No Custard Pies!

This post is written by Karen McAulay, Librarian extrodinaire who has some sage advice for those facing PhD completion seminars and Vivas in the coming months 

Watching Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks facing the UK’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee, surrounded by media hounds and with the world’s TV cameras scrutinising every breath, I couldn’t help reflecting that a doctoral viva voce (or defense) is really very civilised by comparison.

When I attended my viva, there was me, my supervisor, two examiners (one internal, who hadn’t worked with me before, and one external), and the professor chairing the viva.  Now, I appreciate that it’s different in other countries.  I understand that in the USA, you conduct your defense publicly – ooh, that sounds scary, whatever the size of the audience!  Whereas, until recently, the very distances involved in Australia meant that a viva wasn’t really very practicable and you are more likely to be asked to present to faculty.

But if you’ve got a viva voce or oral defense on the horizon, the fundamental purpose of this final hurdle is to get that thesis accepted, even if you have some revisions to do after the viva (or defense, or submission) itself.  These people want you to pass!  You’d like to think that they aren’t generally trying to trip you up, and that their comments and suggestions will be helpful and positive.  There certainly won’t be any intruders or custard pies, no flashing cameras, and no reporters.

So, how should you prepare for your big day?  Let me tell you what I did.

It goes without saying that you’ll know your thesis inside out.  Why not mark key points that you might want to refer to, with those little translucent coloured removable markers?

You’ll also need to ensure that you can cite key authorities to which you’ve referred in your text.  I spent a few hours in the days before my viva, just checking that my key authorities hadn’t published anything pertinent since I last referred to them!  (Write something without my knowing?  How dare they?!)

You know who your examiners will be, so spend a bit of time finding out about their output, too.  It does no harm to read their latest published papers or conference abstracts – even if it doesn’t have any obvious links with your own work – just to get an idea of what makes them tick.  If an eminent academic has a particular bee in their bonnet, you can at least prepare yourself for any niggles they might have about your own approach!

Read over your introduction and conclusion particularly carefully.  Okay, you’ve written and submitted your thesis, but you should try to look at it dispassionately, so that you can at least have a stab at answering the question, “In retrospect, is there anything you’d have done differently?”

If you can find colleagues to give you a mock viva, or if, like me, you’re lucky enough to have colleagues who actually offer to do it, accept with alacrity!  Ask them to pose tricky questions, because what you want to end up with is a little list of tricky questions along with some prepared answers!  There’s no need to memorise them until you’re word-perfect – the very fact of having thought through these questions will mean you’re more prepared for what your “real” examiners might throw at you.

Finally, try to make sure you have a good night’s sleep before your big day.  Keep the bottle of wine for the night after the viva!  My “mock viva” friends reminded me that a viva is actually a unique opportunity when you and your opinions will be centre-stage, offering you the chance to discuss what interests you most, in depth, with knowledgeable senior academics.  If you can convince yourself this is a rare privilege, you’re more likely to go into it with a positive frame of mind – looking forward to it rather than dreading it.  Personally, I’d rather go through my viva again than visit the dentist!

I found loads of useful tips in Rowena Murray’s book, How to Survive Your Viva (Open University Press, 2009), 2^nd edition.  It’s also available as an e-book, so you can access it via your University Library or buy it for your Kindle.

So – if you’re approaching submission time and a viva voce or oral defense is part of the examination process, then good luck from me and everyone else reading The Thesis Whisperer.  We’re all rooting for you!  Let us know how you get on.

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Truly Bonkers, I’m Starting to Think You’re Truly Bonkers .. Early Warning Signs Your Supervisor is a Loon

This is a post from our regular “Supervision Correspondent” Dr Sarah Louise Quinell. Sarah is now the managing editor of The Networked Researcher a blog supporting & promoting social media for research & researcher development.

Firstly, all academics are a little bit eccentric, even if they don’t like to admit it. You have to be really – for working in an incredibly pressurised environment where you get very little recognition, unless you make a mistake. Having to publish or perish, teach, supervise, get grants etc and continually have to find creative ways to save money… it is enough to drive anyone over the edge.

