What PhDs "get" that most people don't | Become an insider

In this video I will share with you what PhD is get that most people don't. It is not to say that you can't get these things elsewhere but it is certainly something that PhD students learned along the way.
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▼ ▽ TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - introduction
0:20 - IQ is overrated
2:01 - the true value of doing a PhD
3:43 - the evolution of the project
6:18 - all academics are in survival mode
7:36 - long-term rewards
8:59 - another is good enough
10:32 - Outro

[@LeggattNZ]

I keep telling people the same - it's not IQ, it's commitment, tenacity, HARD WORK, project management, and consistency... (in my final year.. woohoooo!)

[@robertjamesstove]

Yes. There are a lot of people in my field (musicology) who can think circles around me. Their IQs are through the ceiling. Mine certainly is not. But what I had more than many of them had, and what enabled me to finish my PhD when most of them had never even started one, was the ability to do the boring scut-work and do it to an adequate standard. I think of one dear lady known to me, now alas dead, who dickered over a PhD (literature in her case) for 45 years. How much of it she ever got written down to publishable standard, I cannot say; but I fear the worst. By every possible criterion she was my intellectual, cultural, and moral superior. Yet she lacked the element of steely ruthlessness by which - and only by which - Sh*t Gets Done.

[@prapanthebachelorette6803]

Determination is crucial is so true

[@jean-bosco729]

''The valley of death'' well put! Thank God for saving my soul, I've survived it. Thanks Andy for the excellent presentation!

[@dyad9592]

Pay attention to this man kids, esp. picking a mentor: personable, famous and well-funded, lol! I'm a retired biomed research scientist and educator. I did my PhD in neurosci as a personal goal while also working in another lab and raising a family, so I don't know about the least resistance thing in my case. I just wanted it real bad and did well in all of it. I was hungry and blessed with enough mental substrate, you have to be. But, like most things in life, you won't ever get paid for your extra synapses, you'll get paid for what you produce. After 25 yrs I got out of academic research, real bloodsport, and did what I wanted and enjoyed and was successful. I had no fear, it was just another goal. So IMO, the true value of your PhD is in how it informs the rest of your life no matter what you do. If you can do a PhD, imo you can do most anything. For me, in the end it was worth it. Btw, a PhD in the US in a hard science is, or was 4 or 5 or more years (3 yrs? that's like a lawyer, no way). Followed by 4 -8 years of post-doc ... man, you think you had it rough.

[@janeyap5837]

And then after about another year you started coming out on the other side. This valley of death consumes you and you landed on Andy's channel. Thank you Andy!

[@geoffrygifari3377]

IQ is overrated: *absolutely agree* . It's almost as if IQ in scientific research acts the same way as GPA in uni. Once you get high "enough" more IQ doesn't really matter. Over time i see the distinguishing quality of scientists as the ability to handle uncertainty: knowing that your experiment might not work, that you'd probably not be einstein-famous in your career, and whether or not you'd even *stay* in research, but *you do it anyway*

[@marohs5606]

Thank you so much for this video, it gives me hope that I am OK , and nothing is wrong with me with experiencing everything you mentioned here.. Thank u a lot.

[@mahmoudyassin1493]

I am on the stage of "valley of death" on my Ms degree right now , even I still doesn't begin my thesis-work😓

[@philipdaholic8156]

Hi Andy, great video. I'm currently into my first year of my PhD and I've been watching your videos throughout and they have been a great source of motivation. I'm concerned about what my options are after my PhD, would you be able to do a pros and cons of some of the options in the future? Thanks again and looking forward to the next video!!!

[@TheCharlesalele]

Great presentation Andy. I am in my first year of my PhD and trying to hold a realistic picture of what to expect in the near future. Thank you.

[@DrAndyStapleton]

Glad it was helpful!

[@hudamaulana9590]

Been struggling to put my motivation to do a PhD into words for my PhD application. Thanks this helps me a lot!

[@satyajitghosh6384]

You explained it so nicely. 👏👏👏

[@tedtonz5734]

humility and self-care

[@swizzbeats1212]

Great video, thanks for sharing!

[@boxeriain]

The valley of death haha that was brilliant

[@kotokoulo]

Thank you!

[@simratkaurdhillon7776]

"The valley of death!" 👏🏼👏🏼 Thank you for sharing your thoughts! Could you talk more about 'high impact papers'?

[@chavelitaveizaga]

Thanks again Andy! Excellent video as always :D I wish I had discovered your channel before, your advice is gold ! From the practical tips to the insights and more deep thoughts about academia and what comes after PhD. I'm definitely recommending you to some new PhD students at work. Greetings from a bolivian girl doing her PhD in France :)

[@DrAndyStapleton]

Thank you so much, Isabel. Thank you for sharing my videos!

