“Step one: stop feeling self-conscious about things not working. You want a PhD? Well, guess what. You’re going to be issued a wall, with instructions to beat your head against it for a few years. If you’re lucky, the wall will crack, and you’ll write about the structural integrity of walls. If you’re unlucky, your head will break, and you’ll write about the structural integrity of heads. Either way, we have to talk about failure. If you can’t get over your ego and just talk about what you did and what happened, this will take four times as long.