However, there is good crazy and bad crazy. When you undertake a PhD you spend a great deal of time with one, maybe two people as your supervisors. You learn all about your supervisors own particular brand of crazy and they, in turn, will get to know all about yours. There are times though, when their crazy can be a cause for concern. Here’s five ways to spot the kind of crazy that might endanger your studies (and your sanity!):

Is your supervisor a control freak?

Does your supervisor like to micro-manage? In the natural / hard sciences this is the norm, i.e. you are working on your supervisor’s project and you do what they want. In the social sciences (where I come from) there is a greater degree of freedom.  You are more likely to be working on something you came up with on your own.  But for all students some degree of autonomy and independence from the supervisor is important; after all you are meant to be making an  “original contribution to knowledge”. You can’t do this without being allowed to work and think on your own – at least some of the time.

There are some supervisors who don’t understand that this is your PhD, your work, and that it has to be yours to defend through the examination process. To do this successfully you need to feel you own it. While supervisors have a great deal of experience in how to write a thesis, what makes a good thesis etc, some seem to get confused over this issue of ownership.

I had this problem to a certain extent. My original supervisor micro-managed everything, down to the last paragraph; it was incredibly stressful and frustrating. If you experience this behaviour, and it appears not to be compatible with your way of working, maybe you should consider working with someone else.

Does your supervisor criticise you in public?

Have you presented at a conference and suddenly heard a snide remark from the back only to find it’s your supervisor? Believe me this happens! I’ve seen it and I’ve seen the poor students try to defend themselves and been totally lost. This is not best practice, have a word. Better still, show them the door.

Does your supervisor discuss their family planning issues in front of you?

I remember my friend’s face as if it were yesterday, after a rather awkward moment in a chemist when their supervisors announced condoms were useless! This sounds funny but, for both of you, it’s best to try and keep a vaguely professional relationship until after you finish.

It’s the responsibility of both parties to make the relationship professional, but since there is an uneven power relationship between you and your supervisor,  who is notionally your teacher, it can be hard  sometimes to assert yourself.

Some students are happy going to their supervisor’s house, baby sitting their kids, picking up the dry cleaning and so on – but others do it under sufferance because they are too scared to say no. If your supervisor doesn’t seem to be taking the hint you are uncomfortable with the level of intimacy they are offering , you will need to think carefully about whether you can work with them all the way to the end because…

Phoning at 2am is not normal… for either of you!

It really isn’t. It does happen though and it’s a sign that both of you have let the  professional boundaries slip a bit too much. Do think carefully before exchanging mobile phone numbers – this increases the likelihood that the relationship will escape the bounds of normal working hours.

The problem is, the further along in the process the more stressed you get, the more you are likely to text them at 9pm. I did – particularly to adopted supervisor in the final year. I was lucky, mine always phoned me back; others, particularly those who don’t have teenage children, may not be so accommodating.

Has your supervisor ever made you cry?

If the answer to this is “yes”, you probably need to remove yourself from that relationship forthwith. Original supervisor (must find a better way of differentiating the two) made me cry the first time I met them and then look how that ended up.

As I said at the start of this piece you will learn about your supervisor’s crazy, they will learn about yours, they will probably end up knowing you better than you do yourself and vice versa. Good humour is a pre-requisite for a good relationship, but when the crazy makes things difficult then it’s time to re-think your way forward. These observations about crazy supervisors could easily be turned around and used to describe crazy students - they are out there. If you are reading this post and recognising any of this behaviour in someone you are working with it’s time to have that difficult talk.

How about you – have you encountered ‘bad crazy’ in your travels through academia? How did you recognise it and what did you do?

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The nowwhere-everywhere place

Card received circa April 2011

This post is written by Maia Sauren, a PhD student at RMIT  who will be doing a series on life immediately post PhD

I submitted my thesis. About three weeks ago. I still don’t quite believe it.

Hate me yet? I would. Every time a friend submitted theirs, I wanted to kill them. Or die. On the up side, it’s really possible! Until it was almost over, I didn’t think so.

