Mens sana in corpore sano

This post is written by our regular contributor, Dr Karen McAulay – librarian extrodinaire at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Karen wrote this post in response to a conversation we had on Twitter about the importance of Chocolate in doctoral studies…

When Inger recently mentioned the provision of chocolate frogs at a recent PhD students’ event – how civilised! – I couldn’t help passing comment.  Because this isn’t the first time I’ve caught Inger tweeting about delicious food!  And we all remember the picture of a table covered in gorgeous iced cakes, on a recent Thesis Whisperer posting.  Oh, yum! Well, I should have kept my mouth shut, because Inger has now challenged me to write a piece about the relationship between chocolate and doctorates – apart from the words having five letters in common.  Thanks, Inger!

I’m tempted to help myself to a chocolate biscuit as I write this, but that would display a shameful lack of self-discipline. We all know, deep down, that not only does excessive chocolate make our clothes too tight, but self-discipline really is vital, whether it comes to avoiding excessive chocolate, or getting the thesis in on time.  I managed the latter, so presumably I have hidden resources of self-discipline.  If I could only remember where I left it!

And what am I to say about chocolate?  I could write a WeightWatchers-esque article reminding everyone that, whilst a little of what you fancy does you good, a moment on the lips means a lifetime on the hips.  No, that would be too preachy.

Instead, maybe I’ll just share a few thoughts about the whole ‘Mens sana in corpore sano’ thing.  A healthy mind in a healthy body (or, as Victoria Wood’s book famously said, ‘Mens Sana in Thingummy Doodah’!). And I do know what I’m talking about here, because I’m a migraine sufferer. I can’t stop myself having migraines, but I can take steps to lessen their frequency and severity.  And those same steps are actually quite good in combating the stress that everyone undergoes during doctoral studies.

So, here goes.  In the first instance, I’ve learned that too many sweet, processed sugary foods just lead to blood-sugar highs then lows.  Not good – the human body functions much better in a relative equilibrium.

I hope this doesn’t read like your mother talking, but I’m in my stride now, so I’ll go on.  Humans function better on regular re-fuelling.  Believe me, I know how it feels when you’re in the middle of reading something fascinating at the library, and it’s so specialised or rare that you can’t borrow it – or you’re just at a critical point in that chapter you’re writing, and you don’t want to lose momentum.  Sometimes you can’t help just forgoing sustenance until you reach a suitable point for a break. But where possible, a quick break and a sensible snack are good for your metabolism, good for your eyes, and essential for your mental well being!

Too much caffeine just makes you jumpy.  Sorry, but that’s the way it is.  I’ve learned to drink more tea and less coffee.  I can’t and don’t see the need to give it up, just to exercise a bit of restraint.  And it follows that a Mars bar or an iced Danish pastry and a cup of coffee isn’t really the best lunch, no matter how quick, cheap and tasty.

On the other hand, wholefoods are good for sustained energy.  And carbohydrates can be very calming, so if your research or thesis-writing brings you to the point where you’re hyped up like a Beyblade on speed, then a baked potato could be just what you need to bring you back to normality.  Or a good, thick soup.  So long as you don’t do it too often, a bag of chips or a nice stodgy pudding are actually equally soothing (you didn’t hear me say that.)

Alcohol is ‘a good servant but a bad master’.   Enough said.  (In my case, I know I’ll get a migraine long before anyone else would worry about a hangover!)  Don’t let it affect your productivity!

Exercise is the best stress-buster there is.  If, like me, you’re a real couch-potato with an allergy to anything smacking of team-games or hand-eye coordination, then the thought of regular exercise is unlikely to appeal.  But believe me, exercise does you good.  I promise you you’ll be less stressed if you find something you can tolerate doing, preferably several times a week.  Now, please don’t start wailing that you haven’t got time!  If you’re fit and less stressed, you’ll be more productive in the time available, so go on – walk, swim, cycle, or take advantage of any student gym offer available to you – do whatever it takes, but you will benefit.   (Hint: strenuous exercise burns more calories – just one more incentive for taking yourself in hand!)

