First of all, what do I think contributed to my early finish? (I say early, but although I finished early, my minor-corrected PhD has been stuck in the administration wheel and I won’t be awarded until it is on time… However, I have been able to move on so, to all intents and purposes, I have finished).
My relationship with my supervisor is healthy - occasionally confrontational, but in a friendly way which allows for critical debate. He has been and always will be my friend, without getting unprofessionally close. This is invaluable as I have always felt he was there for me and had confidence in my abilities. He boosted my confidence by sending me off to the right conferences, by only reviewing my abstracts and presentations for the first couple then showing me his confidence by not requiring a full review.
We had regular meetings with other researchers where we would all present our work, building a collegiate supportive atmosphere. If he didn’t know my area that well, he would try to find the right papers to help me out. He even sent me a list of ten published papers in my first year just to get me started. Most of all he gave me deadlines, listened when I needed a sounding board, and always answered my emails. He encouraged my innovative viewpoint and helped me to be confident that it really was the right way to go. This saved a lot of time. I have seen some of my fellow students struggle with supervisors who micromanaged their work even when it was good, causing them to lose confidence and feel that it was never good enough. They were held back from conferences and everything had to be checked before they could move on. This can have a stifling effect and doesn’t serve to produce an innovative, self-reliant PhD student; it can also produce rather narrow research. More importantly for this account, it takes up time and energy which should be invested in the research and in learning how to self-critique.
Now that I have covered the really critical bit, what about the rest? Considering this was an industrial PhD where I was also working one day per week and doing many teaching hours (6-8 per week in one term), how did I do it?
First of all, I had been embedded in the company for 1 year and a half before the start of the PhD as part of a shorter KTP (Knowledge Transfer Partnership). In that time, I learned Operations Management and Operations Research within a real-world environment. It was like an MRes on steroids! I do not think I could have finished early if I had not had this experience in the company or with this level of learning.
Another factor was working hours, because I was in the company I worked the company hours … and then some. They were on 08:30 to 16:30, and at the University I would often work until 18:00 so that I had a packed working day, but was able to have my evenings and most of my weekends.
If I had a deadline, even though it was not going to stop my PhD if it wasn’t done, I did it, no matter what. My supervisor protected me from the constraints of the in-house PhD system, which required regular production of word counted parts of the PhD. Although this system provided structure and encouraged writing skills, its rigidity would have been difficult for me to achieve under the circumstances (being in industry). This avoided any loss of confidence or buckling under pressure on my part. By year 2 I was setting my own deadlines and it worked, really well. Another factor which helped was my family; my son is not small anymore, and was studying for his own exams over this time. My partner started an MRes in my second year so we were a studious family, who to a large extent understood each other’s pain and acted accordingly.
During my final write up my boss at the company (also my industrial supervisor) let me take holiday from my contract so that I could go away and just write. My family also understood the need for me to be away so that I could just write, and I did for two weeks solid, total immersion in my subject. I also took no holidays for the first part of 2017 and worked occasional weekends.