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  • CAREER COLUMN

How to handle the one-size-fits-all PhD

Young researchers can use various strategies to help them to cope with the pressures and demands of doctoral programmes.
  1. Lena Constantin

    1. Lena Constantin is a postdoctoral research fellow in neurogenetics at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

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Science is a profession built on procedures whose outcomes are, by their nature, unpredictable, yet scientists are trained through inflexible PhD programmes that fail to accommodate that inherent uncertainty, and in which projects are expected to ‘work’. Pushing PhD students to adhere to inflexible career requirements without the help of appropriate support networks will affect their mental health. A study published last year, for example, revealed that PhD students are 2.4 times more likely to have mental-health disorders than are other adults educated to tertiary level1.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07387-w

This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged. You can get in touch with the editor at naturecareerseditor@nature.com.

References

  1. Levecque, K., Anseel, F., De Beuckelaer, A., Van der Heyden, J. & Gisle, L. Res. Pol. 46, 868–879 (2017).

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  2. Freeman, R., Weinstein, E., Marincola, E., Rosenbaum, J. & Solomon, F. Science 294, 2293–2294 (2001

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