I seem to have strayed a long way from my brief to write about chocolate and doctorates.  Or have I?  Of course you can have the odd sweet or starchy treat – just so long as it’s occasional, and not a staple part of your diet.  Now, that delicious sandwich that Inger posted the other day … spot on!  I can’t remember now, but – was it wholemeal?  Surely it must have been!

Have you developed an unhealthy relationship with food during your PhD? Or have you managed to keep everything under control? What tactics have you used to stay healthy while studying?

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Treat your supervisor right!

How does a thesis look from the other side? This guest post is written by Dr Kristin Natalier, a qualitative researcher and senior lecturer in the School of Sociology and Social Work, University of Tasmania. If you catch her on a good day Kris will admit she actually quite likes working with research students on their projects. In this post Kristin sets out her manifesto for treating your supervisor right!

It’s not me, it’s you. Do you treat your supervisor right?

Supervisors can be difficult.  We can be eccentric. We can be tetchy. We can lose your drafts and forget to give you feedback. Sometimes we don’t treat you right. But it’s not all a one way street – sometimes you treat us bad, too. Here are some questions to ponder …

Do you roll your eyes when your supervisor offers advice?

Supervisors know stuff. We have spent years as high achieving undergraduates, postgraduates and then academics finding out about stuff. We were employed by our institution because we know about stuff. Some of that stuff will be relevant to your research.

Even if you are working with someone who’s not an expert in your specific topic, they will have something worthwhile to offer you.  Academics ‘get’ their discipline:  we have a working knowledge of its parameters, debates, what’s hot and what’s not. If you have been thinking ‘class’ and your supervisor says ‘what about gender’? , don’t presume they have no idea.  Follow it up: ask questions then or go away, do some reading and some thinking. You don’t have to agree but you do need to engage with the possibilities of the suggestion. Discount the advice out of hand simply because it doesn’t obviously fit with your vision. The mind of a trained academic can be fiendishly subtle…

Thinking about advice is also important when it comes to comments on your written work, especially thesis chapters. If a supervisor asks you to do something, do it or explain why you haven’t. Ignoring it won’t make it go away – it just leads your supervisor to wonder if you are recalcitrant, can’t read, or are just not very clever.

Do you presume your supervisor has poor comprehension skills?

We don’t. We’ve made a career reading and writing in ways that are appropriate to our – and your – discipline. So if we write ‘I don’t understand what you are trying to get at here’, presume it’s because you aren’t writing clearly.  It’s not because we don’t understand sophisticated ideas or specialised language. It’s because you don’t write clearly and effectively – and we’re doing you a big favour pointing that out before some pissed off reviewer does.

Do you act as if your supervisor has world enough and time?

We don’t. You’re likely one of many research students and definitely one of many obligations.  Being late for meetings – or worse, not turning up – are obviously egregious behaviours. Most dodgy practices are a little more subtle, based on the presumably unexamined presumption that when you’re not with us, we while away the hours on Facebook and ebay.  These practices include unrealistic expectations for turn around times on submitted work, expecting instant access when forms need to be signed, ‘just dropping in’, and replying to a request for a meeting one week later and one day before the suggested date (our dance card will then be full).

Do you follow the letter of the law but not its spirit?

When you agree to deliver a draft to your supervisor on Friday, do it right.  A draft is a complete and relatively coherent piece of work, written in sentences and proof read. It doesn’t include notes to yourself or questions to your supervisor (‘Should I discuss Said here?’), there are no missing sections (‘feminist critique of individualisation to go here’), the font is all the same size and style, you have referenced your work and provided a reference list.  Friday means close of business Friday and preferably earlier (hey, it’s Friday), not 11.58pm… or 8.58 am on Monday.

Do you act as though your supervisor is your support staff?

Supervisors have been employed for their disciplinary expertise.  We are not paid to: print out your 357 page thesis draft sent via email, photocopy it and pass the copies to the rest of the team; line edit your work; correct your systematic and yet never predictable misuse of semi-colons; find forms on the University website; remind you of important dates relating to your candidature; provide a reading list of foundational texts in your field. In short, we are not your secretary, editor or research assistant.

Do you hide things from your supervisor?

