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  • CAREER FEATURE
  • 25 June 2024

How researchers navigate a PhD later in life

  • Elizabeth Landau 0

Elizabeth Landau is a science writer based in Washington DC.

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Krista Bresock sat crying in her professor’s office. She had to discuss one of five questions with her professor, in person. It was the concluding step of her final exam in functional analysis, the last course that she needed to complete for her PhD in mathematics. He’d shuffled a set of five cards, and she’d picked Card Number Two — corresponding to the one problem that she had not fully studied.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02109-x

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Education at a Glance 2019: OECD Indicators (OECD, 2019).

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