Student Perspectives on the First Year of a PhD

I recently finished the first year of my PhD, and I wanted to reflect on that experience, but as you’ll often hear, every PhD is different. Each student walks their own path, and that can make it difficult to know what advice is worth sharing or listening to. Rather than just share my own, I decided to sit down with some other students who have just finished their first year and talk about their experiences in depth. My goal is not to summarize these conversations as a definitive account of how a first year will look, but instead, to provide a few different perspectives on the experience.

I interviewed seven other first-year computer science PhDs. We all study NLP at Johns Hopkins University, and most of us are affiliated with the Center for Language and Speech Processing. We have a variety of prior experiences, with some having years in industry, others coming straight from undergraduate or master’s programs, and one still working full-time. Between us, we have junior advisors, senior advisors, single advisors, and dual advisors. We come from a range of institutions and geographies, with one of us moving to the US for the first time this year.

From my interviews, it was obvious that these differences greatly shaped our experiences, but we also had much in common. We often faced the same challenges and learned the same lessons. In this post, I’ll share some of those lessons about independence, happiness, comparison, and the advising relationship. At the end, I’ll conclude with some more direct advice from each of us.

Note: This idea was inspired by Nelson Liu’s post on applying to an NLP PhD, which was invaluable to me. I hope that this post will be similarly useful for those considering, applying for, or starting an NLP or CS PhD and that some of these insights will be useful for new PhDs in general.

Independence and Self-Knowledge

Across all the conversations, the most prominent theme was independence. For many of us, independence was why we chose to do a PhD in the first place. We wanted to work on big problems, be creative, or have some control over our work. It’s empowering and exciting, and most of us really enjoyed having that freedom, but at the same time it’s challenging, especially for those who are used to more structure.

“There’s been a lot of independence in both a good way and bad way. That’s why I like [the PhD], but it’s also why it’s been hard.”

The people who seemed to be handling that level of freedom the best by the end of the year were those who understood themselves. People who knew their working style, the problems they care about, and the environments they thrive in had a much easier time picking a direction and being satisfied with where they were going. Some came in with these skills; others described how they developed them. For example, writing down what you really care about and experimenting with your work style.

“Do some soul searching and really flesh out what it is you care about early. I think even if that changes, it’s useful … And trying lots of things early on is useful. Like, work at different hours, starting early, starting later. Do something else in the morning first or go to work first but leave earlier. Figure out what works for you.”

Personal Well-being and Life Outside of Work

Though I expected independence to be important to many of our experiences, I was slightly surprised by the second most common theme: joy. Our group seems generally happy with their lives, which diverges from the common image of a depressed graduate student that I feared when I began.¹ There were certainly times of stress, anxiety, or insecurity, but they seemed to be the exception rather than the rule. One of the biggest self-identified drivers of happiness was a good relationship between work and life outside of work. Nearly everyone expressed the importance of maintaining personal well-being, whether through exercise, hobbies, or social activities.

“I have friends and I have that kind of social safety net. I can go home, and if I’ve had a stressful day, just hang out with some friends.”

“The two things that I felt were most grounding were finding a church community … and then also joining gospel choir. Practices are once a week on Fridays, so I have something to look forward to.”

There is often a temptation to sacrifice extracurriculars to focus more on research, but for many of us, personal well-being and research success are inseparable.

“Reserving personal time for myself and fitness, whether it’s hiking, running, strength training, or just walking outside, has been probably the greatest gain in both general productivity and quality of life.”

“When I didn’t feel like working anymore, I just relaxed through some hobbies and activities; when I felt happy and relaxed, I became interested in my research again.”

Comparison and Achievement

When stress or anxiety did appear, a common culprit was comparison. We are all acutely aware that we should not compare ourselves. We know that everyone has different experiences, circumstances, and goals, but it was still tempting.

“I try not to compare, but it’s really hard.”

Within our group, the most common remedy for this temptation was to slow down and focus internally.

“I want to take it slower. I wanna gain more knowledge. I want to read more. And if my productivity is kind of slower than other people, I’ll be fine.”

“Work on yourself and compare yourself from where you started, and hopefully you’ve grown.”