Please don’t. We don’t need or want to know most details about your life but we can’t work with you to develop your research if we are missing key information about your circumstances.  This information includes: any illness that is difficult to manage and may affect your thesis work; significant life events or commitments that may affect your thesis work; problems with the design and implementation of your project; skills you don’t have but need to have.  Knowing about this issue will shape what we can expect from you, how we will support you, and how we advocate for your interests to the institution.

Do you say thank you?

For many of us, supervision is the very definition of a thankless task. Being listed halfway through the thesis acknowledgements is a pretty small payoff for over three years of effort.  Saying ‘thank you’ at the end of a meeting or when your supervisor has commented on your work is a nice touch, even if it is only common politeness.  Even classier: delivering your supervisor their crutch of choice (chocolate, coffee, moonshine) when you plonk the first full draft of your thesis on their desk. Those suckers can be rough to read.

Thesis writers feel mad, sad and bad in response to their supervisors’ behaviours. But supervisors have feelings too. More than feelings, we have professional expertise and authority. And we write references for our graduate students. If you don’t communicate well, find it difficult to work with others, fail to meet deadlines, present poor quality work and struggle to be flexible in your thinking … well, how’s that reference going to read?

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How to have an office in your handbag

Two weeks ago I started a collaborative google map so thesis writers could share their favourite places to work. I’m happy to report that this has been a roaring success with over 100 cafes marked on it – and more being added everyday. Thank you to everyone who contributed. I’m happy to know that if I ever find myself in China or Africa, I know where to get wireless access and a table to work on. Since last week Kylie Budge talked about managing herself between multiple places of work, I thought I might continue the theme of mobile scholarship.

People often ask how I manage to get so much done when clearly I don’t spend exactly 40 hours a week in my office. Happily for me (or sadly, depending on how you look at it) the barriers between work life and home life are fuzzy. I like to write and research, you know – for fun, so I carry an office in my handbag which allows me to work just about anywhere, anytime. I’m sure many of you have a similar system, so I thought I would share mine by way of encouraging you to write in and tell us yours:

1. Computer

If you are just writing on the move your computer doesn’t actually have to be that powerful. For the last couple of years I used a Dell mini 9 inch Netbook that fitted neatly in my handbag. While it was no pocket rocket, the Netbook it did the job; I could plug it into any projector and the battery enabled up to 3 hours of typing.

However, this meant I had three computers and managing the data was a bit annoying. When my Dell Netbook sadly died I replaced it with a Mac book Air 11 inch, which is the same weight but more powerful. This enabled me to replace my desktop PC, which brings me down from 3 computers to two.

2. Apps

Working mobile is much easier with cloud applications: software delivered over the internet. There are a growing number of services and many of them are extremely useful for academics. Some people use Zotero to manage their bibliography, but I use Mendeley because it’s a bit like itunes and twitter rolled into one; I can make and share bibliographies as well as see my library from any machine with an internet connection. A recent find to complement Mendeley is A.nnotate which enables you to mark up PDFs and share them with others.

Similarly I use Evernote as a public online ‘scrap book’ to keep track of websites I find as well as notes from seminars and conferences. I use Prezi or Slideshare to do my presentations so I can always present, even if I can’t easily plug in my laptop. There are many cloud apps out there – I am always interested to hear about new ones!

3. Smart phone

Without my Android phone I would not be able to run my handbag office. Most of these apps listed above are available on my phone as well as on my computer. One of the reasons I bought this phone rather than an iphone was, at the time, it was the only one that could act as a ‘wireless hot spot‘. This means I can turn it on in my pocket, direct my computer to look for it and have an internet connection. Wherever I have phone reception I can work in nerdy, cord free bliss: train, tram, bus or cafe.

4. Kindle

Although I am conflicted about the death of bookstores, I love my Kindle. The other morning it wouldn’t wake up for some reason and I swear I felt like my dog had died (luckily Mr Thesis Whisperer managed to reboot it). The ability to keep 100 or so academic books in my hand bag is kind of amazing – whenever I pull it out I have a little “Here I am, living in the future!” moment.

