Clarifying your motivation and your personal situation is an important first step in preparing for a doctorate. This is because many other decisions – e.g. at which university and with which supervisor you would like to obtain a doctorate, which type of doctoral funding is suitable for you – depend very much on what goals you are pursuing with your doctorate.

Almost all doctoral candidates experience dry spells in the course of working on their doctoral dissertation: the topic has to be adapted, funding is problematic, life circumstances change, and those around you begin asking when you will finally finish… It is therefore very useful to deal with possible stumbling blocks to doctoral motivation right from the start and then make a conscious decision for or against.