“There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done.
One is called Yesterday and the other is called Tomorrow.”
(Dalai Lama)
FAILING TO SUCCEED
A blueprint for self-guidance and personal responsibility
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
ISBN 3-7664-9950-9
eISBN 978-3-7664-8034-7
Distributed by: Jünger Medien Verlag + Burckhardthaus-Laetare GmbH, Offenbach
Translation: Nikolas Bertheau, Hamburg
Editorial: Anja Hilgarth, Herzogenaurach
Cover illustrations: Martin Zech Design, Bremen, www.martinzech.de
Comic strips: Ralf Alex Fichtner, Schwarzenberg
Cover picture: Antonov Roman / shutterstock
Pictures of authors: Foto Danner e.K., Jestetten
Typesetting and layout: ZeroSoft, Timisoara
Printing and binding: Salzland Druck, Staßfurt
1st edition 2018
Homepage of the original German edition: www.promovieren-heisst-scheitern.de
© 2018 by Atilla Vuran and Gunnar Seide
© 2017 of the original German edition “Promovieren heißt Scheitern”
by Atilla Vuran und Gunnar Seide
All rights reserved, in particular the rights for copying, distribution and translation. No part of the publication may be reproduced in any form or stored, copied or distributed without the written consent of the authors.
Preface
Introduction
1. It All Depends on the What For and the How
1.1From How to What
1.2Theory
1.3Exercise
1.4Challenges
1.5In a Nutshell
1.6Questions for Self-Reflection
1.7Literature
2. Self-Esteem—Are You a Bad-Mouther?
2.1Bad-Mouthing Impacts Your Self-Esteem
2.2Theory
2.3Exercise
2.4Challenges
2.5In a Nutshell
2.6Questions for Self-Reflection
2.7Literature
3. Perception—How True Is Your Truth?
3.1How to Ruin Your Reputation by Employing a Student Assistant
3.2Theory
3.3Exercise
3.4Challenges
3.5In a Nutshell
3.6Questions for Self-Reflection
3.7Literature
4. Fears—How to Tackle Them
4.1The Presentation
4.2Theory
4.3Exercise
4.4Challenges
4.5In a Nutshell
4.6Questions for Self-Reflection
4.7Literature
5. Crises—When What Worked Before No Longer Works
5.1When the Camel’s Back Is About to Break
5.2Theory
5.3Exercise
5.4Challenges
5.5In a Nutshell
5.6Questions for Self-Reflection
5.7Literature
6. Role Models—Indispensable for Learning
6.1Role Models Talk by Walking
6.2Theory
6.3Exercise
6.4Challenges
6.5In a Nutshell
6.6Questions for Self-Reflection
6.7Literature
7. Focus—Self-Discipline Beats Talent
7.1A Good Steed Jumps No Higher Than It Has To
7.2Theory
7.3Exercise
7.4Challenges
7.5In a Nutshell
7.6Questions for Self-Reflection
7.7Literature
8. Uncertainty—Research Is When You Do Not Know It Yet
8.1Earning a Doctorate Requires Resolution and Perseverance
8.2Theory
8.3Exercise
8.4Challenges
8.5In a Nutshell
8.6Questions for Self-Reflection
8.7Literature
9. Overwork—Are You Putting Yourself Under Stress?
9.1Even Professors Do Not Have Everything Under Control
9.2Theory
9.3Exercise
9.4Challenges
9.5In a Nutshell
9.6Questions for Self-Reflection
9.7Literature
10. Strengths and Weaknesses—Two Sides of the Same Coin
10.1The Customer Visit
10.2Theory
10.3Exercise
10.4Challenges
10.5In a Nutshell
10.6Questions for Self-Reflection
10.7Literature
11. Solution Search—Four Approaches to Overcoming Roadblocks
11.1Backing the Wrong Horse
11.2Theory
11.3Exercise
11.4Challenges
11.5In a Nutshell
11.6Questions for Self-Reflection
11.7Literature
12. Decision Making—Last Chance… Gone!
12.1DESY Is Not a Cartoon Character
12.2Theory
12.3Exercise
12.4Challenges
12.5In a Nutshell
12.6Questions for Self-Reflection
12.7Literature
13. Negotiating—Science or Prisoner Exchange?
13.1The Customer Is Always Right! Always? Yes, Always!