I also have the Kindle app on my computer and my phone so that I can read my books from any open internet connection – it even remembers which page I was up to. However I prefer to read from the actual device when writing. Call me old fashioned, but there’s something about having the information on a separate screen which I find conducive to thinking.

5. Analogue peripherals

I still keep a notebook. I just like the feel of using a pencil on paper and it doesn’t need time to reboot. My friends know I am a Moleskine addict and kindly give me notebooks for my birthday. I like them because the paper is nice, you can get unlined pages and the little pocket in the back is handy to hold scrappy bits and pieces. Recently @scottmayson taught me how to ‘synch’ my notebook with Evernote: I take a picture of the notebook page, then tag and upload it. This is a brilliant way to keep track of notes and details that might otherwise get buried within a journal once it is full and sitting on a shelf somewhere.

So that’s my hand bag office – what’s in yours?

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on home and place

Kylie Budge is a PhD student in art/design education at the University of Melbourne in Australia. She is also the co-editor of a new blog, the theteachingtomtom, in her role at RMIT University as a Learning and Teaching Advisor.

What do place and home mean to you? This topic has been swimming around in my head quite a bit recently. I’ve been preoccupied on two levels: in a physical sense and on a more figurative level in relation to the idea of academic discipline. This post has come about because I’m curious to see if others immersed in doing a PhD experience anything like this when they think about ‘home’ and ‘place’.

Firstly, on a physical level, I simply have too many places. By this I mean, during any given working week I have 4 physical places I use for PhD work and my part-time employment. For the PhD I have both a home study space and a space recently provided for me by my university, which you think would be ideal. I mean isn’t it good to have to have options? However, what I’ve found is it can also be somewhat confusing and disorienting. Questions like, what day is it? and, where am I going? frequently pop into my head. And not to mention the myriad of data storage questions it can generate!

I value my home study space for the quiet and solitude it provides. But, quite frankly, on some days both the fridge and the couch are just too enticing. And it’s begun to feel a wee bit isolating. This last part is a surprise to me. Going from full-time work (from years and years of teaching and working in busy, people-centred workplaces) to full-time study I thought I’d never be sick of the quiet and sense of being alone that comes with studying from home. I thought I’d be reveling in it, to be quite frank. And most days I do enjoy it.

But recently I started to feel very isolated and actually began to crave seeing people on my part-time work days. I never expected that to happen! So when my university recently offered a study space I tentatively said yes, and am presently trialling it to see if it will work. On my first day there I met 5 new people and was quite pleasantly overwhelmed. It’s too soon yet to say how that space will pan out.

My other two ‘places’ or ‘homes’ during the week are 2 different campuses at the university where I am employed part-time. So, together I have 4 physical places for study/work. Some people might find this too fracturing or to use my favourite word, discombobulating. What I’ve recently realised is that I thrive in the dynamism that all these different physical places provide. Well, for now I do. Ask me in 12 months and we’ll see if I have a different opinion.

The more figurative aspect of ‘home’ or ‘place’ I’ve been tinkering with is in the context of academic discipline. Caroline Kreber writes on the topic of academic disciplines and their role, meaning and power in universities. She highlights how much discipline matters to academics and the profound role they play in university pedagogy.

My PhD topic (creative practice and teaching of art/design in universities) perches me squarely on the fence of two (if not three) quite different disciplines. And while I understand that I’m not alone in this situation, it often provokes questions for me about where my disciplinary home might be. Or even if I have one.

Before enrolling, I went through quite a tricky period searching for supervisors because I (and my topic) didn’t fit neatly into most ways universities organise their disciplines and their academics. This created lots of days when I wondered if there was something wrong with my topic. Surely the fact that there is no easy or natural home for me is an indicator that something is not quite right, I thought (and sometimes still do).

I view with envy students who have a PhD topic which centres them squarely in a discipline without question. Such a disciplinary home must feel safe and warm and nurturing I imagine. Academically, you must know where to call ‘home’ and where you envisage working (in a disciplinary sense) once the PhD is done.