[@s.b200]

I know another thing that I would add. Freedom to work on one thing at a time and get to decide and make your own decisions in a large project setting (if your supervisor lets you). During my masters I worked as a research assistant in different projects. In one of them my team mates (senior scientists) were procrastinating way too much and did not take the responsibility they signed up for, endangering the project. They just had so many projects simultaneously so I ended up running and managing almost all the work alone for a year. They told me as I was admitted to my PhD recently: 'Enjoy this time, when you have this one project to really delve yourself into without distractions!' I understand what they mean and I realise that work can also become so much more chaotic after the PhD as you get involved in many different things. I will try to enjoy it to the fullest - after the research assistant jobs I know I likely can cope!:) Thank you for great videos Andy.

[@frazulabrar]

Amazing content, quite insightful!

[@DrAndyStapleton]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@studentaccount4354]

TY

[@tapanvora9506]

Nice video but I have not yet started my PhD and craving to get the admission and doing hard work for that.

[@xy4669]

Put depression and suicidal thoughts in the list

[@56jasa]

I find the IQ part improbable. The overlap isn't perfect and from my research it drops off over time in education(far more in elementary than at graduate level), but it's still a strong contributor. The genetic overlap between educational attainment (the genes thereof) and IQ (the genes thereof) is ~50%. Now life circumstances can add a lot of noise and this mostly accounts for high school flunk-outs rather than PhD completion rate, but it's still a strong predictor, and there is absolutely no evidence it drops off at any point in terms of the IQ scale, the correlation is linear all the way. In e.g., same effect size difference of 120 to 140 as 140 to 160 or 160 to 180; the reason the most ridiculously successful people aren't the most ridiculously smart is due to regression to the mean and the enormously large noise/"circumstance variable" mentioned prior. To illustrate how large the regression to the mean effect is, even just taking the prior attainment/IQ overlap which is quite large and probably much more so than in graduate school, which would give a correlation of roughly .7, we would see that at 172(one in million IQ), you would only get one in two thousand mean expected rarity value of education(rarity slashed by 500) and the two sigma(bottom 2%) left tail of this distribution, the SD of which is also roughly .7, would have around only one in fifty educational attainment, which seems like quite a lot, but the rarity is slashed by an enormous twenty thousand. Now add noise/circumstance variables to the mix and the fact it drops off with increasing education, and it would probably model the actual case quite rather well. But it still means more IQ, even at the very extremes, is still a quite large advantage. Even if it explains just 16% of the variance, it would mean someone 30 IQ points smarter has a whole .8 standardized effect size advantage. So I find the claim IQ is overrated itself overrated. lol Besides, what are high IQ people supposed to do? Get good at video games? Go into programming and upper management?(the prior saying similar things about IQ and tenacity, funnily enough) What else would it be for?

[@nonee915]

Oh wow.. i was questioning the same today like why exactly m i getting out of it?

[@iranjackheelson]

My subconscious brain: "mm... nice, long beard" --> "Socrates" --> "wise man" --> "Socrates" --> "yes... long-term reward" --> "nice long beard" --> loop My brain predicts at 08:38 "it's certainly something you get... intricate... (long pause)... BEARD"

[@bardmadsen6956]

Chemistry that is impressive, you probably won't get this post as it is about anthropology. Yet, I have many questions. Anyone happen to know of a comedy skit where, I think it is the same fellow playing both parts as black older couple and the man lights a joint and the wife is worried he's going to set the air on fire and he replies back "You don't know nothing about Chemistry, pronounced incorrectly? In the last seven years I have found that the vast majority of doctorates haven't a clue and I can prove it. It seems all they know is what they were told to know and are closed minded, trapped in their own dogmatic tribalism. My contention is that the Taurid Stream, that seems to emanate from the Pleiades during our crossing of its pre-perihelion caused the abrupt transition from the Pleistocene into the Holocene to which mankind anthropomorphized it into mythology and religion. The Pleiades means the dove stars, seven avian host of stars, within the Taurus Constellation and yet they are clearly depicted as seven dodo's in a row at Gobekli Tepe and the academia think the zoomorphic art is just the common animals of the area. The Mesoamerican experts know the rattlesnake tail means the Pleiades which is clearly stated as the causation of earthly destruction is ignored. The story is universal in traditions, yet they think Halloween with its well known fireballs (Taurid meteors) commemorating the Festival of the Dead is just a 'synchronicity coincidence' and not coincident. Or the denial of the strikingly clear secondary impacts formation of the Carolina Bays and Nebraska Basins. This SHOULD be common knowledge and one of the top dangers of our species that is sidetracked as not worthy of recognition. Not long ago I watched a video of an astrophysicist explain meteor streams and he stated that it is the speed of the Earth in its orbit that produces the shooting stars and didn't have a clue to the speed of the debris from the progenitor comet !

[@delbimore431]

Totally agree. High level entrepreneurship is the same. You work for years before it pays off and makes sense to other people. Then, they see the rewards, the success, and they call it luck or network... luck is the name lazy people give to situation they wouldn't even try to make happen... some people dont get it, or pretend to, otherwise, they would have to admit they're lazy and you're not.

[@worawatsr9803]

This is not true. I’m a tenured track professor and many people used to read my PhD papers all the time.