13.2Theory
13.3Exercise
13.4Challenges
13.5In a Nutshell
13.6Questions for Self-Reflection
13.7Literature
14. Accepting Leadership—But How…?
14.1The Meeting
14.2Theory
14.3Exercise
14.4Challenges
14.5In a Nutshell
14.6Questions for Self-Reflection
14.7Literature
15. How Do I Lead my Supervisor?—An Unconventional Perspective
15.1Even Professors Are Human
15.2Theory
15.3Exercise
15.4Challenges
15.5In a Nutshell
15.6Questions for Self-Reflection
15.7Literature
And Then What—The Time After
Earning a doctorate is a big challenge, a multi-year endeavour to enter uncharted scientific territory. At the start, you don’t know in any certain terms what you are in for. Unexpected problems may arise; there will be setbacks, plans will have to be altered, and you may even need to reframe your topic. But, on the other hand, you do not yet know the feeling of happiness that comes with reaching a breakthrough or gaining totally unexpected insights after a hard spell of thinking or preparing complex experiments. The road to your doctorate leads through highs and lows, and sometimes through dry spells. At other times, things run smoothly, in a “flow.” You must persevere and be able to inspire yourself over and over again to take up the challenge.
This book will help you on this journey, teaching you many things about yourself, your goals, needs, attitudes and ways of working. The insights you will gain from working with this book—which is a working book rather than a book you will read in one go—will serve you well, and not only during the time of preparing your doctoral thesis, with its setbacks and successes, its apparent standstills and sudden breakthroughs. Arguably, the most important message is found at the end of the book: as you work with this book, you will learn to self-guide—and only if you are able to guide yourself are you able to guide—or lead—others. Providing you succeeded in completing your doctoral thesis and earning your doctorate, the odds of you taking up a leading position later in your career are certainly high relative to the average population. And, as a leader, you will be able to, and will feel the need to, apply the very capabilities you will have earned during the time spent in preparing your doctoral thesis.
I do not know of any other book that presents you with typical situations occurring during the run-up to the doctoral degree the way this book does, offering you helpful instructions on how to handle these situations pro-actively, and providing insights far beyond tackling the problem itself. This book has been written by practitioners experienced in supervising doctoral projects who have also worked on psychological and sociological topics with a relevance to doctoral projects of this type. This is what makes this book so helpful. Whilst you will certainly not incur each and every problem or question covered in this book, they are all instructive and worth considering.
I wish readers a fruitful and helpful encounter with the topics presented. Since most of you are probably at some stage, early or late, of preparing your doctoral thesis, I also wish you a successful completion, so that, in the time after the defence, you will look back at this stage as a beautiful and satisfying period of your life.
Professor Dr. Ferdi Schüth
February 2017
Vice President of the Max Planck Society, Scientific Member and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research
Care to guess how many attempts to earn a doctorate fail for subject-related reasons? And how many fail for other reasons?
We have seldom heard of failures due to subject-related reasons. Most of the time, those giving up do so for other reasons. Our experience tells us that personal reasons are a major factor.
Learning from and avoiding failure—these are the central topics of this book. By “failure” we mean setbacks that tend to weaken an aspirant’s confidence in his or her own ability to earn a doctorate. We mean the failure to master every-day tasks and challenges, the criticality of which often becomes obvious only after an aspirant has started to work on his or her thesis. Most of the aspirants concerned were highly gifted students who experienced few difficulties before they embarked on their doctoral journey.
