Starting (and hopefully, ending) a PhD studentship is undoubtedly a thrilling -though demanding- task that is meant to teach students to cope with the hard work that is at the base of a research job. As someone new to several different duties -often performed at the same time- a PhD student can underestimate the magnitude of his tasks, and be overwhelmed by them.
This simple “to-do list”, published on Nature Website these days, it’s not just an interesting and useful synopsis of the things each PhD student should keep in mind during its long journey to the most important instruction title confered by academia, but it also offers a series of useful elements to highlight the differences between the way PhD studentships are managed around the world and the way they are designed in Italy, where PhD programmes can be often vague and students can be confined to perform collateral “chores” that, in the end, result in significant undertraining and alienation from true research.