I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I entered my PhD studies with an assumption that my academic success in my undergraduate and postgraduate coursework would naturally translate to success in doctoral research. I was wrong! During the first two months of the program, my self-esteem took a major blow as I struggled to figure out how to put together a research proposal. Although I had done this before on a much smaller scale and with more guidance for my Master’s thesis, the PhD proposal was a much gnarlier beast which I was ill-prepared to fight. And the hardest part was the one that seemed the most basic — developing the research questions.