As an aspiring PhD student if you have ever wondered whether you’d be able to complete your PhD successfully, rest assured you are not the only one. While every doctoral journey comes with its unique set of challenges, there are some basic skills required for PhD that you can imbibe to navigate your way better. So what skills should a PhD student have? This short article will walk you through some of the most essential skills needed for PhD students.
Essential skills required for PhD
1. Quest for knowledge
The drive toward expanding and growing your existing knowledge bank is one of the prerequisite PhD skills to transform you into a motivated candidate. Any successful doctoral journey begins with a willingness to embark upon a continuous quest for knowledge and the ability to keep learning as well as unlearning concepts on a regular basis. Learning to view ‘negative’ results as potential new data is not only an important aspect of a PhD journey, but is also a helpful skill needed for PhD students to keep going during the tough times.
2. Time management
While the drive to gain new information is useful to design a hypothesis, one of the skills required for PhD is the ability to translate your hypothesis into a tangible experiment in order to test its feasibility. Some of the biggest challenges and stressors faced during this entire process arise due to ineffective time management. This can also lead to unnecessary mental and physical exhaustion. Learning to maximize your productivity within the stipulated time, is one of the most crucial skills needed for PhD students.
3. Data analysis
One of the most important research skills for PhD students is data analysis, which is a key component of any doctoral journey as it contributes significantly to a deeper understanding of the subject. This includes the ability to view your data through an objective lens, grasp patterns through the data, and form logical conclusions leading to new hypotheses. Today many online tools are available for analyzing big data; however, human judgement and discretion are still key skills required for PhD students and helps to lend a contextual relevance to the analysis. Thus, data analysis is definitely counted among the most essential research skills needed for PhD students to succeed.
4. Communication skills
Developing good communication abilities is one of the important skills needed for PhD and is necessary not just to ensure your research is conveyed properly, but also to improve your professional relationships. Effective workplace communication is an important skill needed for PhD students and will lead to smooth interactions with your peers and seniors and can also help you to build long-lasting professional connections. As a PhD student, remember you may be required to convey your research not just through academic channels such as publications and presentations, but also through informal interactions with experts at conferences. This makes learning to communicate your research through various modes one of the basic skills needed for PhD to ensure a successful doctoral journey.
5. Perseverance
Among the most undervalued research skills for PhD students is perseverance. That is because, the doctoral journey is bumpy, with a lot of uncertainty and failures. There might be times when you question your abilities and lose faith in the big picture. The quintessential PhD skills of persevering through such moments and regaining the motivation and drive to move ahead take a lot of patience and practice. Many doctoral students find this to be quite challenging, but every student must find their own process of polishing these skills needed for PhD. In fact, not only are persistence and perseverance extremely crucial, they serve as transferrable skills required for PhD life and even beyond.
Acquiring these PhD skills before or even during your doctoral journey may seem like a daunting task; however, the good news is that all these skills are transferable and will definitely prove to be instrumental in helping you carve out a fulfilling career beyond your PhD.
R Discovery is a literature search and research reading platform that accelerates your research discovery journey by keeping you updated on the latest, most relevant scholarly content. With 250M+ research articles sourced from trusted aggregators like CrossRef, Unpaywall, PubMed, PubMed Central, Open Alex and top publishing houses like Springer Nature, JAMA, IOP, Taylor & Francis, NEJM, BMJ, Karger, SAGE, Emerald Publishing and more, R Discovery puts a world of research at your fingertips.
Try R Discovery Prime FREE for 1 week or upgrade at just US$72 a year to access premium features that let you listen to research on the go, read in your language, collaborate with peers, auto sync with reference managers, and much more. Choose a simpler, smarter way to find and read research – Download the app and start your free 7-day trial today!
