phd project not working out

The Savvy Scientist

Experiences of a London PhD student and beyond

Academic Challenges: How to Overcome PhD Problems and Academic Failure

Completing a PhD can be difficult . No matter how much planning you do, there will almost certainly be times when academic challenges mean that things don’t go the way you’d like them to.

Today I want to illustrate some of the academic failures I experienced with my own PhD. I hope that sharing these PhD problems and what I learned may help you. Or if nothing else reassure you that you’re not alone!

This list certainly isn’t complete, but I want to give a flavour of wide-ranging failures, starting from PhD applications through to the completion of my project.

A reader suggested the topic of academic challenges. If you have a suggestion for something you’d like covered please leave a comment or send me a message .

Academic Challenges During My PhD Applications

1) taking three years of applications to get a funded phd position.

Academic failure: I applied for my first PhD position the year after I finished my undergraduate degree. But I didn’t actually start a PhD until three years’ worth of applications later.

I made the mistake of not casting a wide enough net and failed to consider how important funding is. I naively thought that as soon as I got offered a place I was sorted. Little did I realise that funding can be the main hurdle.

Over these three years I applied to only five projects in total:

Key learnings

Although I got offered a place for the first PhD I applied for back in 2013, I didn’t secure any funding. Now I know that getting accepted without funding doesn’t necessarily mean much!

I spent those years whilst I was applying gaining experience working as a research assistant in different universities. This extra experience (and name on papers) helped enormously to secure the funding I eventually took: a university-wide scholarship.

Each department only put forward one applicant (their strongest, supposedly) and from this department-wide pool only one scholarship was awarded. I certainly wouldn’t have been considered an outstanding applicant based off of just my undergraduate experience.

With some persistence it all worked out in the end. In hindsight I’m much happier with the project I ended up doing than if I’d gone for the one as intended at the start! Even so, it is easy to see how someone could have given up after the first failure in securing funding.

Application tips :

• Cast a wide net . Generally, more applications mean a higher chance of getting a funded project. Also, consider looking abroad. One of my regrets is not having applied for a PhD abroad, or at least tried to spend some time abroad as part of my project.
• Persistance pays off with PhD applications. If you like the work of certain researchers get in touch with them and stay in regular contact.

2) Failure in my basic biology knowledge at interview

Academic failure: Of my five PhD applications, I got rejected at interview stage for the Synthetic Biology CDT at Oxford.

It turned out that although the course was intended for non-biologists who were entering the field for the first time, I still didn’t have enough biology experience. One of the questions they asked was what DNA stood for: I didn’t have a clue!

Read about all my PhD interview experiences here .

Firstly, we can’t be good at everything!

Especially if you’re looking to change fields, it can be tricky to quickly get up to speed. This is particularly true when you have no idea what you’ll get asked at interview.

In my experience, once you start a PhD project it is actually a more forgiving environment, allowing you to build up your knowledge. So don’t worry too much that you need to know everything before you start. Even so, I felt like a bit of a failure walking out of that interview not being able to answer a relatively basic question!

Now I have a bit more experience I’d suggest demonstating your knowledge and capabilities with actual experience where you can.

I appreciate that this can be difficult but it could simply be a case of completeting a free online course. Doing so in my own field helped a lot with securing my current post-doc position. Having something tangible to support your application can go a long way. It also helps to slightly take the pressure off any awkward interview questions.

Academic Challenges During My PhD Project

Failing to reproduce published results.

Academic failure: For months I couldn’t acheive similar results to a previous study in the literature. The method was going to enable the main work of my PhD project and I had already spent a good chunk of my project budget trying to get it working. I was sure I was following the method precisely, and even emailed the authors looking for support. I never receied a reply and never did get the method working exactly as described in their paper.

Thankfully, after some more experimentation, we got a technique which worked. It even turned out to be better suited for our application than the method I was trying to reproduce. These developments lead to my first paper .

I got lucky that we found a method which worked before we ran out of money and time on the project. It could have gone very differently if we’d not tried other methods but it’s also worth saying how important it is to look to mitigate risks like this.

It is always worth being aware of how much time/money you have left. At an early stage start thinking “if I don’t have X done in Y weeks, we ought to look at doing something different”. Persistence is important with academic challenges but so is adapability.

