For most graduate writers, acclimating to doctoral-level inquiry is fraught with numerous tensions, whether regarding the development of scholarly identity (Gardner et al., 2014), navigating graduate school's newly decentralized sources for support (Simpson, 2012), or mastering the writing and research conventions that govern disciplinary…

So, you have decided to do a PhD … now what? In this essay, the author provides some advice for beginning PhD students, basically sharing what he would tell his younger self. Doing a PhD is a transformative experience, but the process is challenging, not merely on an intellectual level but also psychologically. To overcome these challenges, one…