I’ve been enrolled for many years, and finishing took all my reserves. Working part-time just wasn’t working for me, so I took out a loan. I developed a mild social phobia – the idea of talking about something other than THIS CHAPTER made me panic. I transcended the full gamut of emotions and sublimated them all into mania. I ate my body weight in nutella. I co-opted someone into formatting and called in friends to read drafts. I took far too many stimulants; I’m still paying the sleep debt.

A week after submitting, the numbness started wearing off, and another week after that I was still having nightmares about all the things I might’ve got wrong.

Don’t listen now in case I jinx it, but I think it looks great. I’m really proud of what I’ve done.

Some time ago, a person whose work I respect took me out for a coffee. He said he was impressed by my presentations at the last couple of conferences we’d both been at. he told me that, in his opinion, I was ready to submit and that I shouldn’t let myself be held back by lack of confidence.

I was a bit stunned. I didn’t feel like I knew what I was talking about. It took me another two years before I agreed with him. I knew lots of about my research – that is, the application of the principles, but not enough about the theoretical basics. It’s only in the last couple of months that I started feeling like a baby expert in my field. I  found myself writing the literature review as a story full of facts, and when I sent it to my supervisor it came back with only a few minor corrections. That’s when I knew I’d made it.

I have amazing friends

And now… well, what now? I have months to wait before I hear back. Who am I? What do I want to do? And just what kind of a person  takes this long to finish a project? 

I’ve defined myself as a student for so long, I’m not quite sure where to go from here.  It’s a bit like being a teenager again – somewhere between full of potential and just plain awkward. I’m bright and overeducated, I could do a mountain of different things, but I’m not sure which direction to push. I keep reminding myself that I’ve held lots of interesting jobs already, and getting a fabulous education means I have in fact started a career. I’m going to a conference next week and it’s the first time in years I’ll be without a vague sense of guilt and inadequacy.

My thesis is on an engineering/science topic but I don’t want to be an engineer or a scientist. I’m wondering if doing a Ph.D. was worth it, given I don’t want to be an academic.

I’ve learned more than you’d care to ask about a lot of technical topics. More importantly, I’ve learned a lot about myself and what I’m capable of. I viscerally understand the value of sticking to my guns, of removing my attachment to areas I want to pursue when I can see they’re fruitless, and of doing the hard slog even when it sucks. I also know that I can finish a huge project, and what that takes.

I don’t regret my choices, but I do wonder if these are all things I could have learned in less painful, and perhaps more lucrative, ways – like, say, having a job. I’ve come to think of a Ph.D. as something a person might choose to do if they already know a lot about their topic, rather than starting out in their career. It seems silly to go through a trial by fire for what is, for now, very little reward. I don’t regret my choices, completing a Ph.D. has been closely tied to my self-esteem. But knowing what I do now, I’m not sure I’d choose the same path given my time again.

I expect I’ll have a different view in another five years.

So what am I doing with my time now? Besides catching up with all the people I’ve avoided for months, you mean?

I’m freelancing the kinds of small jobs I did before submitting, I’ve registered with a contracting agency in the vague area I want to work in, and I’m google-stalking the people at next week’s conference. I’ve also started setting up coffee meetings with people who do interesting work, where I ask about how their job happens, and how happy they are with all the bits of it. In other words, I’m doing what has been recommended right here on this blog: I’m doing my research on the next bit. My brain is automatically geared towards assimilating information and having deadlines, so I’m using that to my advantage.

In this post you see a picture of the card my future self sent to me, some time in April. I think she wanted to help me imagine life post PhD. If you’ll excuse me, I have to save the space time continuum by going to write that card now! If your future self wrote you a card right now, what would it say?

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“Demystifying Dissertation Writing”

“Demystifying Dissertation Writing”  sits on my shelf of ‘how to’ books. Stylus publishing donated a copy to Dr Charlotte Frost and Dr Sarah Quinell, of PhD2Published, kindly organised for a research student to receive a copy and review it for the Thesis Whisperer.

