It can feel very dark and alone in that office, reworking the chapters. But occasionally the clouds can break and a ray of light shine in. A friend who has also been a doctoral student a few years earlier, and made it through the process to become a doctor, can come into the doctoral student’s ...

At first the doctoral student is a little shocked. Literally, she is getting list after list of things to change on everything she has spent the last two years writing. ‘What is this?’ she wonders. Is she abnormally thick? Has she missed something during her education that was showing up in her unacceptable manuscript? Was ...

The first thing the supervisor can do, to get the process started, is tell it like it is: the doctoral student needs to brace herself and start balancing against the waves. After the first few years of relative peripheral participation and relaxed encouragement, the supervision style changes and the real work starts. This change can ...

This method of teaching is shown in the movie when Daniel and Mr. Miyagi drive out to the seaside shortly before the tournament. Mr. Miyagi tells Daniel to go stand in the freezing water and try to balance against the giant waves that are crashing against the shore. Daniel thinks this is impossible, but he ...

Mr. Miyagi, to all outward appearances unfazed and unperturbed, suddenly throws a karate chop at Daniel. And without thinking how, Daniel’s hand automatically blocks it. Wax on. And Mr. Miyagi’s follow up kick is just as effortlessly blocked by a paint-long-stroke-down movement. Every blow Mr. Miyagi throws at Daniel, Daniel manages to block from what ...

After Daniel waxes all of Mr. Miyagi’s cars, late in the evening, he is allowed to go home. But then next morning, when he comes back, shoulders aching and all set to learn karate, Mr. Miyagi takes him around the back of the house and shows him how to sand the garden’s wooden walkway. This ...

Without exaggerating or being over melodramatic, I think that most freshly minted PhD’s would assure you that writing a PhD dissertation is very similar to Daniel’s predicament in this scene. Especially on those nights when one is stuck alone at the computer until 2AM. Or the mornings one wakes up with a beating heart and ...

I came to Sweden to do a PhD on gender and technology. I wasn’t sure what to expect of a Swedish doctoral education, but with time I realized that being a PhD student here had a lot in common with learning karate from Mr. Miyagi. It can safely be said that ‘The Karate Kid’ is one ...