The strange truth is, I like both of my possible disciplinary homes and can feel quite comfortable in either – even if I often have this sense that I’m not going to be there for long. In a disciplinary sense, I feel very transient. Interestingly I’m starting to get used to this and it’s beginning to feel alright. Bourdieu wrote a lot about ‘field’ or ‘habitus’ and the play of power and agency, and the resulting anxieties when we have to navigate a range of these.

I think I know what he means in a disciplinary sense. However, I’ve also realised I don’t have to feel like a visitor in either discipline but can benefit from being able to move between and work within both disciplinary homes. It’s made me think that perhaps universities should start softening those disciplinary boundaries for those of us who don’t quite fit into one in particular. Who knows what creative outcomes might flow from such new spaces and places? What do you think?

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This guest post is from Helen Hickson,  a Social Worker and PhD candidate at La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia. Helen is currently about half way through a PhD exploring reflective practice with social workers. This piece was originally posted on her blog “Helen Through the Looking Glass“. In this post Helen wonders if doing a PhD makes you a good competitor in trivia nights… or not!

I went to a Trivia night last night with some colleagues at the University. I used to love Trivia nights, but I haven’t been to one for a long time.

They are different these days, with powerpoint slide shows and projectors, and last night I realised that I am different too.

There were six rounds of questions and we did well for the first two rounds – the general knowledge questions. We knew the chemical symbol for gold (it’s au in case you were wondering), the two highest grossing movies of all time (Titanic and Avatar) and we knew the names of all of the characters marooned on Gilligan’s Island.

We did particularly well in the third round when we had to identify international architecture, and as a table we chatted about the conferences that we had attended all over the world. But then things got harder and I realised that while I have focussed all of my attention on my PhD research topic the rest of the world has gone on without me.

We were stumped in the sports section. We couldn’t remember who won the 2010 Women’s Singles Title at the Australian Open (has it really been eight months since Kim Clijsters took home the trophy?), or the name of the person who won the Australian Ironman Championship six times (I will save you the trouble of Googling it – it’s Trevor Hendy).

We stumbled in the section where we had to identify cartoon characters – who has time to watch TV when you are busy writing a PhD? There are cartoons on TV that I haven’t heard of and some of them have been on TV for several years.

But the section where we failed in the most spectacular fashion was the flags section – we couldn’t remember if the stripes on the French flag were horizontal or vertical, and which country had the red stripe over white and which one has the white stripe over red.  Actually, I still don’t think I can explain the answers to that one.

As I drove home and contemplated our performance at the trivia night it occurred to me that as much as I have loved reading in the past, I don’t have time for it anymore.

Pre-Phd, I had one or two novels on the go at all times. I loved to read all kinds of books or to curl up on the couch with the newspaper on a rainy Saturday afternoon.  But today, I can’t even remember a time when I did more than glance at the front page and the employment section of the newspaper. 

I think I am craving a trashy novel.  It’s hard as a PhD student to contemplate using precious and valuable time to read something other than a journal article or text book, but I think that is exactly what I need to do. Maybe, I will even watch TV!

While I am absorbed in PhD research I am immersed in a place that is privileged and sheltered from the realities of what is happening in the rest of the world.  And maybe, from time to time, we should come up for air and check out what is happening in the rest of the world. Read a trashy novel, see a tacky movie at the cinema or watch a re-run of a long-forgotten comedy on TV.  Because while I have spent months reading, thinking and writing about qualitative research methodological approaches that have epistemological credibility, it is unlikely that there will be any questions about that at your nearest trivia night.

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Office or Cafe: which is the better workspace?

About a year ago now I had a phone conversation with @bjkraal who showed me his excellent and funny “Brown car blog”.  I got nerdishly excited about the potentials of using a photo blog like Tumblr to do crowd sourced research. My HTC Android phone has a  great camera in addition to 3G access and apps which allow me to upload straight to Tumblr. This makes it the ideal data collection instrument – hello ethnographic fun!

@bjkraal and I started to toss around around some ideas for a photoblog theme and came up with a research question to drive it:

Is there any evidence to support the idea that the presence of senior professors and VC’s at university events is co-related with a higher quality of catering?

Exhibit A: tray of snacks at the 2011 AUQA conference, Melbourne.