This review was written by Linda Baines, a part-time researcher, who is just completing her MSc and
starting PhD in September.  Her research interests lie in ethics, knowledge exchange, innovation and corporate social responsbility. She tells me she fits these around a full-time day job at a UK research council and is devoted to her Kindle.  You can talk to Linda on twitter as @LBA_OX12

“Demystifying Dissertation Writing” by Peg Boyle Single PhD, 2010. Published by Stylus Publishing L.L.C., Sterling, Virginia, USA ISBN: 978-1-57922-313-7 Paperback 202 pages

This  book is subtitled “A Streamlined Process from Choice of Topic to Final Text”.  It is aimed at postgraduate students in humanities and social sciences.  So, I was expecting it to be a treatise on ‘how to write your PhD thesis/dissertation’ without any effort.  And it mostly is and it offered me some fresh insights.

The book focuses on the writing process, on starting, writing and completing your thesis/dissertation successfully in a systematic way that maxmises your time and effort.  It is interesting to see what it  does not cover: how to start, undertake and complete your PhD, or more detailed topics such as research methods methodology, data analysis or undertaking a literature review (although it encourages the reader to think about these in developing an outline and suggests how to organize  and analyse your notes).

The book is written from a US perspective, and non-US readers will occasionally have to provide their own parallels with doctorate process they are following.  The author is a graduate teacher and knows and understands her students and the challenges they face in writing a dissertation.   This book provides practical advice.  For many readers   it sits alongside with “Authoring a PhD” by Patrick Dunleavy and “How to Write a Thesis” by Rowena Murray.

This book offered me some new tools and approaches that I could apply immediately, particularly the focus statement, a short summary of what your research topic is about in plain English, and a one page outline of your dissertation (although other books cover this as well).

The strength of the book lies in its focus on the writing process.  It offers approaches to and ways of exploring your topic, refining the scope and the boundaries of a research project, and offers hints for effective reading and note-taking.  Peg Boyle Single stresses the idea of establishing a writing routine, working with fellow students and overcoming writers’ block.  She aims to support the reader in becoming a fluent writer.  She also covers choosing a topic and a supervisor, developing a detailed outline, different approaches to take to thesis (thematic, data analytic and journal article).

The most immediately refreshing perspective is that the author recognizes that PhD students have other dimensions to their lives; that their research and their thesis are only one of several elements which they are juggling. Like other books in the field, , working ‘little and often’ and ‘start and keep writing’ are the keys to a completing a thesis/dissertation.

Peg Boyle Single writes clearly and her suggestions are practical. This is not a high flown theory book; it is practical, accessible and easy to read.  I read it in several short sessions and found myself sitting down to use and develop some of the tools and concepts that she describes. This book provides a very useful practical introduction for postgraduate students.  This kind of book helps to fill a gap that exists on many graduate courses at Masters and PhD levels; learning about how to write, the writing process and how to manage this.

I would recommend this book along with Patrick Dunleavy and Rowena Murray’s books as essential reading and material for new PhD /postgraduate students, and those in the middle or later stages of their doctorate who are struggling in to get to grips with the dissertation/thesis writing process.  As the author uses generic techniques, the book also provides a good starting point for Masters students.

The writing processes and management techniques and approaches that Peg Boyle Single describes have wider application; they can be used for other kinds of writing projects.  At just over 200 pages, this is a book to skim at first reading for an overview, and to come back to for advice on particular topics.

However, if you are looking for greater insight into doing PhD, then you may prefer to refer to other books such as “The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research” by Marian Petre and Gordon Rugg.

Do you have other suggestions for good books for PhD students to buy, or own a book you like so much that you want to review it for us? Let us know in the comments!

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Slow Academia

It’s winter here in Melbourne; the kind of weather that calls for soup. My favourite soup is the sort which simmers all day on the stove. You know, where you fill a pot with a pile of vegetables and cook the crap out of it over a long, cold afternoon.  I’ve got a pot like this on at the moment and the smells are permeating the house. You never know how good this kind of soup is going to be until you taste it of course, but you know that slow cooking intensifies flavour and transforms humble ingredients into something special.