It is our aim to make it easier for doctoral candidates to master the task of writing their doctoral thesis—a mission characterized by a multitude of challenges threatening to overwhelm almost everyone who tries. We will do so by looking at the doctoral process from the perspective of self-guidance and providing tips for dealing with oneself in the face of challenges typically encountered during the doctoral process.
The goal of this book is to help candidates avoid failure to complete the doctoral process, however, without taking the easy way out of skirting difficult key stages altogether. We would like to assist candidates in compiling their best possible doctoral thesis by putting the individual at the heart of the doctoral success.
A workbook helping candidates compile their doctoral thesis, this book is meant to be a catalyst for self-development. Here and there, it therefore provides space for readers to jot down their own insights.
The book has not been written as a guidebook in the sense of “tips and tricks for earning a doctorate, from A for “aim” to Z for “zeal,” but as an interactive workbook. In our view, in order to tap into its true value, it’s best for readers to actively grapple with its content rather than just “absorbing” it.
The conditions defining the doctoral process differ greatly depending on the subject and the doctoral scheme. Common to all subjects and doctoral schemes, however, is the fact that the doctoral process pushes almost every candidate to his or her limit.
The book builds on three pillars: HAVE, BE and DO (see the figure below). To each pillar, we have dedicated five chapters. Each of these fifteen chapters is self-contained. Chapters can be worked through in any order. We recommend readers to start with the topic that most appeals to them on a spontaneous basis. By structuring the various topics critical to successfully earning a doctorate into the three topic areas HAVE, BE and DO, we aim to reduce the complexity of the book. In our view, the doctoral process is all about developing both oneself as an individual and the scientific topic.
The three pillars of this book
Each chapter begins with a story from everyday life to introduce the topic of the chapter. These stories all take place in one specific engineering sciences institute. The protagonist, doctoral candidate Laura Spielberg, lives through various situations as she prepares her doctoral thesis. Whilst the situations presented certainly do not perfectly fit into each and every doctoral setting, and although everyday life in medicine and the social-humanitarian disciplines may look quite different—and admitting that the doctoral process is not the same for candidates who are simultaneously working as research associates as for those who are not—in our view, the topics are ultimately the same in each case. Only the priorities among them may differ. Though based on true cases, the stories have partly been accentuated in order to highlight the underlying topic. Individuals’ names, titles and functions have been changed.
Next comes a “Theory” part offering key facts around the topic. Since the book has been conceived as a workbook, the subsequent sub-chapter is always an “Exercise” helping readers adapt theoretical insights to their individual situations. The next sub-chapter highlights typical “Challenges.” “In A Nutshell” summarizes the gist of the chapter. Each chapter ends with “Questions For Self-Reflexion” to help readers further adapt the content of the chapter to their individual circumstances. Not all questions are relevant to all situations. Just focus on the questions you find most interesting as you read the book. Finally, for each chapter, we have compiled a further reading list related to the topic at hand.
The topics of this book have been chosen based on long-term observations and doctoral supervision activity. We make no claim of completeness, and here and there the suggested solution approach may even lack a scientific proof of effectiveness. Based on our experience, however, we believe that the ideas presented can be useful to a great number of doctoral candidates. Thus we see this book as a helpful contribution rather than a panacea.
“Am I what others tell me?
Am I what I know about myself?”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
With stage fright, it is not as simple as you might think: some people, such as stage actors, may need it to be better able to focus. Laura, however, was not an actor, but a typical research associate preparing her doctoral thesis. On that day, she was going to have a meeting with her doctoral supervisor, Professor Cornelius. Since the professor principally asked his doctoral candidates to meet him at his private home, she had started out in good time and well prepared. With each step that brought her nearer to the professor’s home, however, her stage fright got stronger. Laura hated it! Standing in front of the large, heavy entrance door, she felt like a hurdler about to compete in the Olympic games finals. She could hardly have been any more jumpy. Moreover, Laura’s stomach growled audibly. The young doctoral candidate hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, since she was unable to swallow the slightest bite. She felt her heart throbbing even faster as she pressed the cast-iron bell push and heard the muffled ding dong from inside the house.
