admin - PhD Thesis Bangalore

When to quit a PhD programme? Would taking a break help?

Are you thinking of quitting your PhD programme? Is it too stressing for you to handle? Don’t take a harsh decision, and first try to take a leave of absence. This break would help you to try and put your life back on the track, and explore options and opportunities you see outside the academia. The … Continue reading “When to quit a PhD programme? Would taking a break help?”

Are you thinking of quitting your PhD programme? Is it too stressing for you to handle? Don’t take a harsh decision, and first try to take a leave of absence. This break would help you to try and put your life back on the track, and explore options and opportunities you see outside the academia. The break can be as long as one year to help you take a firm and calculated decision of whether you want to come back, or you are happy outside the world of doctoral studies. If you decide to apply for leave of absence, ensure these few things:

Never leave on a sour note and burn bridges with your supervisor or the university. You must always leave on convincing personal issues as a reason which have not much to do with the institute or your course
Study the guidelines of the university thoroughly so that your absence from the course falls within the norms
Utilise the break to evaluate your decision in a pragmatic way. Do not come back to the course half-heartedly. Come back only if you know it is your calling in life.

It is natural and expected to have ups and downs in the PhD programme, and one should be prepared for it. But, if you have some serious concerns, then it should be surely a decision to quit and not let your research life take over your personal success

If you feel that you are becoming a victim of a psychological disorder that is going out of control, and lasting over a few weeks. There is no point to let things go out of control. It is always better to call it quits

The demands from the programme, in context to finances, time and resources are challenging for you, and the kind of returns you see it bringing for you is not very exciting

There are health issues that are increasing affecting your wellbeing. No achievement is worth enough to compromise with health, surely.

If you have so decided to quit the programme, make it your own individual decision and not something that is under the influence of n your family or friends. If you do so, again you would be dissatisfied, and feel difficulty accepting the life then after. So, be careful when you make your decision.

Why should you stay away from plagiarism completely?

Visualise that you have toiled on writing something with all you constructive input, and by the end it looks like something you wanted, and you feel very proud of the outcome because a lot of sweat and blood has gone into creating this. But, soon you find out that, what is actually your hard work and effort is being used by someone else in their name. How would you feel? Undoubtedly, you would get angry and annoyed apart from being disheartened. This is the story of plagiarism and it isn’t anything different from stealing something that belongs to someone else, and then calling it as your own. There are a lot of researchers who tend to indulge in plagiarism, intentionally or unintentionally in their project. It is not right, and one needs to be very careful. Here is why:

It is in contradiction with the law: This is very important to know, if you are not aware that by getting into plagiarism of content you are pushing yourself on the other side of the law. The law does not permit to use someone else’s content as your own. If you happen to copy work for which the writer has a copyright, you are eligible to be dragged to court and maybe even pushed into paying a hefty amount for stealing someone else’s work, and calling it as your own.
It is against ethics: It is ethically not right to use others content in your name. When you are tempted to do that, first, you must ask yourself, if someone else would do it to you, how would you feel? Your principles and value system would stop you from doing an act that is degrading.
You aren’t making any new contribution: When you create something new for your dissertation, you are enriching your own knowledge and at the same time contributing constructively in the academia. When you pick up something and show as your own, there isn’t any new knowledge created and it isn’t any different from cheating. Perhaps, just a refined form of cheating.
You may lose your degree: Your supervisor or evaluating committee may find out about the copied content. Most of the time, an expert eye can easily distinguish between original and unoriginal content. In case they decide to take a stringent action, you may end up losing your degree. A risk, surely not worth taking.

PhD: Are you making these mistakes while searching for a job?

Transferring yourself into a new industry while job hunting can be a daunting task and may leave you confused and perplexed. The business world is quite different from the academia and without proper guidance and training you can face a lot of difficulty navigating industries. Some networking tips are surely helpful to guide you to … Continue reading “PhD: Are you making these mistakes while searching for a job?”

Transferring yourself into a new industry while job hunting can be a daunting task and may leave you confused and perplexed. The business world is quite different from the academia and without proper guidance and training you can face a lot of difficulty navigating industries. Some networking tips are surely helpful to guide you to do the right thing. You must ensure to avoid these few things while starting or growing a career in the business world:

Networking with the wrong people: PhDs usually tend to meet PhDs. That is their most common networking strategy. But this kind of networking rarely leads to any kind of job opportunities arising. All that you get to hear are the experiences of the people and not any new job options. You must meet with people in the business wold and people of different industries and interest areas. The more diverse category of people you meet, better would be your scope of landing into getting job offers.
Blowing up your title and attitude: Some people after completing their PhD want to act bigger and refuse to consider themselves at the same pedestal with the others who are non-doctorates as they think that their accomplishment makes them worthy of much more. You must be realistic when you meet with people. Boasting and exaggerating about your skill set may not be of much help and may perhaps bring down your credibility when you are not able to live up to the expectations you have created.
Awaiting contact from others: networking and being known in the business world is all about taking initiatives and contacting people on your own. If you keep waiting all the time for people to contact you then it may never happen. Remember that no one is going to chase you with a job on the platter. The ball will always remain in your court.
Underestimating your potential: This is in contrast to the above mistake. It is right that you must not blow up your title and attitude, but at the same time you must not tone yourself down below your due potential. You end up doing that sometimes, when you show how desperate you are for getting a job or you accept the salary package without any much negotiation. You have to maintain your grace, and create an impression that you are not distressed without a job.

Few aspects of contemporary Social Research

Research is a blend of a wide range of activities and skills. In an attempt to be a good researcher, it is required that one is able to work with diverse people, understand those specific methods that have to be adopted for conducting research, have thorough knowledge about your topic of study, be able to … Continue reading “Few aspects of contemporary Social Research”

Research is a blend of a wide range of activities and skills. In an attempt to be a good researcher, it is required that one is able to work with diverse people, understand those specific methods that have to be adopted for conducting research, have thorough knowledge about your topic of study, be able to articulate thoughts vocally as well in a written way, and so on. The list of qualities and skills desired in a good researcher are endless.

Though, the aspects related to contemporary social research can be described through an endless list, but some of the most explicit and straightforward aspects that relate to research are:

Theoretical: Social research is primarily theoretical as its major concern is with the development, exploration, testing of ideas of the researchers regarding the way the world operates. But is it only theoretical?

Empirical: In addition to be being theoretical, it is also empirical, which means that its foundation rests on observation and measurements of reality of the perception that we carry of the world around us. Most of the research that we see around, is a good blend of the theoretical as well as the empirical aspects of research.

Probabilistic: Another word that describes Contemporary Social Research in a good way is a Probabilistic. This is because this research is based on probabilities. All the inferences that are made in social research have probabilities that are associated with them and the word certainty does not have much to do with research. Research only helps us to approximate probabilities for the situations studied.

Causal: This term means, that most of the research is focused on looking at cause and effect relationships. Though this may not be true for all studies, as some of the studies are only observational and some are attempted to explore relationships. However, studies are beneficial and useful, only when they go beyond observation and exploration. As, change can only be brought by understanding the cause and effect between the factors, so that the problems can be eliminated.

These are some of the important components of Contemporary Social Research and though the list is not exhaustive, and one can surely add more factors to it, but these are the important and definitive components that are used in defining the basic meaning of Research. Researchers must acquaint themselves with the meaning and thorough understanding of these terms, so that they know what their study expects from them.

How to work with different literature for crafting the Literature Review?

In an attempt to create a successful Literature Review, most of the researchers target to connect their work to the diverse literature that they read. That diverse literature could be as varied as, from research papers, policy documents, blogs, websites, articles, books etc. Scholars, sometimes even go further and incorporate cartoons and films. So literature … Continue reading “How to work with different literature for crafting the Literature Review?”

In an attempt to create a successful Literature Review, most of the researchers target to connect their work to the diverse literature that they read. That diverse literature could be as varied as, from research papers, policy documents, blogs, websites, articles, books etc. Scholars, sometimes even go further and incorporate cartoons and films. So literature should be considered as something plural, because, though it is a single entity but it couldn’t be created without compiling content from multiple ends and directions.

The primary objective behind reading a literature is, to gather lots of relevant information about a topic. It helps to confirm ones opinions about what he already knows. When you read varied literature on a particular topic, you categorically come to know what is known to you and what is not. The researcher, who is in the process, or at the stage of evaluating existing literature, gets an open perspective and looks at it from a critical point of view, so that beneath the knowledge on the surface of the literature, what is the view point, can also be understood. Eventually, when you have lots of literature with you, you are able to compare, contrast and then ultimately develop a perspective, which can be combined as common characteristics or approaches.

Researchers who don’t have an in-depth understanding of what is the core objective of creating the Literature Review, create it with the only sole purpose of text summarization, making lists of results and arguments. You must remember, this is just the first step in the creation of the literature review. You must rather have an evaluative perspective and not just listing down or compiling content. The job of Literature Review should be completed, to do justice to your research, as well as, to all the effort you make in collecting information and compiling it. The task is complete only when you have mapped the entire field. You should be able to clarify what has been the explicit contribution of the research, and its relationship with the prior research that has already been done.

Once you have done that, you unambiguously bring out the gap that is unfilled and still needs research. So you can end your Literature Review highlighting very clearly, that thorough analysis of existing literature brings out some gaps, and filling of those gaps is the objective of your research