For some time now the ‘slow food’ movement has questioned the value of ‘fast food’ and called for a return to more authentic modes of cooking and eating. Like any catchy name will, the concept of Slow has been applied to other activities: Slow travel, Slow gardening, Slow fashion, Slow parenting. What these manifestations of the Slow Movement  share in common is an appreciation for the value of taking more time and care to make something – a dish, a dress, a garden on the assumption that it will be better than something put together in a hurry.

As regular readers will know, I am almost obsessed with Fast. I’m constantly after the next technique or process which will increase my output. This is because, much of the time, Fast is Good. One of the traps which thesis writers fall into is over thinking everything, which can be solved by Fast. But recently I’ve started to think about Slow and how it might apply to academic work, because there are aspects of it which just can’t be rushed.

If you think about it, a thesis or dissertation is the epitome of Slow. Even if you finish in speedy fashion you are unlikely to turn one out in less than three years. Over those years you have to do a lot of different things: talk to people, collect data, record observations or make stuff. At the same time you must absorb information and engage with other people’s ideas. In a way, doing a thesis is like a long, slow conversation with these ideas and things, during which you try to tease out what ‘knowledge claims’ you can make. The outcome of this ‘conversation’ is recorded in writing – a thesis or dissertation text, which is examined by others who decide if the quality of the conversation is good enough for you to take on the title of Doctor.

You are but one ‘speaker’ in this Slow Conversation which means, as Liz Thackray points out in her recent blog post, your control over it can be, well – tenuous. After making changes to her thesis outline, Liz tells us how she reread an early abstract, which had served to focus her thinking at the time. Now she realised that it didn’t ‘match’ her thesis anymore:

“… ideas which were central to the abstract a few months ago, are no longer there, but other ideas which either were not present, or were peripheral are taking centre stage. I am seriously beginning to wonder if rather than me owning my thesis, whether it actually has somehow acquired a life of its own.”

There’s an interesting similarity between this statement by Liz and those made by fiction authors who begin to ‘inhabit’ their characters. These writers report a similar sense of separation and otherness, along with a profound kind of connection. As Ann Marie Priest writes:

“I began to feel my character’s feelings. I began to feel myself responding to what the others were saying as though I actually was the person I was pretending to be … I knew, without even thinking about it, what my character was going to do next … when I came to write a monologue for her, it was virtually effortless. She wrote it herself.”

I don’t know about you, but I often feel like my fingers are moving across the keyboard while I take dictation from someone else inside my head. When I read my papers back I they seem to be written by this strange other self and not ‘me’. At least I feel like this other self is a much better writer than I am. Perhaps this ‘multiplicity’ – of selves and of things, is why so many people make the analogy between finishing a thesis or novel and giving birth. A thesis is of you, but it has many other parents: scholars, research participants, archives test tubes to name a few. Consciously thinking about this sense of writing ‘taking control’ of you can be helpful. Consider this quote from Bruno Latour:

“A paper that does not have references is like a child without an escort walking in the night in a big city it does not know: isolated, lost, anything may happen to it”

Latour alerts us to the fact that our thesis has to have relationships with other literature, past and present. If your thesis is a ‘paper child’ you are responsible for its welfare. To return to my theme of Slow, would you let your child wander around the city with any old person you met on the street? No – you would want to take time to get to know this escort before you trusted them.

Likewise, developing your relationship with the literatures who accompany your thesis takes time. While I can and do encourage you to ‘read like a mongrel’ (fast and furious), Fast reading is really a way of finding out which pieces and authors are worth investing time in. Deep understanding of literature needs repeated reading and thinking. as well as writing. In other words, a Slow conversation with the ideas. This process can be frustrating because, just like soup, you can never be completely sure the thesis you make from these Slow conversations will turn out as good as it can be. However, if applied correctly, a bit of Slow will ensure that your thesis has more flavour than most.

Speaking of soup, mine is just about ready, so I might leave you with this thought: What if losing control is an essential part of writing a thesis? Realising you have lost control forces you to slow down. When you stop talking so much, you can listen better. Maybe then your thesis will tell you what it needs. What do you think?

