Includes bibliographical references and index.

What we wish we had known: lessons learned to keep your doctorate on track -- Choosing your topic: a supervisor perspective -- ‘Begin at the beginning’: identifying ideas for a PhD -- ‘I want to do it because I want to do it’: boarding flight PhD -- Asking “the” question -- Whose doctorate is it anyway? How students and supervisors can work well together -- When an orchestra misses its harmony (or how I learnt to work with my supervisors) -- ‘How much time do I get?????’ -- Views from the top and views of the valley: the paths of dissertation literature reviews -- Critically reviewing the literature: the ghosts of literature present, past and future -- Reading academic papers: visiting and re-visiting old friends -- Research philosophies and why they matter -- Getting your research philosophy clear -- Changing philosophy (aka the only PhD is a finished PhD) -- Designing and conducting a quantitative study: lessons learned from work, home, and school -- Strategies for analysing qualitative data: how to get started with making sense of all that material you’ve collected -- Discovering statistics and developing a quantitative research design -- Mirror, mirror, on the wall, how am I making sense of it all? -- Too much of a good thing – tradeoffs between training and completion? -- Critical feedback: transforming criticisms into indispensable insights -- ‘They think I’m stupid’: dealing with supervisor feedback -- No book or resource has all the answers -- “Ok Google … since when did you join my supervision team?” -- Embracing research ethics: from cognitive walk-through to reflexive journey -- Gaining ethical approval -- But I am just going home: research ethics and student safety -- Organizational governance: the final hurdles for research approval -- Wearing skirts and writing like a woman: a winding road to gaining access to research -- Gaining access to apparently easy informants -- Letters from a doctoral researcher to a data collection advice column … and the responses -- Addressing power differentials and managing egos: how to collect reliable qualitative data when researching ‘elites’ -- Time is waiting in the wings -- Navigating the supervisory relationship: the case of the disappearing supervisors -- Managing time and maintaining focus -- Tightrope walking: balancing the dynamic tensions of the doctoral process -- Keeping your life on track: living one spoon at a time -- Opportunities and challenges of studying abroad -- Keeping life and career on track as a non-traditional doctorate student -- Finders, keepers, losers, weepers! A doctoral candidate’s reality of changing thesis advisors -- To leave or not to leave your Alma Mater -- My journey -- Eat, sleep, redraft, repeat -- Challenges in writing up qualitative findings -- The power to write -- Writing your thesis quickly and well -- Rewriting and overcoming writer’s block -- Overcoming writer’s block (and submission anxiety) -- The final mile: avoiding and overcoming viva trip-ups -- My viva voce examination: a rollercoaster! -- Let me defend myself (or at least my thesis) -- Networking with academics to solve your PhD puzzle -- Are conferences worth attending as a graduate student? Reflections and lessons from a former graduate student -- A tale of three dissertations: experiences of transforming mentored research into an article -- How can you publish from your dissertation? -- Publishing from your thesis -- Getting the first academic job -- Beyond the doctorate: getting your first job -- Publications, what publications? -- Balancing act.