ULTIMATE GUIDE TO DOING A PHD, THE - Merle van den Akker

Have you ever considered doing a PhD, but have no idea where to start? Or are you doing a PhD and feel like you're losing the plot?
Deciding to do a PhD is going to be one of the most impactful choices you'll ever make. It's a multi-year commitment that can really shape your career and your life. Yet as important as the PhD is, there's not much collated information about the process as a whole: this is where this book comes in!
It explores every aspect of doing a PhD from application to graduation, and the whole mess in between. There are chapters on the motivation to do a PhD, the application process itself, questions around workload, time management, mental health, (peer) pressure, supervisor (mis)communications, teaching, networking, conference attendance, all the way up to publishing your thesis, and preparing for the next steps. And no, the next steps don't necessarily mean continuing to work in academia. This book addresses both career pathways, whether leaving or staying in academia, equally.
This book aims to take a PhD student or prospective student by the hand and outline the entire PhD process, answering every question you might possibly have along the way.
Contents:

[*]About the Author
[*]Acknowledgments
[*]Introduction
[*]Should You Do a PhD?:
[*]Reasons to NOT Do a PhD
[*]A Critical Evaluation of Reasons to Do a PhD
[*]The Practicalities of Doing a PhD
[*]Biggest Misconceptions About Doing a PhD
[*]So Should You Do a PhD?

[*]Applying to the PhD:
[*]Finding a Topic
[*]Finding a University
[*]Finding a Supervisor
[*]Finding Funding
[*]Getting Your Documents in Order
[*]How to Survive an Interview
[*]Offers and Rejections
[*]Concluding Remarks

[*]Starting the PhD!:
[*]Settling in
[*]Coursework
[*]Planning the Research
[*]My Supervisor and I
[*]First-Year PhD Review
[*]Concluding Remarks

[*]Getting on with the PhD!:
[*]Structure Amidst Chaos
[*]Teaching
[*]Conferences
[*]Writing It All Down
[*]The Publication Journey
[*]Time Management and Multi-Tasking
[*]Taking Breaks
[*]Mental Health
[*]Failure
[*]Talking Supervisor (Again)
[*]What Do You Want from the PhD?
[*]Mentoring
[*]Knowing When to Quit
[*]Doing a PhD Is Not Enough
[*]PhD Review, Year 2
[*]PhD Review, Year 3
[*]Concluding Remarks

[*]Finishing the PhD:
[*]Balancing the PhD with the Job Hunt
[*]Leveraging Contacts
[*]Mental Health Revisited
[*]A Good PhD Is a Finished PhD
[*]Submission!
[*]Final Year PhD Review
[*]Things I Would Have Done Differently
[*]Concluding Remarks

[*]PhDone! Now What?:
[*]The Anti-Climax of Submitting
[*]Break?!
[*]The Viva
[*]Concluding Remarks: The Aftermath

[*]Conclusion

Readership: Younger (undergraduate, MA/MSc) students considering doing a PhD. Anyone (older students, practitioners and professionals) considering doing a PhD, or those who are engaged in education research for understanding the current struggles in the PhD process.
Key Features:

[*]The PhD process is an inherently untransparent, fascinating, yet underexplored topic. The demand for more information regarding the PhD process is huge, and the target audience for this book is broad as a result of this. This book can be a helping hand for those actively considering doing a PhD, those who are already in a PhD, as well as those may have only ever given doing a PhD the smallest of thoughts
[*]This topic has millions of followers across different social platforms. And these are only the platforms that I am aware of. Although the language used in academic settings may be considered complex, The Ultimate Guide to Doing a PhD will be written in a way which assumes no prior knowledge of academia, nor will it target a specific field of study (e.g. marketing, physics, philosophy) making it accessible to any reader regardless of background, interest or education level