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Careering through the PhD

This is the first guest post by Dr Shari Walsh from the Careers and Employment service at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. Shari is one of a very small number of careers counsellors who specialises  in helping PhD students. Here Shari talks about the importance of developing a vision about your future career path, post PhD.

I have to admit that I really didn’t think much about my career when I started my PhD. My research degree wasn’t part of a big career plan, I simply loved my research topic and thought the lifestyle was pretty good. I realise this is a bit paradoxical given that I am now a Career Counselling specialising in career development for Postgraduate Research students!

Upon reflection though, I realise that I actually did do some form of career preparation and development during the degree. Things like tutoring, applying for and receiving a research grant, publishing, presenting at conferences and the like. These activities were primarily to set me up for an academic career so it was quite a shock when I realised I actually didn’t want to be an academic or researcher for the rest of my life.

Don’t get me wrong, I admire people who do these roles, I just realised that I didn’t want to be one of them. I studied my undergraduate degree to be a practitioner not an academic. And then I kind of stumbled into my current position where I can use my experience to help other postgraduate students to think outside the box and really identify what they want to do and how to go about it.

One thing I have realised in this role is that most postgraduates are totally unaware of their skill set and what they can do at the end of their research degree. It is very easy, like me, to get on the academic/research pathway and not take time to reflect if this is where you really want to be. I also notice that many postgraduates get disillusioned about the realities of post-doc life as they hadn’t researched or prepared for this inevitable occurrence. So, start thinking of your post-PhD pathway now. Here’s some ideas:

Take time to reflect on your career direction:

Rather than seeing reflection as an ‘extra’ activity that you will do if you get time, schedule it into your calendar. It is really disappointing for me when I have a client who has handed in their thesis for external examination and then arrives in my office saying – What’s next? Unfortunately, a job is not likely to just appear when you are ready – you need to do some preparation.

Identify your skills:

Do a formal activity such as a skills audit or brainstorm your skill set to identify the skills you have beyond research.

For instance, teamwork is a part of the PhD process as you work with a supervisor or two and most likely have interactions with other students and staff. In reality, a PhD is a massive learning curve in project management as you have to organise tasks, meet deadlines etc. Rather than simply seeing your activities as part of the research process, re-frame them as employability skills and change the language to build your understanding of how they will help you in the work environment.

Develop a vision:

I am not a huge believer in having a fixed career path. Difficulties arise if the end goal is not what is expected and often people with an absolute goal overlook exciting opportunities along the way.

Rather than having a fixed goal, develop a vision of what you want to do. What activities do you enjoy doing? Do you envisage working in a team or on your own? Do you want to a lot of interactions with people? Is money important? Understanding what you enjoy, what motivates you, and your values is an integral part of developing a vision. I used to do collages of my career vision and stick them up around my office to keep me motivated.

Ask for suggestions on what you could do:

What would your friends and colleagues suggest you do and why? The ‘why’ is very important as it reinforces our skill set and competencies. Often people see us in a different light to the way we see ourselves, their advice might be life changing, but:

Become your own person and decide your own pathway

Often students say that they have a strong sense of loyalty to their supervisor and they feel guilty if they decide they choose a different path.

I had a great supervisor. She had given me many opportunities to prepare for academia and it was a difficult decision to let this person, whom I admired, know that I didn’t want to become an academic (she took it very well and we still collaborate on some projects). However, in general, supervisors want the best for their students so let them know your thoughts.

Use your research skills:

Use your well developed research skills on yourself to research roles that interest you and to develop an understanding of the skills you already have that you would be beneficial in that role. Identify useful sources of information such as career and job seeking websites (e.g., This  website); regularly read the Higher Education section of The Australian and the professional section of The Weekend Australian; talk with people working in roles that interest you. Make sure you keep a record of what you discover.

See a Career Counsellor:

All universities offer a career counselling service. Make an appointment to discuss options and to have time and space to talk about where you want to go.