Of  course it’s a rather silly question, but that wasn’t the point of the exercise – plus there was the added bonus of not having to seek research ethics approval because that food was at risk of being eaten anyway. So as soon as I got off the phone I started a blog called “Refreshments Will Be Provided”. The blog is (and will continue to be) open to contributions from others. Quite a few people, mostly PhD students, have been so kind as to submit photos. As a result I was able to develop a bigger and more interesting data set which doesn’t just reflect my own corner of the academic world.

Now I have been collecting data for a year I think I am in a position to state that the answer to our research question is Yes – the more lofty the company, the fancier the snacks.

Consider Exhibit A on the left, a plate of petit fours at a rather high powered conference about quality assurance in higher education. The conference was full of ex VCs and professors as well as assorted government and union types. The snacks were almost as intimidating as the company (at least to this early career researcher, who is constantly on a diet – or anyone with a food intolerance, as this picture sadly shows).

While collecting this data on food I found a number of interesting things, which probably need another post. However the most immediately fascinating observation was how much of my own academic work gets carried out in cafes. I write, read, take notes, think and meet people in cafes on and off campus on almost a daily basis. I am such a regular at one on campus that it’s really my second office. I like this kind of ‘free form’ academic practice so much that I take a lead role in organising the weekly “Shut up and write” session at RMIT university (9:30am, Friday mornings at the bench table at ‘Pearson and Murphys’ cafe if you are interested).

Dueling laptops at RMIT's friday morning "Shut up and Write" session.

It seems I am not the only one to love a cafe, in fact @KathrynPaterson sparked off the idea for this post by recommending it as the remedy when I complained about how distracted I was in my home office. Isn’t it odd that these noisy, busy spaces seem conducive to research writing and reading? Especially when you consider that the primary reason academics resist open plan offices is that the presence of other people is distracting. What is going on?

I wondered aloud on Twitter why it sometimes is preferable to work in a cafe than at one’s desk and got a number of interesting replies. @LizDobsonUoH pointed out that such a practice has a proud heritage; JK Rowling famously wrote the Harry Potter series in a cafe. @RebeccaRDamari sent me an extremely funny and interesting article called “Destination: LAPTOPISTAN” where a reporter describes his visit to a particularly famous cafe where:

“Laptops had colonized every flat surface. No one uttered a word; people just stared into screens, expressionless. It felt like that moment in a horror movie when the innocent couple stumbles into a house filled with hibernating zombies, and they listen, in terror, as the floorboard creaks.”

It seems the motivations described in the New York Times article are similar to people on Twitter. @idreamofcodiene, described her motives for occupying cafes as stemming from “a desire to appear studious to those around you”. @orientalhotel expressed similar motivations and added: “I think cafe time allows me to focus on just one thing w/o pressure to feel I should 10 books/websites at once”.  @shannonej summed this up nicely when she remarked: “As a social person a cafe is a social setting but I’m not interacting so work gets done. In a quiet office I get distracted @ misskatielow agreed and pointed out the importance of caffeine in this process.

@ai1sa pointed out that you are ‘off the grid’ when you are in a cafe – unless you take a call, no one has to know you are there.That is unless, like @levis517, you can’t resist ‘FourSquare’ (” I couldn’t STAND to have ANYONE ELSE be mayor of MY cafe it’s MINE ok no I don’t own it but it’s still mine.”)

@sannapeden sent me off on an interesting tangent when she remarked that working in cafes is “equivalent to the inflated cushions fidgety or ADHD kids sit on to get them to concentrate in school… ..except, you know, with cake.” (I had never heard of such devices, but apparently they do exist). @jazzlinguist added an interesting twist when she told me about studies of kids which found that they concentrated better when they had diminished sensory input.

