PhD Advice from Caitlynn Beckett

In this blog post, I discuss with Caitlynn Beckett, a PhD student at Memorial University in the Geography Department, what it is like to be a PhD student. I asked her about what she loves about her PhD, her greatest challenge, if she always wanted to do a PhD, what brought her there, what piece of advice would you give someone interested in a PhD, and advice she wishes she had when she was younger. Give it a read, you may even find something you were looking for, share similar feelings, or learn something new!

“Across Canada there are thousands of abandoned contaminated sites that will leave legacies of pollution for nearby communities for generations to come. While there is a lot of great technical research happening on how to contain and manage this pollution, there is not a lot of research on community-based objectives for closure”.

Let's begin...

Depending on what stage of your career you are at, you may also be very interested in hearing about the work and advice of PhD students. As I racked my brain for someone I could ask, it was clear that Caitlynn Beckett would be a great candidate! Caitlynn is in her second year of her PhD, and already it is evident that she will make a great impact in her life as well as in her research.

Caitlynn's Research

She is situated at Memorial University of Newfoundland under Dr Arn Keeling (Memorial University) and Dr Brenda Parlee (University of Alberta) where she studies the clean-up of contaminated sites in Northern Canada. More specifically, she is focused on the clean-up of abandoned hard rock (e.g., gold, silver, iron, copper, etc.) mines. She says that “across Canada, there are thousands of abandoned contaminated sites that will leave legacies of pollution for nearby communities for generations to come. While there is a lot of great technical research happening on how to contain and manage this pollution, there is not a lot of research on community-based objectives for closure”. Her research aims to fill this knowledge gap by addressing issues such as how communities can maintain management systems like ‘tailings cover’, a combination of plastic and rock layers that are meant to “seal off” the mine waste from the surrounding communities. She also wants to address what kind of land use the community members should be planning for and how managers will communicate pollution dangers to future generations.

“I think that remediation should look to heal the harms of the past, especially for Indigenous communities, who have born the brunt of negative effects due to resource extraction.”

What do you love and what are the challenges of being a PhD student?

It is clear that Caitlynn enjoys her experience as a PhD student from the many wonderful things she said about it. However, it does not come without its challenges!

Here are some of her examples of things she loves:

1. Shaping her own project

She likes that she is able to shape her own research project in collaboration with the communities that she is working with and with the colleagues she has at several different universities. Caitlynn says that “It feels pretty amazing to create a project in collaboration with such inspiring people across Canada”.

2. Every day is a challenge

Every day she is learning and being challenged, and she is “definitely never bored!”.

3. Flexible schedule & self-motivated work

As a PhD student, your schedule is flexible and self-motivated. Which, like for many graduates students, can be good or bad. Caitlynn says that “sometimes it is hard to convince myself to get to the office, but I think that such a flexible schedule can also offer a lot of opportunities for a more balanced lifestyle. Sometimes I work 8-hour days, sometimes I take an afternoon off to focus on my own health or to help out a friend. Having a supportive supervisor and committee definitely helps with this balance”.

4. Travelling (a lot)

Caitlynn likes that she gets to travel a lot, but it is “both a blessing and a curse”. Over the past three years, she has been lucky enough to travel throughout Canada (Northwest Territories, Nunavik (Quebec), Yukon, Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal) and internationally (New Orleans, Sweden, and Iceland).

Her greatest challenge:

1. Self-doubt

Caitlynn says that she has a similar challenge that she thinks many other graduate students share (myself included). She feels her greatest challenge is self-doubt. She says that “It is very easy to fall into the trap that you are not smart enough, not a strong enough writer, not good enough at getting grants etc. and that you will forever be behind in this competitive academic world. I think this can lead to a lot of anxiety and over-working, which I try hard to manage, but often lose sleep over”.

When did you decide you wanted to continue and do a PhD or did you know all along you wanted to do it?

Caitlynn "had no concrete plans to do a PhD", but it has always been something she considered as a possibility. Having loved her Master project, she was lucky enough to be able to expand on that research (with good funding, she adds). If she hadn’t been so fortunate, Caitlynn would have tried to take more time off between her Masters and PhD because it can sometimes be difficult for her not to feel burnt out. However, she says that if she had taken this time off, "maybe the PhD would have never happened!".

Would you say there was one specific thing/person/personal attitude/ambition that brought you to where you are now?

Caitlynn says that her love for school brought her to where she is today. "Throughout my undergraduate degree, I always felt drawn towards research and graduate school...in fact, I think I would say that I've always just loved school (and have been successful at it - and have had the resources and family to support it)". There was no one in particular that she could think of that led her here, but she felt that school was always something she was good at and it "is a position from which [she] can do some good in the world".

What piece of advice would you give someone who is interested in starting their PhD?

There are a few things that Caitlynn mentioned which are essential for your PhD.

1. Make sure you are paid 'well'

Caitlynn says that graduate students should be paid enough to have minimal living standards and that we should not settle for any less. Having been lucky enough to get some extra grants and funding for herself, Caitlynn really believes that this is possible. However, like her, you would also have to apply for many opportunities, scholarships, and grants. Although applying for all of these grants may take a lot of time and determination, Caitlynn says that the experience of applying both helped her career and her financial stability. She insists that “such opportunities do exist, and no student should have to settle for being broke or going further and further into debt”. She thinks that if you are with a good supervisor or in a good program, they will recognise this and will support their students’ financial needs. (I should mention here that Caitlynn and I were a part of such an excellent programme in the Geography Department at MUN where graduate students are required to be funded - yes, livable wages, according to SSHRC salary - throughout their studies).

2. A good supervisor

“Having a supervisor who you work well with is a huge advantage in graduate school, so doing a lot of background research on potential supervisors is a must”.

If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice to help with your career ambitions what would it be? 

After some thought, Caitlyn said that she thinks she would have given herself “more time to 'screw up' or to 'get lost'”. Caitlynn has always been very directed, “moving from one thing to the next without much breathing time in between”. Although she doesn’t think she made a bad choice continuing straight into her PhD, she believes it is important to take time off and explore other (non-academic) routes and experiences. She says that as she moves forward in her PhD and beyond, she hopes to open herself up to these kinds of opportunities.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Caitlynn so much for taking the time to answer all of these questions and sending in her photos. Her answers were very thoughtful and helpful for anyone considering a PhD route or Masters.