ECON CLUB
Ph.D. Students Offer Realistic Advice on Challenges, Rewards at Special KU Economics Club Panel
Cutline: Four current Ph.D. students provided undergraduates with a frank discussion as to how different their experiences would be should they decide to also pursue their doctoral degrees in economics.
The KU Economics Club, an important entity that fosters collaborative interactions helping the Department’s undergraduates maximize their experience, held a fascinating event on March 7 (“Publish or Perish: Insights into the World of Ph.D.”) featuring four current Ph.D. students offering realistic advice regarding the challenges and rewards of pursuing doctoral degrees in economics.
Current KU economics Ph.D. students Donghyun Lee, Lily Springer, Syeda Marjana Razzak, and Shatil Anaholy appeared at the Economics Club’s Speaker Series panel presentation at Snow Hall and offered a no-holds-barred and at-time humorous assessment of their journeys through the Department’s Ph.D. program. The event included discussions of how challenging it had been to balance their GTA teaching duties with their own research and classwork and other areas of their lives.
Shatil told the assembled audience of undergraduates that he had started out with an interest in pursuing his Ph.D. in physics, but quickly had became hooked on economics once he had seen supply and demand curves.
Donghyun added that given the stresses of Ph.D. life, motivation was a very important part of the process and the journey.
“That motivation should ideally be about a passion for economics,” he said.
Undergraduates with an interest in ultimately pursuing their doctoral degrees should jump at any and all chances to do primary research, according to Lily.
“You should consider doing a research assistance-ship if at all possible to start getting exposed,” she said. “Once you do get into a Ph.D. program, you will find that developing perseverance is key – especially during the first year, which is very intensive in both theory and math.”
Syeda noted that the challenging work-life balance for she and her fellow Ph.D. students had been an often-discussed topic on their shared journey.
The four panelists explained that one very important skill they had to learn was to be more self-directed – that Ph.D. students were simply not as “spoon-fed” as undergraduates. They all agreed on the importance of Google Scholar as a critical tool; and also about the stress involved in studying for the qualifying exam.
“One thing I had to learn was to change my mindset and be able to take some punches academically and move away from perfectionism,” Lily said.
Shatil added that the other thing new Ph.D. students were going to notice was the “quantum jump in terms of study effort” they would be putting out relative to their undergraduate days.
The panelists further agreed that maintaining other activities and friends outside of the Economics Department was very important, as challenging as that could be at times.
Donghyun said that avoiding burnout also involved developing more efficient time-allocation skills. He said that he had found that grading was one way to have at least some mental downtime from his most intensive studying.
Ph.D. candidate Srishti Slaria, who has already accepted a tenure-track position at Illinois State, also attended the event and chimed in with additional advice for the undergraduates should they consider pursuing advanced degrees.
“You likely will find that data skills are more important than theory if you are wanting to get into the private sector instead of the academic track,” Srishti said. “The bottom line is that if you don’t have a love for research, the Ph.D. program is probably not for you.”