• Is there someone in your group or university who already does what you’re trying to do? Be polite and make use of their expertise.
• Read a lot of literature to gain a solid understanding of the range of methods usually utilised. The ones which are used more often may be more reproducable and could be a good starting point.
• Reach out to authors of other studies but don’t expect them to reply.
• Try to iterate quickly to improve your chances of success.
• Make a plan B ! This is so important. Be prepared to pivot to something else if things don’t work out.
• Also, there is a reproducability issue in academia. At the very least when you come to write up your own research make sure to describe your methods in detail to help future researchers.

Failure to access equipment

Academic failure: A large part of my project depended on accessing a good quality micro-CT scanner and I didn’t have easy access to one. I spent months trying to find good reliable access. There were a few around the university but most groups and departments wanted to keep them to themselves.

I ended up using the one at the nearby Natural History Museum, and for the most part this worked out well. The only problem was that we had little control over it. We had to pay everytime we wanted to use it and had to book a slot months in advance. This all meant that I could only run a very limited number of experiments throughout my PhD: putting a lot of pressure on each set of scans and ultimately dissuading me from taking too many [potentially exciting] risks.

It really isn’t ideal to rely on equipment you only have very limited access to and there is high potential for it to cause significant academic challenges.

Mid way through my PhD I thought all my prayers had been answered when my supervisor won a big grant. This included provision to buy our very own posh micro-CT scanner. I still had a few years left of my PhD so it seemed like a sure bet that I’d make good use of it.

Well the procurement process for such an expensive bit of kit was painstakingly slow. The equipment eventually got delivered to a new campus in a building which still wasn’t finished by the end of my project. I failed to ever even see the scanner let alone use it!

There is so much potential for things to go wrong when you don’t have easy access to equipment. In hindsight I would have better utilised the equipment I had easy access to and made that the backbone of my project. Other results would have then been a bonus.

• Don’t rely on using equipment housed anywhere outside of your lab. During my time at Imperial, even communal equipment meant for researchers across all departments was moved off-site which has potential to cause complications.
• Even for equipment in your group, think about what you’d do if the equipment stopped working tomorrow and wasn’t fixed. This type of thinking can actually help you come up with new ideas which could be useful side-projects.

Failures to get research papers published in target journals

Academic failure: Numerous times I’ve failed to get papers published in journals we’ve submitted manuscripts to. For instance one paper which is currently under review was rejected by two other journals previously. Another we got published on our second or third attempt.

I try to see individual rejections of papers by journals as academic challenges as opposed to failures. It is great to be striving to publish your work and especially if you’re aiming for popular journals it is inevitable that you’ll face some rejections. It could be argued that if you never get papers rejected you’re not being ambitious enough!

I’ve written a whole series of posts about publishing and you can find them here: Writing an academic journal paper series .

As much as you can try to perfect a paper in preparation for submission, there is an element of luck. Different reviewers are looking for different things, and their opinion of your work will likely also vary a bit depending on the mood their feeling at the time. Even if you submitted the same paper multiple times to the same journal (note: don’t do this!) you’d likely get a range of decisions.

In my opinion it is only a failure if you don’t try at least try and get any of your work published!

Failure in rig design and testing: the time my rig started leaking salt water inside very pricy equipment!!

Academic failure: As mentioned in a previous section, my PhD project involved using a micro-CT scanner at the Natural History Museum.

I designed and built a new rig to enable me to do in-situ mechanical testing: basically apply force to biological samples during scanning. We had to keep the tissue samples hydrated in liquid at all times, including during scanning, and often used PBS : a salty water solution. I had tested the rig in our lab before taking it to the museum and it seemed to work as expected. I knew that I had to be able to leave the equipment because the experiments were at least eight hours long each (and ran continuously) and it wasn’t feasible to stay near the machine 24/7 even if I’d wanted to.

In my first set of experiments using it at the museum we got it all set up and running. I stayed for about 30 minutes to check there were no problems, then left to get on with some other work for the day. All seemed fine. A few hours later I got a message from the technician running the equipment to tell me that he thinks the liquid level is going down inside my rig!

I race over there, immediately take it out and pray that we haven’t caused any damage to the equipment. Miraculously there was no long term damage, but it was a very near miss. If the technician hadn’t spotted it things could have gone very differently! For reference the scanner cost the best part of £1 million… eek!

