an undergrad, and first year phd students usually take around three classes. Many grad students also serve as teaching assistants tas and must learn how to juggle their needs along with their students. And of course, in the final three years of the phd program, you'll mainly focus on writing the dissertation and preparing for oral exams. Each year, some phd candidates do not meet the requirements of their graduate programs and are asked to leave. Others choose to leave because they are burnt out, or their interests have changed. Some students who don't complete the phd leave with a master's degree others leave with no degree at all. Successful phd students thrive in a highly intellectual environment, are willing to work very hard with only a possible payoff, love their field of study, and don't mind forgoing impressive paychecks.

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If this sounds like you, forge ahead! in undergraduate education a great deal, in academic terms, is organized for the student. It may not have seemed like that to you at the time, because you were required to do a considerable amount of work, but, for example, syllabuses were laid down, textbooks were specified, practical sessions were designed, the examinations were organized to cover a set range of topics in questions of a known form, and so on. You could quite reasonably have complained if asked about an extraneous subject, `but no one told me that i was supposed to learn that topic or methodology or theory or historical period.' for the most part you were following an academic course set by your teachers.

In doctoral education, you have to take responsibility for managing your learning and for getting yourself a phd. Of course, there will be people around to help you: your supervisor s , other academics in your department, fellow students and so on. Some of them will even tell you what, in their opinion, you have to do to obtain the degree, but the responsibility for determining what is required, as well as for carrying it out, remains firmly with you. And if it turns out that you need a particular topic or theory for your work, then it is no excuse to say, `but nobody told me it was relevant.' it is your responsibility. You will be expected to initiate discussions, ask for the help that you need, argue about what you should be learning, and so on. You are under self management, so it is no use sitting around waiting for somebody to tell you what to do next or, worse, complaining that nobody is telling you what to do next in the postgraduate world these are opportunities, not deficiencies.

The overall university framework for research students ensures that there is a basic similarity for all doctoral candidates as they progress through their studies. But there are also some notable differences between the research cultures of university disciplines, particularly between the culture of the laboratory based sciences and that of the humanities and social sciences. To a considerable extent they stem from the large capital investment in equipment and materials required in scientific research. Supervisors in science have to take the lead in obtaining the physical resources and the research personnel required.

A studentship may be allocated and a doctoral student recruited specifically to work on a designated line of research. In this situation the `apprenticeship' aspect of being a doctoral student is emphasized. The student's research topic will be clearly defined to fit in with the innovative thrust of the supervisor's research programme, and this will set limits to the level of research creativity that can be shown. The student will be required to do `dogsbody' work in the laboratory or on the computer as part of professional training. In these situations there develops what might be called a `joint ownership' of the doctoral research between supervisors and the students.