Finally, just like you are becoming an expert in your research field, you can also become an expert in your career. Be pro-active, get started now, and work towards obtaining a successful result. What are you doing now that you think will help you in your career goals post PhD?

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How to avoid going off at tangents

This post is by Karen McAulay, Music and Academic Services Librarian at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama

In a long, extended project like a doctoral dissertation, it’s all too easy to allow ourselves to get distracted, both by potentially interesting research ideas, and by humdrum everyday interruptions. Reading Eloise Zoppos recent Whisperer post about keeping a research journal, I was reminded of my own efforts to keep all the different strands of my research carefully recorded and in a retrievable form.

Are you scatterbrained?

The Free Dictionary.com defines ‘scatterbrained’ as, ‘a person regarded as flighty, thoughtless, or disorganized.’  Isn’t this a fair description of most of us at some stage in the throes of thesis-writing, though? (not exactly flighty or thoughtless, but certainly with wildly disorganized thoughts!)

Before I tell you about the technique I eventually adopted to bring things back under control, let’s look at a typical PhD student’ s day, by the time they’ve  started the serious business of writing up that dissertation.

Picture the scene: you’ve eventually pinned yourself down at your desk, and you have a clear couple of hours in which you intend to do some serious writing.  You’ve assembled your notes, planned what to say, and have some idea of the order in which these thoughts are going to hit the page.  You’re unlikely to be disturbed by humankind for the rest of the morning.

Distractions

Ping!  You get an email alert, or a text, and feel you’d better answer it,  because (a) it’s urgent; or (b) it won’t take a minute.  Except that you can’t quite lay your hands on the information you need …

Back to the chapter.  Until it suddenly crosses your mind that you need to make an appointment.  This won’t take long!  But you lose your train of thought.

You sigh, shake yourself down and return to work.  This time, there’s a new Facebook comment, and before you know where you are …

Finally, you face up to the blindingly obvious, close down your email window and mute your phone.  Now you’ll be able to concentrate.

This time, everything goes swimmingly, until a rogue thought – perfectly connected with your research – creeps, unbidden into your consciousness.  It’s relevant, and – hey, this could be a totally new insight.  This is what it’s all about, you sigh contentedly, breaking off from writing to search for a reference, check the library catalogue, or hunt for an abstract of that tantalizing conference paper.  You note it down, then decide that a quick cup of coffee will help you concentrate.

Suddenly the endlessly long morning isn’t quite so endless, which is a shame when you really had intended to get so much done!

Concentrate, concentate!

Fundamentally, this is all about concentration, isn’t it?  I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that my mind is sometimes like one of those firework fountains, sparking out ideas in all directions until I wish I could just lock it down to go in one, focused direction at a time.

With many of these distractions, there’s really no easy solution apart from a steely self-discipline.

Surprisingly as it may seem, we aren’t under any obligation to check emails or social media at regular intervals.  It’s simply a question of relearning the skill of sitting still and concentrating for a fixed period, gradually increasing the time as we become better at it.

Getting words onto the page

More than once, I’ve come across the suggestion that you should write every day, no matter what apparent rubbish goes onto the page. The reasoning is that you’re more likely to get results if you have a writing habit, than if you procrastinate and write nothing!  Even random writing will get the creative juices flowing  and re-reading your own faltering efforts will give you the chance to re-order, re-phrase, polish and edit until you’ve got something closer to a coherent argument.

Does this ‘write everyday’ thing work for you, though? 

Speaking personally, I have never been able to embrace the random writing habit.  I certainly can’t just start writing ‘stream of consciousness’ stuff and at some stage move into a more focused academic discourse.  Rather, I have an idea what I want to write, and I write it.

If I sense it’s going nowhere, I grind to a halt, and then start shuffling around sections to see if I can improve the logic.  And if it simply will not work, I still follow the advice that my supervisor once gave me, early on in my doctoral research – I write makeshift headings for each paragraph, and then look at the logic of the headings.

A variant on the idea of the Research Journal

Self-discipline is something that we all have to work at, but I’d like to finish this post by sharing with you a tool that I came up with during the final months of writing my thesis.

