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.

This Happened to Me During My PhD

30 Sept 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:19

In this monologue, the speaker recounts a personal episode from their PhD program where a required mathematical statistics class, which relied heavily on calculus-based proofs, became a source of intense anxiety. Despite being a strong C‑minus student, they attended every office hour, tackled the final exam by solving a problem in three different ways, and feared failing the course, which would have forced a retake. The grade was delayed until the start of the next semester, causing sleepless nights and panic. Ultimately, the course was graded on a curve, and the speaker’s average of about 68 was converted to an A‑, relieving their stress. The narrative concludes with a call to action, inviting listeners to join a free dissertation help community to avoid similar panic.

Chapters

I want to tell you a story. For me, this wasn't in my dissertation. It was in my classwork. And I was taking a statistics course. And I, quite honestly, it was called mathematical statistics. And it was using calculus to prove statistics. And it was a requirement. And I was a really, really, really strong C-minus student at best in the class. And I spent every office hour the professor had in his office trying to figure out how to do these things. And we came to the final. And I needed a certain grade to pass the course because I had to pass. Otherwise, I had to take it again. And I had the Good professor. Got into the final and I redid one of the problems 3 different ways. And I listened to somebody else after the final and they said they did it the other— one of the other ways. And this was in December and I didn't get my grade back before the next semester started. And I woke up several times in tears feeling, I'm going to fail out of this. I can't do it, whatever. Interestingly, I got my grade back a week into the new semester. And this was graded on a curve. And somehow I must have done that right and pulled my average up to about a 68, which became an A-. So I spent over a month panicked because I didn't have information. I didn't know what I needed to move forward. So hopefully we can help you avoid that panic. If you're looking for a community, join our free dissertation help group.