Here are my top 10 ideas, rather than advises, for a new PhD student. Ideas are not necessary in their order of importance.

1. Art of negotiation: Do not be too agreeable with anyone, especially with your PhD supervisors. Work hard on your experimental hypotheses but do not abandon them just because your supervisor thinks it is a bad idea or because they come up with a better idea. Do not delude yourself into thinking that they know better because they are more experienced. They might but it is not their PhD. Take ownership of your PhD. Remember, the main goal of a PhD is to train yourself towards becoming an independent researcher by developing the necessary critical thinking skills. Challenge your supervisors on their stances, obviously in a reasonable fashion. Most principle investigators (PIs) enjoy and even encourage that sort of a challenge. Those who don’t are perhaps the kind of PIs who want someone (or rather anyone) to carry out the work on their ideas and not your ideas. Beware of such scientists.
2. Always clarify your authorship position on any research article before starting the manuscript: You might hear many horrific tales about PhD students not being adequately or reasonably recognised for their contribution towards a journal article. Most of them are true (though be wary of some overtly exaggerated tales) This is more common in big labs where multiple PhD students and post-docs work on a research project. Problems arise when multiple people work under the fairy-tale assumption that they would be the first author on any research paper that arises out of this research. They carry on working without bothering to clarify this with their PI. You would be surprised to know that some post-docs have even claimed attribution/recognition to the Nobel Prizes awarded to their PIs! These controversies are difficult to regulate as no one can really isolate the importance of any particular individual’s contribution in a project. Nevertheless, do not be afraid to raise this issue.
3. Never pay for your conference trips: Make sure that the conference expenses are covered through the funding that supports your PhD. If not, insist that the School/Department pays for the conference. Some PhD students do not realise that a conference is a place where the University gets a bloody good publicity of the research being conducted by them. The least they can do is to cover the conference expenses in exchange for the publicity. Do not delude yourself into thinking that a conference is a mere personal development or networking exercise and that it is only reasonable to pay for my own career development. That is plain wrong.
4. Handling loneliness: You will sooner or later experience loneliness. This is not uncommon. For whatever it is, loneliness can be an asshole. It crawls around you slowly in an unsuspecting fashion and before you know, you are now under the spell of ‘Mr and Mrs Loneliness’. Personally, I have an opinion that the ability to fight this loneliness completely depends upon the biology of a person. For e.g. narcissistic individuals rarely would be affected by the bouts of loneliness as they will inevitably find a way to get out of it. Many other personalities though can get pretty damn stuck. But speaking objectively, you can beat loneliness by having a good set of friends, both within and outside the PhD community (which I will cover in the next point). Don’t feel embarrassed to seek help from professionals. Don’t feel anxious about taking anti-depressants (though I never did). Don’t feel ashamed to do simple things like calling your parents and expressing your angst. Don’t feel it is a waste of time to journal your thoughts down. Every little helps. Don’t suffer in silence.
5. Having a good social circle: This includes not just the social circle involving your PhD friends but also the people outside of it i.e. with people who have nothing to do with research. Lets face it: during my PhD you are going to get tired of seeing the same faces everyday (especially if you work in a lab). Hanging out with the same people outside work hours might sound cool initially but guess what; even your social life would become meaningless after a certain period of time. Also bear in mind, too much social time with work colleagues can have some ugly unexpected consequences. Gossips might spread like a wild fire, drunk talks might become hard facts, small groups might polarise within larger groups, things might get personal etc. All these add up to your already stressed out PhD journey. Be good friends with everyone. Diplomacy is underrated.
6. Self-time: Just be aware of this fact: burnout from work is real and mental health is important. Don’t always try to off-set heavy work with a under-cool social life. Do try and incorporate a ‘Me-time’. Your brain relaxes in different ways during socials and during self-times. During socials, it mostly forgets. During me-times, it mostly reflects. Always maintain a delicate balance between socials and self-time. This might sound a bit mystical but personally, the reflections that have occurred during my self-times have actually enhanced my ability to deal with heavy work; this happens through enhanced concentration, less noise within the mind and more room for tolerance. Explore it. Highly suggested.
7. Overwork glorification: Don’t ever buy into the overtly pretentious made-up maxim of traditional academia that “If you are not suffering, you are not working hard enough”. Anyone who comes up with ideas like these must be asked to f**k off. Anyone who comes up slightly diplomatic versions of similar ideas must be politely requested to go back to the caves. You chose to do a PhD because you love research. You might be bad at it, never mind. But no one has the right to make you suffer in their pursuit of ‘transforming’ you into a good scientist. These tyrannical methods are archaic and highly overrated. The good news is that these views are no longer appreciated and even looked down upon within academia. Most modern scientists love to treat their PhD students as their colleagues or at least give them the permission to ask stupid questions and even fail in expensive ways with their own ideas without having to be afraid of being judged. Things have changed, we (modern scientists) are moving ahead.
8. Acerbic academics: Some academics are plain acidic. This is obviously true with every other profession but the difference here is that academia is a sanctuary of the ‘intellectuals’. You are training yourself to be an intellectual. You probably would ignore a highly piercing remark about your intelligence from your friends, family or even a fellow PhD students. But when a similar remark is made by your mentor or by any other academic whom you highly venerate, you are more likely to engulf their remarks without challenging its veracity. I am not referring to the academics who like to talk to their students in an informal manner, filled with humour and sarcasm. I am referring to the academics who have a clear goal of damaging the self-esteem of anyone who challenges their ego. Stay away from such ‘intellectuals’, no matter how smart they are.
9. Avoid comparison: A deep seated problem of the human psyche is comparison with fellow beings. It is quite rampant in academia too. It is very common to hear someone lamenting, “Oh, I am in my third year of my PhD and I don’t have a single publication but Sarah who is just in her second year has two publications already! Either I am not working hard enough or my project is crap.” Everyone’s project is unique and although all PhDs are roughly 3–4 years long (in the UK), the nature of the work plays a huge role in the output time. Some projects are so high-throughput that you can obtain a gamut of data in just a few weeks and start writing a paper. Some projects are so novel and multi-disciplinary that it might take an entire year just to lay down the ground work. It might not pay off immediately but sooner or later it will. The more riskier the project, the less sooner the output time but the more novel will your project be. In deed, many funding bodies these days are encouraging ‘high-risk, high-gain’ projects whose ambitions are so big that there are no clear, laid out milestones initially, only an huge overall vision of the project. So, do not place a huge amount of emphasis on the publication record of your colleagues. It is okay if they have a Nature paper already, appreciate them for their work. Your time is yet to come and perhaps, in a different place?
10. Explore: Don’t stick to the vicious cycle of work-social-home-work-social-home. Explore, explore, explore! Read books that challenge your assumptions, talk to people whom you would avoid on a good day, Travel along to places, ask random people of you could click their pictures, do something that freaks you out (for me it was asking someone out:massive fail!), draw your bizarre ideas on a paper, attend strange workshops, do lots of volunteering. I learnt so much about life during my volunteering times with a homeless outreach group. It made me a better scientist as well. Life is all interlinked. Do not deceive yourself into thinking that tunneling all your energies into your subject matter will land you a Nobel Prize. In fact, a study has shown that the more eclectic you are outside work, the more chances of you bumping into a Nobel Prize. For e.g. scientists who could dance, play piano, write stories etc. were more likely to become Nobel laureates than their ‘work-eat-sleep-work’ counterparts. Go on, who said you can’t have a fulfilling life as a scientist!

This is not an exhaustive list obviously. I would like to add more points as and when possible.

Enjoy!

Pranav