Nonna Nurse Tips for New PhDs

Earning a PhD is not a small thing. Before you rush into the next project, grant, article, or role, give yourself a grace period to rest and reflect.

You have completed something amazing but also very demanding. Let yourself breathe before jumping back into the pond. The next challenge will still be there when you're ready.

You may enter academic and research spaces where some people seem very sure of themselves. Don't let that intimidate you.

Each person brings a different set of knowledge, talents, experiences, and questions. That is what makes good research teams possible. 

Trust your knowledge and eperience. You would not have made it this far without it.

Seek out colleagues whose knowledge, training, methods, and lived experiences are different from your own.

Don’t only collaborate with people who think like you. Your work will be stronger when others challenge your assumptions, question your ideas, and help you see what you may have missed.  Collaborating across perspectives and cultures can help your work become deeper, clearer, and more meaningful. 

 Networking is not just self-promotion. It is how people come to know your work, remember your interests, and think of you when opportunities arise.

Attend the conference session. Ask the question. Send the follow-up email. Introduce yourself to someone whose work interests you. These small steps can lead to future collaborations, invitations, publications, presentations, and friendships.

You do not need to become someone you are not. Just let people know who you are, what you care about, and what kind of work you hope to do.

You may not be punching a clock, but that does not mean you should work all the time. Research, writing, teaching, and service can easily expand into every corner of your life.

Your inner critic can also become exhausting. Review your work carefully, but do not critique it so harshly that you become frozen and unable to move forward.

Develop a schedule, create reasonable timelines, and protect some of your time for rest, relationships, and ordinary life.

Disseminate your findings through traditional publishing channels and through the many other options now available.

A journal article is important, but it is not the only way to make your work visible. Present, teach, write, speak, post, and share what you have learned with the people who can use it.

Don’t let your work be the tree that fell in the forest and no one heard. Research only matters if it is shared.