2 Social Comparison Tips for PhD Students

Posted on April 1, 2018 by Lucas Colusso

How does a PhD student focus on doing good work without worrying about the number of papers churned out? Can we assess work in terms of the broader contributions of research and not just the impact factor of journals and conferences they are publish in? The answers to these questions is obvious, but while changes are not made, we offer you strategies to alleviate the terrifying social comparisons that permeate competitive academic environment.

Avoid extreme comparisons!

Avoid socializing and sitting next to other students in your lab who work 24/7 and are able to write a "best paper" in 1 day. And even if you can do that, is that actually the life you want?

Second, use that browser extension to block Facebook during your work hours to avoid accessing Google Scholar all of the time. Do you know all of those studies saying that accessing Facebook every day makes people miserable? Accessing Google Scholar every day to check other scholars’ publication numbers makes you twice as miserable #facts.

Compare to those who are closer to you!

If you are a masochist and still desire to access Google Scholar all of the time to check others’ publication numbers, only compare yourself to other people who started their academic careers at the same time as you did. However, ideally, you should compare to those who started a few years later to make up for those 2 or 3 years of grad school when publications were slow due to awful R2 comments, dysfunctional advising relationships, and adapting to an engineering-oriented department coming from your background in Media arts/psychology/anthropology/communications/ (pick one).

In interdisciplinary departments, social comparisons can be harmful and it is important to pick appropriate comparison targets (people with similar methods and contribution types, people with similar career goals, people with similar priorities for work-life balance). #micdrop