This attitude is also reflected in the goals we set for ourselves. When I asked each person what they want to achieve by the end of the PhD, the answers mostly avoided common external measures like papers published or internships completed. Instead, they were personal.

“[I want to achieve] a lot of internal stuff, like feeling more sure about myself and being more confident in my ability to figure this out when I get stuck.”

Managing Your Advisor

Though we acknowledged the importance of self-focus, we could not ignore an essential component of the PhD: our advisors. Our group has high opinions of our advisors, acknowledging their exceptional skills in storytelling, big-picture thinking, and problem-solving, but I was surprised by a common trend in our relationships. I had always thought that professors were the ones managing their students, but this year many of us were also managing our advisors. We were trying to guide them into what we wanted, which was often more time or a better use of time.

“[In my meetings], I just need to be more in the cadence of bringing results rather than ideas, because ideas can go off any number of places.”

“[Improving my advising relationship] is a lot of taking agency over it and saying, ‘No, I’m going to fight for my time.’”

The degree to which we had to wrangle our advisors varied by seniority, research style, and personality, and many of us spent the year learning to be assertive. However, that isn’t always easy. The advising relationship is intimidating, even for those with good relationships and industry experience.

“I think I’m more terrified of [my advisor] than I should be. But I think a lot of that goes away the second, like, I’m actually in a meeting with [them] … It’s still scary and it’s funny too because I don’t get that with my bosses at work.”

Final Thoughts

For me, there are a few key takeaways from these conversations:

1. A PhD comes with both the privilege and responsibility of independence, and making the most of it will require you to know yourself well. You should invest in learning what you care about and what works best for you.
2. If you want to succeed in research, you need to thrive outside of it. Make friends, have fun, take breaks, and take care of your physical and mental health.
3. You will be tempted to compare yourself to others. It’s natural, but it’s not helpful. If you’re struggling with comparison, try working towards internal goals rather than external achievements, which are often out of your control.
4. Be prepared to actively manage your advising relationship. Even if it’s intimidating, you should communicate clearly and steer the relationship in the way you want it to go. Your advisor can’t read your mind, and even if they could, they wouldn’t have time to.

These takeaways are based on commonalities across our experiences, but it really is true that every PhD is different. Everyone I talked to had unique challenges and accomplishments that aren’t in this post. If you’re considering or starting a PhD, you’ll have a unique experience that others don’t, and that’s okay. You’re not doing anyone else’s PhD. You’re doing your own.

To close, I’ll share some first-year wisdom from each of the fantastic students that I talked to for this post. You should absolutely check out each of their websites and their research.

“Slow down and experience. Think about everything, including anything different, anything amazing, and anything discouraging during this new period. The experience itself is precious.”

– Han Jiang

“Your advisors don’t have to be the people that you talk to nearly the most about projects. You’ll have labmates, external collaborators in and out of academia, and other faculty. They don’t have to be the end-all be-all of your collaboration.”

– Rohan Jha

“Talk to older students. In the first semester or first month I thought there would be a lot more face time with advisors since I was previously used to daily standups, but that’s actually not the case … Also, older students have a lot more insight into other aspects of the PhD.”

– Saron Samuel

“Create time to take breaks. A PhD is hard. Doing hard things requires rest. I find that taking a step away helps bring so much more clarity to my situation and my problems. Rest looks different for every person, but it’s in the rest that reflection and creativity can happen.”

– Didi Zhou

“Talking to people is super important, and I wish I did more of it. Even just asking people about their research … You’ll find a lot of cool people working on things just by being like, ‘Hey, what do you do?’”

– Cole Molloy

“Just getting into a PhD is an incredible achievement, especially these days. You’re in something great. You’re probably going to do something great. One year isn’t enough to tell you whether or not it’s gonna happen.”

– Kuleen Sasse

“Security is extremely important. You’re starting this program, and sure, you might have a bunch of shortcomings that you think are crucial to getting this PhD done, but you’re here. A lot of people can have those and still have very successful PhDs. The worst thing you can do is react badly to the realizations of that fact.”

– Austen Liao