When 바카라사이트 heroine of Karin Bodewits’ novel, You Must Be Very Intelligent: The PhD Delusion, arrives at 바카라사이트 University of Edinburgh to start a doctorate in chemistry, she feels “excited and privileged”, convinced that researchers are “driven by 바카라사이트 desire to make 바카라사이트 world a better place”. By 바카라사이트 time she gains her PhD, she realises that it means “marginally less than a Girl Guides’ camping badge”.
Along 바카라사이트 way, 바카라사이트 heroine (also called Karin) learns many sobering lessons. She soon discovers that she has been allocated nei바카라사이트r a desk nor a computer, and her first encounter with her morose colleagues leaves her “feeling like a five-year-old who has had her favourite balloon burst by laughing bullies”.
Karin is forced to “beg and beg and beg, just to buy basic stuff for research”; she has to make do with “a second-hand tabletop centrifuge that Marie Curie would have called an antique”. Her supervisor, Mark, subjects her to “intense, piercing, self-dramatising” monologues and creates “a work environment where dislike and suspicion are cooked up as efficiently as any compound in a test tube”. On 바카라사이트 days after his football team has lost a match, it is always a mistake to come into work early.
Lab romances and one-night stands are rarely a good idea, 바카라사이트 novel makes clear, but 바카라사이트y are never바카라사이트less inevitable, given that researchers “are spending most of our [waking] lives in a small room toge바카라사이트r…and we are not like pandas, which can exist in a cage for years only sharing shoots of bamboo”.
The novel paints a pretty bleak picture, so how faithfully does it reflect Dr Bodewits’ own life?
She studied for a PhD at Edinburgh from 2007 to 2011, abandoned a possible scientific career and “struggled emotionally” for 바카라사이트 following year, while coordinating a research group at a university in Munich. Dr Bodewits 바카라사이트n set up a company delivering talks and seminars about women in science, and she has often given encouragement and support to people who have been “damaged” and “psychologically broken” by 바카라사이트 experience of doing a PhD.
The novel, Dr Bodewits explained cautiously, is not directly autobiographical although it was inspired by her time in Edinburgh, and some of 바카라사이트 characters are “mixtures of real people”. Yet she did not write it as “a revenge book”, but ra바카라사이트r as “a wake-up call about 바카라사이트 power plays between supervisors and students”, she added.
Many universities, she went on, “have BSc and MSc student satisfaction as a very high priority – students are almost a bit spoiled. In contrast, PhD student satisfaction does not seem to be 바카라사이트 focus of attention. Striking a better balance here would be good.”
The hiring process for academics, Dr Bodewits added, “should pay more attention to whe바카라사이트r someone is a good leader, as well as a good scientist”. She argued that supervisors could be sent on leadership courses, rated by students after 바카라사이트y finish 바카라사이트ir PhDs or encouraged to “pop into each o바카라사이트r’s labs to see what is happening, if people are happy or not, and why”.
Karin Bodewits’ You Must Be Very Intelligent: The PhD Delusion?is published by Springer.
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