Thankfully the problem with my rig was quick to fix but it would have been far better to avoid these issues in the first place.

• Double, triple or quadruple check that equipment is working as expected: especially for rigs and devices you’ve designed!!
• Mitigate risks. In my case, once we thought we’d resolved the issue we did a few more experiments with paper towel taped around the rig to ensure any spills would be soaked up. Yes, really.

Failure to stand my ground

Academic failure: for the most part I was lucky to not have many disagreements and regrets from my PhD. Even so, there are a few instances where in hindsight I wish I had held my ground and put a bit more thought into making sure I was getting the right outcome for myself and/or the research.

To give a tangible example: in the rush as I was finishing up my project I had to decide on a title for my PhD. I worked through some ideas with my main supervisor and someone else chimed in to take the title in a different direction which my supervisor said he thought was a good idea.

We met in the middle with a hybrid title. Soon after finishing up I regretted the choice but by then it was too late to make any changes so I’m stuck with what we chose. The title isn’t awful and it doesn’t need to define my PhD, but even so I do regret not putting in a bit more thought to what I wanted and diplomatically standing my ground.

Pick your battles, but do stand up for yourself. It is your PhD!

Bonus: failing to get elected to lead a student society (twice)

Not related to academic work, but I’ll include it as part of my time at university during my PhD.

The failure: I wanted to get involved with a student society which had disbanded by the time I joined the university. Myself and a few others started it back up again and I was keen to lead it.

I applied for the role of president and got rejected.

I ran for the position again the following year and got rejected for a second time.

Finally, as I was entering my final full PhD year, I got in on the third and final attempt!

Stick with something. Or maybe know when to move on?!

How to Deal with Academic Challenges During Your PhD

Reframing academic failure.

Facing academic challenges is part of the PhD process. If you’re doing something new it is inevitable that things will not go perfectly the first time. In fact, if things appear to have gone perfectly it more than likely means that something is wrong.

Despite the name of this post, try to think of these issues as challenges to overcome rather than failures. An academic challenge only becomes a failure if you’ve not made a reasonable effort to overcome the obstacle. For example, if you ignore something for several months or don’t tell your supervisor about it, then what could have been an easy fix can become a much bigger issue.

You’ll find it much easier to deal with something when it is framed as a research challenge, which can be exciting to overcome, rather than considering every setback as a personal failure.

I’d say that one of the most important parts of a PhD is to learn from your mistakes. This is an integral part of the PhD process and you’ll only be able to do this when you can objectively assess how things are going. Please don’t fall into the depressing valley of thinking about your work as a failure.

How to Mitigate the Risks of Academic Failure During Your PhD

• Communicate regularly with your supervisor. Communicating openly and often with your supervisor will ensure you’re both working together effectively as a team. Your supervisor should be a source of motivation and provide guidance on any academic challenges where necessary. If you meet regularly you can stop potential PhD problems in their tracks before they become big issues. I found meeting weekly to work well. If your supervisor is often too busy to meet that should be a warning sign which should also be addressed.
• Know the literature thoroughly . For most research topics, you’re not the first person to have asked the questions you’re looking to solve. Find out where other people have got to and build up your research from this. We can’t be experts in everything, but you should know how other researchers have conducted similar experiments to you. This should help you both to avoid academic failures and have a solid starting point from which you can begin adding your own twist – saving you months of headaches.
• Work hard but work smart . Certain academic challenges can be overcome simply by putting in the necessary effort. Check that equipment is working ahead of when you need it, do all the necessary calibration as often as necessary and don’t shy away from the effort required to try out different experimental procedures. But on the other hand, don’t work aimlessly otherwise you risk burning out. Work smart which ties in with the next point: planning.
• Make a plan. Know when you need to have achieved certain milestones by in order to stay on track. Mitigate risks by thinking about alternative routes of research in case things go wrong.
• Cut yourself some slack . We all make mistakes, don’t stress yourself out too much about small errors. Try to keep a level head and stay in a mindset where problems with your PhD don’t get you down too much. As long as you are making efforts to develop your skills and seeking to get closer to answering your research questions you’re on the right path.

I really hope that content such as this is useful in normalising academic failure. It is completely normal for problems to occur, but it is how you deal with these academic challenges which will define your PhD. Best of luck.

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