Steve Tippins Ph.D.Helping doctoral students get their dissertation accepted, succeed in their careers, & change the world | Academic Career Advisor | Dissertation Chair & Founder, Beyond PhD Coaching | 35 + years of experience.

PhD Success Stories

27 Aug 2026 · 0 min

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0:23

In this brief monologue, the speaker reflects on a key lesson from their PhD journey: the importance of trusting the process and actively incorporating advisor feedback. They emphasize not being hard‑headed, promptly following up on feedback during regularly scheduled bi‑weekly meetings, and learning to return work to the advisor for review. While it took time to fully grasp the value of this iterative loop, the speaker notes that such feedback is essential for progressing to the next stage of the dissertation, highlighting a practical strategy for effective mentorship and research advancement.

Trust the process and understand the feedback that's being given to you. It's a reason behind it. Don't be hardheaded is what I said with the feedback. The faster I was able to follow up with that feedback with my advisor, because we had on the calendar every biweekly meetings, like I learned the process of just get it back to them. And then yeah, it took some time to really grasp it, but that feedback is necessary to keep you getting to the next part of it. And so that was what I learned on the other side of things.