“Yes, please?” a rather high-pitched, well-articulated voice promptly answered. It belonged to Professor Cornelius and perfectly matched his personality type. Laura had only been employed at the institute for a matter of months and did not yet know the professor very well. In person, she had met him only once, at the application interview, where she had had the impression of a calm and factual middle-aged man. “There is not much temper to be found in this man,” Laura had thought to herself. To her, he had appeared somewhat colourless and hard to fathom.
“This is Laura Spielberg!,” Laura dutifully announced, slightly stooping forward to make herself better heard through the intercom.
“Ah, yes, one moment, please!,” the voice answered. Laura clearly felt how nervous she was, her clammy hands being a clear indication—not to mention the lump in her throat. She was curious how things would turn out and whether today she would gain a clearer impression of her doctoral supervisor. “Pull yourself together! What can possibly happen?,” she thought, trying to calm herself down. After all, to prepare for the meeting, she had intensively occupied herself with her doctoral thesis, read a book on the doctoral process and studied the doctoral degree regulations. She was familiar with the details of the process and the rules of the procedure. She had written outline notes on the content of her doctoral thesis and spent hours polishing the text the day before. What else could she have possibly done? Nonetheless, she felt incredibly nervous!
Professor Cornelius opened the door. “Hello, Ms. Spielberg!,” he greeted her in a friendly voice, shaking hands with her. “I’m glad you are here. Please, come in!”
This evening, the professor wasn’t wearing a suit as he normally did at the institute, but was dressed informally. Just like Laura herself. He wore a pair of jeans that had seen better days and a grey jumper.
“Hello Professor Cornelius!” Polite and gentlemanly, Professor Cornelius took a step back and, with a broad gesture, welcomed Laura in. He took her coat, putting it in the wardrobe, and led her through the vast parlour with its many pieces of antique Art Nouveau furniture into the winter garden.
“Take a seat, please, Ms. Spielberg!,” Professor Cornelius said and pointed at one of the voluminous armchairs.
“Thank you!,” Laura replied and hesitantly let her eyes travel. Looking through the large glass panels, she beheld a well-groomed garden with a large pond.
“Would you like to have something to drink?”
“Yes, I’d like to. A glass of water, please,” Laura heard herself say, sitting in a rather tense posture in one of the astonishingly comfortable armchairs. “It’s quite nice here,” she thought to herself. As Professor Cornelius headed toward the kitchen to get the drinks, Laura put her folder on the coffee table, turning it in such a way that Professor Cornelius would be able to read it from his side of the table.
Cornelius returned with a tray and filled two glasses with still mineral water. Next to them, he placed a bowl with crackers and a bowl with fruit. “Help yourself, if you please,” he encouraged her, pointing at the glass bowls with his right hand. Laura’s initial nervousness began to give way. Since she was hungry as a bear, she didn’t need to be told twice and pluckily took to the crackers. Having seated himself in the opposite armchair, Cornelius also helped himself to a cracker, leaned back and relaxed. Smiling, he chattily asked in a friendly voice: “How are you, Ms. Spielberg?”
“I have worked a lot on my outline notes these days,” Laura succinctly replied. “I think I know which topic is suitable.”
For a moment, the professor looked at Laura silently, but with a friendly and soothing smile. After another moment, he asked, still smiling: “And how do you feel?”
“Eh… well,” Laura replied in an authentic, slightly pusillanimous tone. She couldn’t deny that her doctoral supervisor’s reaction somewhat puzzled her. Being in no way factual and matter-of-fact, it momentarily put her off her stride.
“I’m pleased to hear that.”
“After this welcoming chatter, how about cutting to the chase?,” Laura thought to herself. She was already on tenterhooks and couldn’t wait getting to the heart of things. In the hope of being able to sort out her thoughts, she took a big gulp of water, throwing a glance at the professor. As their eyes met, Cornelius gave his doctoral candidate a friendly and confident smile. Laura put her glass down. “So, now…,” she thought and picked up her papers.
