I have been moving at full speed in my academic pursuits these past years (see Bachelors’ Outline & Master’s Outline) and now that I am about to finish the M.Sc. Logic (UvA) in record time, I am wondering whether this approach has been the right one or not. Thinking about whether this has been the right approach in the past is perhaps not the best question to ask, since I cannot change that anyway, and in the end, I am proud of my results, which both on paper and in terms of competence acquired, given the time span, are very satisfactory. The question I want to think about today is whether it makes sense to maintain a similar pace during my PhD, no matter where it will take me (see PhD Applications). Here I find some arguments in favour of changing the pace and then describe the struggles I had when keeping it in the past years.
The first key point is that what I did up to now allowed me to get a good introduction to different Research Areas but not get very deep into a single one. I have developed competence in a variety of fields in mathematical logic and analytical philosophy, but there is no single field in which I feel ready to publish. This is not a problem during my master’s but needs to change when getting started with the PhD programme. This non-specialisation is not directly a consequence of the quick pace I kept in these years, but it is certainly connected since I could never just follow my curiosity and take the time to read several papers on one topic and give accurate answers to all questions that came up, as I had too many things to do in too little time. As a consequence, I couldn’t get deep enough into a single field.
Secondly, during a PhD, the activity I need to maximise the outcome is not really just to push to finish it quickly to do a Postdoc but instead to get good papers published in my field. This does not necessarily mean having a slower pace, but at least that I should not finish before the contract ends. Though perhaps the aim of getting two PhD degrees, like in math and philosophy, could be an aim to bear in mind.
Fourthly, on a more practical note, I will be paid for 5 years (if in PhD Applications in the US), and should therefore not take much less than 5 years. Finding funding is always a struggle, and losing money by finishing a contract before its due might not be the best strategy.
Last but not least, it is getting stressful. I recently wrote about Is it the Begin of a Motivational Decline and I find that the current pace is not something I can keep in the long run. Three years have been a good amount of time to get a solid background in my field, and now I need to take the time to get really deep into one single field without spending too much time tasting different fields.