A worried PhD student - How much is required for my thesis? - (Sep/25/2014 )

Hi guys,
 
==This part of the post has been edited per request of the original poster==
 
My questions are - How many ChIPseq experiments would you need to have enough for a PhD thesis? Would three chipseq experiments be enough to finish? What happens if some of these experiments fail? How can I motivate myself to get this done?!
 
Thanks for taking time to read this - I can give you more information

Hi, I can't answer your questions about how much is enough for the thesis, and I hope that someone will be able to answer this soon, but I can say something about this question: "How can I motivate myself to get this done?!"

You are not alone with this. A lot of us have trouble during their thesis, advisors who don't care or are always absent, failing experiments etc.

My own thesis (not PhD) was one long struggle or rather one long succession of failing experiments and worries, so I know how you feel. My motivation also dropped during times, but I kept going because I still had (and have) the final aim of getting that title and publish something, and to see that all the effort was not done in waste.

When your motivation drops, just think of how it will be like when you finally get that PhD you worked so hard for, and think about how you've come a long way and now it's just about the "last steps" to be still taken...

Hi - Thank you for taking the time to answer

I try to think like that as much as I can. One good thing to come is that I am getting a publication soon. I won't be first author but I will have my own figures so I am happy with that. 

Its just the pressure is on now and part of me just wants to leave and never go back but I know Ill regret that. It's a horrible feeling giving pretty much the same presentation to my department every time (we present quite often). Hopefully I can get some more experiments done on my trip away.

Hello.

You are definitely in the same boat as the other PhD students :)

Don't worry, it is stressful :) Just be happy that you are nearly done!

Ahmad

You have done a good job in 3 years. When you can successfully submit it totally depends upon where you are. I have seen people getting PhD in 3 years, irrespective of what crap they have generated versus 10 years with a correspondingly richer pile. One objective measure is getting one first author publication in a decent journal out of your work (not necessary, nor sufficient in all cases, but a useful marker).

Just keep at it, without losing sight of the ultimate goal -- to get it over with asap. You know the learning part comes during the fellowship!

 On our university there is a paper requirement for administratively being able to finish PhD. At least three publications, where two of those should be first author and two of those in IF journals and two of those original research.
Generaly when you have done work enough to have such papers, that means you have done work enough to finish PhD.

But of course there are IF journals and IF journals, at there may be also exceptions if you have only a single publication in very high impact (like Cancer Cell..), so it's not that all the student's work is worth the same, but at least they know that they have to produce enough work to fit in the publication limit.

The vague definition of a PhD work that I heard is that you have to present a decent amount of some novel findings. Or THE novel finding, ideally. So having some main work done, in a IF journal and co-authored other novel findings is just fine for this.

But that PhD should not be awarded for a great amount of work, that lead to nothing (i.e. no publication), because it's nice that you tried and worked hard, but that's not enough.

So what I see (but I don't know what are your own specifics for getting a PhD) you have some co-authored papers with novel finding, so you probably should focus on finishing something you already have in part, or just focusing on finishing anything else.

So, if you feel there is not sure your colleagues will provede things you need for finishing the main topic, select something you can finish. Without something finished, it's just a huge pile of "maybe someday" data, if you understand what I mean.

(just IMHO, all of that)

Good luck.

(I also had the biggest problem with "finishing" eventhough it wasn't about the work or papers, but about writing the dissertation, but it's the same.. you can't have a huge book that ends in the middle, but rather a complete book that deosn't need to be that big )