“Based on the state of technology, no one has yet…” Laura began her presentation, giving a detailed description of the essence of her outline notes. Professor Cornelius’s facial expression showed that he was listening attentively. At one moment, he nodded approvingly; in the next, he looked critical. With a slight shake of his head, he signalled his disagreement with some points. There was no doubt that the professor listened to the detailed presentation, which was full of technical terms and carefully researched data, numbers and facts.
When Laura finished, she was first and foremost satisfied with herself and her performance. The initial nervousness had disappeared. Now she was overcome by a growing sense of excitement—especially when, after a little pause, Professor Cornelius seemed to be about to ask a question. Laura focused her attention, since she was eager to answer this question concerning her outline notes in a technically accurate and professional way. With anticipation, the young doctoral candidate waited for her professor’s first question. “What will he go into first?” Laura asked herself. Which detail would her doctoral supervisor first focus on? She watched him with large, expectant eyes.
“And what is important to you?” Professor Cornelius calmly asked, smiling charmingly. “I mean, in our conversation?”
“That I’m going to know the exact problem to be solved, later today, when we are done,” she replied quick as a shot. “In particular, when it comes to the measurements.” Laura started into another very detailed presentation, lining out three potential approaches and evaluating them with all their pros and cons. The experienced professor refrained from interrupting his doctoral candidate and patiently waited for her to pause. Even the constant talker has to reload from time to time.
“By the way, how do you deal with pressure, Ms. Spielberg?” Professor Cornelius said. Laura was slightly puzzled. What prompted this seemingly irrelevant remark?
“I beg your pardon?” Laura wanted to make sure that she didn’t misunderstand his words.
“I’d like to know how you deal with pressure, Ms. Spielberg!”
“Well, when I am under pressure, I look for several solutions and chose the best among them,” she answered succinctly. “Right now, for instance, this concerns the question as to which problem is the best for me to deal with in my doctoral thesis.”
Laura looked at her supervisor who reciprocated her glance. And, suddenly, there was a pause, one of those famous moments of silence when you can hear a needle drop. The doctoral candidate didn’t know what to make of it. Cornelius just placidly sat and smiled. “He is obviously pondering the options,” Laura interpreted the situation and gave the professor an expectant look. Again, there was an agonizing moment of silence.
“By the way, where did you spend your summer holidays?” the professor asked as he took some more crackers, leaned back and enjoyed the salty snack, throwing Laura a questioning glance. She finally lost the plot completely.
“I beg your pardon?” she asked once more.
“Where did you spend your summer holidays?”
So she hadn’t misheard. “Now he even wants to know where I spent my holidays,” she thought, perplexed. “Is he still in his right mind?” The initial inner tension had vanished, and with it the stress attached to her doctoral dissertation. Laura now felt considerably calmer and cooler but also annoyed. So she told Professor Cornelius about her holidays, if somewhat reluctantly. Finally, the small talk was beginning to take effect, after all. Needless to say, Laura focused on just the basics, as this was not a private party and her interlocutor was not a like-minded chuckling girlfriend holding a cocktail in her hands.
“Very good,” Cornelius replied. From his facial expression, it was obvious that he was actually interested in his doctoral candidate’s holiday report. “And what did you enjoy most during those two weeks?”
“Having time!,” Laura answered spontaneously. “Finally having time. You know, I was even able to read through all the literature on the state of research and to write these outline notes. That was very interesting, especially the insight that…”
Skilfully and intentionally, Laura had put the focus back on her actual topic, going into the details of her work. She continued with her insights on the state of research of various research teams all over the world and talked about the differences between the most important publications.
“What do you think, which group leads the field?” she quickly put in after she had finished her monologue, in order to avoid any pause the professor might use to ask another question that would once more lead astray from the topic.
“Did you spend your holidays alone?” Cornelius asked, ignoring her question.
