These blogs are written purely from my point of view and do not necessarily agree or disagree with other opinions that proliferate the internet. I am a first-year law PhD student. I am 53 years old and this is my first blog. Hopefully, they may be of some use to someone.
Money
I had a wonderful job in project management. I was a senior project manager, and I earned a decent wage that provided me with a comfortable lifestyle. I gave all of that up to transfer into law and complete my PhD.
The biggest question I had concerned money. I was leaving a well-paid job and would not be earning anything for 3 years. This is slightly concerning. However, I had made the decision to do this, and I needed to cut back on everything to make this work.
In the year before I began my PhD, I found my latte factor (read the Automatic Millionaire by David Bach) and was confident that I could do this. I still had rent, transportation, bills and food to buy, but I do not have any debt.
My funds are tight and I have no wiggle room for luxuries. Nevertheless, I am managing and all things being equal, I am doing ok.
Career
I need to give more thought to this one as I have not planned this out correctly. I have been somewhat naïve in assuming that I have the education (law degree), I have experience and I work well within a team and bring lots of transferrable skills.
In saying all of that, I never considered what the legal sector wants to hire. My demographic is not what the legal sector wants to hire. Along with the startling fact that law degree is not necessary to become a solicitor or barrister, a graduate degree in law (mine is in financial and commercial law) is a definite mark against you. Add a PhD on top, you have just wasted a ton of time and money for paper that is worthless.
You cannot even rely on these qualifications getting you employment within academia as only about 40% of all PhD graduate end up in academia. The statistics for law are less promising.
In spite of this, I am rather confident of finding the right work for me. I am fortunate to have two amazingly supportive supervisors who are intent in growing my network, getting me published, introducing me to law firms and setting me up to do consultancy work should I wish to.
Just be patient with this one. You have to be proactive and not sit back and think you will worry about this in your final year. Start exploring your options today.
Are you good enough?
The dreaded question of self-doubt. Yes, you are good enough. Let me explain. I have had to learn so many new skills early on that it seemed somewhat overwhelming at first. There are some intellectual sounding people you meet and they have all the big words that are just not in my vocabulary.
Our law school is twinned with the business school and the university has provided us with a room that has 30 workstations for PhD students. There are approximately 14 law students and 70 business students. Everyday there are maybe 3 or 4 students who attend regularly. I will speak more about this when we talk about schedules, but this is an indication of why people are always stressed whilst doing a PhD.
Do not be concerned with 3rd or 4th year PhD students and what they say and what they do during the day. They could be student representatives for various committees or boards and they may have done their undergraduate, graduate and now PhDs at this university so the staff know them well. You just have to do two things in your first year. Read and write. Do this every day and you will be fine.
I will write a different blog about imposter syndrome and how I overcame it. Do not worry about this. All of academia, from PhD students to professors are riddled with it. Do not concern yourself with this, I overcame it very easily.
Schedules
Your PhD is yours to do, and you will do it alone. There is no-one to help you and no-one really cares. I will caveat this by saying that your supervisors do, but only to a point. They will not write this for you. It is yours to write and write it you must. To do this effectively, you have to have a schedule.
There are many resources available in books and the internet that you can utilize to set up your schedule. I will only say a couple of thigs about them. First, it is your schedule so it can be flexible whilst you are figuring it out. It is not locked in stone. Do not make a schedule that you cannot stick to.
Second, it must include lots of reading and writing time. Read and write. Read and write. This has to occur from day one. This is the essential part of your schedule.
Third, learn to say no. PhD students further down their journey are stressed to death every day. In their first year, they did not read or write enough. In their second year all they worried about was getting an academic position when they were finished, so they wanted to do some teaching (because it looks good on their CV).
They are burdened with preparation, marking and teaching. They become obsessed with feedback from the students and the other academic staff who observe them teach. What compounds this, is the appalling contracts they have to sign to endure this stress.
They get paid for 6 hours to mark students’ papers. If they have 35 papers to mark, this will take them about 50 hours. That will be 44 hours of unpaid labour that could be better spent reading or writing. The problem is of course, they require the teaching experience to apply for an academic position once they have their PhD. It’s a bit of a conundrum.
My suggestion would be to read and write every day. Go to the university if possible. Make your schedule something you can work with and not ignore. Prioritise your activities and block out mass amounts of time to read and write.
Supervisors
I have two fantastic supervisors. My primary supervisor is a non-practicing lawyer who is an expert in banking and financial law. My secondary supervisor is an expert in finance and economics. As my PhD concerns financial regulatory law focused on private debt funds, I am fortunate to have two expert supervisors who have my future development at the forefront of all they advise upon.
Make no mistake, they are very driven and determined people who are experts in their fields. They have supervised many former pupils and have high expectations of me. Therefore, I work hard every day, attend university every day and read and write every day. I am not going to let myself down by letting them down.
In supervision meetings, they ask you for updates, what are you reading, what are your thoughts etc.? Upon hearing your replies, they offer guidance and advice and are determined to ensure that you understand that they are there to help you anytime for anything that you require. My advice would be to utilize these experts whenever you can.
Final thoughts
You will have some concerns about the challenge that a PhD provides. Most of your fellow PhD students are good people and you will make great new friends who will help you. In general, your supervisors will be excellent as mine are. A PhD is a great challenge, jump on in!