My documents folder still contains a few dated files enigmatically named ‘Tangental Threads’.  And the system works like this:- when you start working on a chapter, you simultaneously open your current Tangental Threads document.  Any remotely relevant distractions get jotted down in your Tangental Threads.  But you don’t take any action on them until you’ve finished your writing session!

I salvaged a few of my old TT documents to show you what I mean:-

• “Monelle article – note salient points and see where I can allude to it.”
• “At work – Scottish Life and Society book.  At home – Anderson, Imagined Communities.”
• “Border songs – contact people suggested by xxx”
• “University Library – King, Locke, Treitler.  National Library – Callander letter manuscripts.  British Library – see the Thomson edition containing his dissertation.”

I also collected full citations of the books I intended to follow up, and a number of quotations which I planted into text boxes to make them easy to find when needed in particular chapters. This is why I needed my notes to be digital.

However, it’s all a question of personal preference.

I did keep a handwritten research journal as well, but the TT documents were vital - a kind of digital scholarly “To do” list, and a catch-all for those fleeting thoughts that would otherwise either have distracted me from the task in hand, or perhaps have been forgotten altogether.  Adding library shelf-marks later meant I could sally forth to the university library knowing exactly what I was there for. And it wasn’t uncommon for me to include domestic trivia - after all, even doctors need dentists!

Indeed, whilst the doctorate is now done and dusted, my Tangental Threads documents do still live on.  Keeping lists like this is, for me, a vital way of organising my thoughts.  I wonder how many other busy people have found the same?

Related posts

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Dear Thesis Whisperer (from Joanne Hall)

Editor’s note: One of the nicest things about running this blog is that I often receive ‘thank you’ letters by email from PhD students, especially when they complete.

Often they tell me the most important thing they have learned, or give me tips and ideas for a post based on their experience of doing a PhD. I thought I would start sharing some of these letters with you in a “Dear Thesis Whisperer” column.

Here is the first, from Joanne Hall who recently submitted her thesis in maths at RMIT.  When she isn’t studying maths Joanne volunteers with Girl Guides,  plays in puddles with her son and discuss geeky things with her husband.

June 14, 2011

Dear Thesis Whisperer

I have just submitted my Thesis. Hooray! Thanks for an excellent blog, it has helped me immensely. Now that I have a bit of time, I thought I’d share an idea that I have found useful. The separation of research from writing.

When you know a topic really well, as happens towards the end of a research degree, a lot of important facts are in the forefront of your mind. Sometimes your memory fails and you find yourself thinking `who?’ or `how many?’ or `when?’. It is tempting to stop in the middle of a paragraph to search for the fact. Don’t do it. This will kill the flow of ideas.

I take this advice from Sci- writer Cory Docotorow. When writing, don’t research. This sounds counter intuitive, especially when writing to obtain a research degree. Getting ideas written down is difficult. Finding facts is a much easier if tedious task. But it is a waste of creative energy. This is no disrespect to my colleagues in experimental or social sciences who must undertake months of labwork or fieldwork to find facts (I study pure mathematics.)

I use the symbol XXX in my writing:

`In XXX Schwinger discovered that …’ or ‘XXX is the smallest number for which …’

When I have done a solid creative writing stint (maybe 30min), I then switch to the easier task of chasing down the facts required to fill in the blanks. I can go through and find all the places where I have written XXX and fill in the blanks:

‘In 1960 Schwinger discovered that’ or `14 is the smallest number for which…’

Ideas are the valuable part of research, but if not written down, they can be lost. Facts can be retrieved. You read it somewhere? You can find it again. I also use XXX to surround pieces of text that need fact checking. e.g:

‘A quantum state is described by a XXX density matrix XXX.’

I have a bibliography item XXX, so that I can include a reference that I can’t remember.

In summary, collecting facts is an important task in any research project, however it is not a task that should be done in the middle of a sentence.

Keep whispering,
Joanne Hall

If you would like to send me a “Dear Thesis Whisperer” letter you can find my details on my contact page.