“No, my boyfriend was with me!” Laura felt increasingly annoyed but did her best not to show it by the sound of her voice.
“And what did he do while you were working?”
“He did some hiking.”
“Did he like hiking alone?” Cornelius gave Laura a look as if he commiserated with her boyfriend. Laura hated this question, and she felt a spur of anger. She couldn’t tell her professor that this had in fact been a constantly recurring issue during their holidays, could she? Three times she had had serious arguments with her boyfriend Benjamin.
“He wasn’t overjoyed, but it was okay for him in the end,” Laura replied shortly and threw an ostentatious glance at her watch. Twenty minutes of the one-hour meeting had already passed. Laura became increasingly impatient and nervous. She tried to hide her restlessness as well as she could, but her continuous shifting in her seat betrayed her.
“It’s great that you were able to reach a consensus with your friend. He is obviously very tolerant,” the professor remarked. His voice was full of acknowledgement, which contributed to Laura’s guilty conscience she felt towards her friend. “What is not negotiable for your friend? Where is his limit?”
“Enough is enough,” Laura thought. That was going too far, after all. Her impatience became mixed with rage. “What am I to say now?” she thought and reached for her glass of water. Just to gain time.
“Professor Cornelius, I thought we would talk about my dissertation?”
“We are right in the middle of it.”
“Really?”
“Sure.” Cornelius leaned forward and grinned across his rimless glasses. He looked Laura in the eyes and began: “At the time I was preparing my habilitation treatise, I was freshly married and spent all nights and weekends in front of my computer. My wife then asked me what was most important to me in our life.”
“What did you answer?”
Cornelius smiled. “I said, absent-mindedly and without taking my eyes from the monitor, ‘that we will stay together until one of us dies.’”
“And what did your wife answer to that?”
“She said, ‘And what about the time between now and the funeral?’” Cornelius replied, still smiling. “That night, I wasn’t able to write a single line. I was frightened by myself!”
Silence fell over the winter garden. Laura glanced at her professor and beheld a smiling, smirking face. Suddenly, the penny dropped. She now understood what her supervisor intended to put across to her by telling this short anecdote. Laura shook her head and laughed.
“You mean, the doctoral process is not only about the content, but also about how to consciously design and live this period of your life?”
The professor nodded. “Exactly! My questions were about what is most important to you in your life. Your What For. And, therefore, we will talk about both your thesis and your life in each of our forthcoming supervision meetings.”
Laura laughed again and nodded her head. “Working on my doctorate, how could I forget that there are more things I need in life?” They now continued their topic-related discussion on numbers, data and facts in a very pleasant and relaxed atmosphere.
What is the purpose of this chapter? In a scientific context, “working” means focusing on the content. Typical questions scientists deal with on a daily basis include: What should I measure? What does this result mean? What is the appropriate solution approach? What is the state of science? What is the scientific hypothesis? What scientific methodology should I use? Each of these questions is content-related. The content of scientific work is, of course, of fundamental importance and, most of the time, the only criterion by which dissertations are evaluated.
If you consider giving up on your doctoral journey, just think about the What for you embarked on it in the first place.
What motivates most people? They do what they do in order to fulfil certain needs. In other words, key to motivating people is the What for of their endeavours. Whilst one strategy is to do something in order to achieve a satisfying result, another possible strategy is to do something in order to avoid an unsatisfying result.
What makes you want to earn your doctoral degree? What is the need behind this wish? In other words, what do you do it for? Some doctoral candidates are looking forward to the research work itself, while others just want to use the title to make a career without being disadvantaged by not having a doctoral degree when others do. Some do it to prove to themselves that they are capable of doing it, so that, later, they won’t regret not having tried it. Or they simple do it because, in their families, it has always been the natural thing to do. There are still hundreds of other good reasons—from the perspective of each individual—to try and earn a doctorate.
So what is your What for?
It is imperative to ask this question prior to embarking on a doctoral project. Later in the process, whenever difficult stages have to be mastered, it is the What forwhatfor