Dear James,
Thanks for your post! This is what I have been hoping for;
people like you writing about your experiences and
thoughts on PhDing. It'd be good to have more, many more,
both about good and not so good experiences.
Terry is, I think, too hasty and unfair to come straight
back at you about there being dangers and hazards ahead,
even after a good PhD experience. Of course there are,
many of them. But I'm sure you know this, and I'm sure
you'll find your way through and around these as you
start and accumulate your post-doc experiences, including,
perhaps, supervising your own PhD students, just as Terry
did.
Oldies like me, and Terry, and others here, should not
pontificate like this. We've accumulated more experience,
yes, but that does not, in and of itself, translate into
wisdom to be handed out like this, not in this fast
changing world.
To make design research quality better needs new ideas,
new approaches, new efforts, and lots of determination.
However, and if this is pontificating, then so be it, I
do believe that each researcher knowing and being the
keeper of the quality of what he or she does is the
necessary basis for all that must be done.
Best regards,
Tim
Donostia
The Basque Country
===================
On Jun 21, 2012, at 11:33 , James Self wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> To add to Tim's comments on where responsibility should be placed, what it means in terms of the PhD experience and what doctoral students take from it, anecdotally, I have just completed a PhD in Design (conventional thesis submission). I was lucky enough to have a supervisor who continually went above and beyond the call to be as sure as he could that what I was doing and how I was doing it would be of value to both design research and practice.
>
> This has indeed instilled a sense of how to conduct the supervision of a PhD (in me) that I will try to emulate as I move through a career in academia. Most of us only have one experience of a PhD (one's enough for me!). When the time comes it is that experience that will, in part, inform how I (others?) handle my (their?) own supervision.
>
> So to all you PhD DoSs and supervisors out there, you can and do make a difference. Keep up the good work...
>
> Best,
>
> James.
>
>
> James A. Self
> Doctoral Researcher | Design Research Centre
> School of Design | Kingston University London
> Tel: +44 (0) 77 241 91 667
> Blog: http://www.designerlytools.blogspot.co.uk/
> Site: www.industrialdesignresearch.com
>
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