I started to wonder about the complex relationship between noise and distraction. I talked to a friend of mine who has adult ADHD who told me how much working in front of the television helped her to concentrate. Looking up the symptoms of ADHD on wikipedia was a bit confronting I have to say – I could certainly tick off a few, especially a few of the ‘inattentive’ ones:

• Easily distracted, miss details, forget things, and frequently switch from one activity to another
• Have difficulty maintaining focus on one task
• Become bored with a task after only a few minutes, unless doing something enjoyable
• Not seeming to listen when spoken to

There’s no room to outline all the distraction literature here – definitely a post for another time as I am running out of words in this one. If you feel so moved to contribute to Refreshments Will Be Provided I would be delighted of course, but maybe there’s the possibility for another crowd sourced research project here? I wonder if we could compile a worldwide google maps mashup of thesis writer friendly cafes? You know – so we can share the cafe love (if you don’t know what I mean, look at this one for fast food restaurants in the USA).

I declare the nominations open! What is your favourite cafe to work in and why? Tell us in the comments or enter it in the Thesis Whisperer google map (if you need instructions on how to add a location to it or start your own, go here)

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Of hands and minds

Those who have been reading this blog for awhile will know that I have recently changed from Microsoft Word to Scrivener for writing purposes. If you want the reasons why, read this post, but suffice to say it has made a startling difference to my productivity. Scrivener was built on the Mac platform and is still only available on Windows in Beta, but it’s already so indispensable to my life that I am considering buying a Mac, after 19 years as a happy Windows user.

It’s not easy to contemplate this move. To be frank, from the outside at least, Mac users can come across as a little obsessive – even cultish.  The story I have always told myself is that those shiny aluminum Mac cases look nice and all, but it’s what’s on the inside that counts. So what if the Windows interface is a bit ugly!? It works for me. I’m the kind of girl who prefers flats to heels after all.

OK – maybe I have become a bit reactionary. I haven’t been an architect for over a decade so it doesn’t really matter what type of computer I use. But still, being a Windows user has become part of who I am, so I continue to buy them.

However, while reading a book called “Writing a novel with Scrivener” (which I highly recommend for all you Scrivener converts by the way) I realised that Scrivener on beta on Windows is still missing some of the full functionality of the Mac version. I have been contemplating  replacing my old Dell Netbook and Mr Thesis Whisperer is provided an 11 inch Macbook Air by his employer, so he kindly lent me it for the day to see what I thought.

So here I am… writing on a Mac.

Although being a Windows user is more of a habit than a necessity, habits have a way of becoming hard wired. The first thing I notice is that my hands think they are still in the PC world. I keep hitting the = sign instead of delete and the alt key instead of command – or control – or something. And what is that funny curly symbol for? Argh! Everyone on Twitter keeps telling me it is more intuitive and that I will get used to it – but I just don’t feel it.

This ‘platform confusion’ in my hands is making me think about how much our habits of thought are deeply affected by the things we handle in our work. A scientist is a scientist in their hands as well as their heads; same with an architect, a social scientist and any other discipline you can name. We all have procedures for manipulating the world which help us to think.

Take scientists as an example. The first empiricists worked hard to create systems to record and measure sensory data – what we can see, hear, smell touch and taste. A key plank in the scientific method is the idea of ‘witnessing’ – hence the principle of repetition. If an experiment is repeated, there is more than one witness and (hopefully) a more reliable observation, which can then be used to build a theory.

Early scientists thought some witnesses were better than others, to be specific, it was better for an experiment to be witnessed by a Gentleman than a Servant. Servants (and women for that matter) were supposedly unreliable because of their tendency to be emotional, distracted, dishonest etc – despite the fact that Servants were doing much of the work and, presumably, in a better position to give a reliable report (if you are interested in learning more, I recommend looking up some of the papers by Stephen Shapin).

When I talk to scientists involved in teaching research students they tell me that the problem of the unreliable witness is still there, in a slightly altered form. Undergraduate science students are taught the techniques of their trade by replicating experiments which are known to work; they learn that an unexpected result is a failed experiment, probably because the equipment or conditions were set up incorrectly.

However, in research, a lot of the experiments are new so it can be difficult to tell a valid result from a mistake. Research students, as I pointed out in an earlier post, can easily overlook a valuable result because they are in the habit of thinking they did something wrong.

It is possible to use this tendency to develop habits to our benefit. For instance, you may not realise how much writing can help you to structure your thinking. In the book “They say / I say: the moves that matter in persuasive writing” Graff and Birkenstein argue that critical thinking and writing can be aided by using ‘skeletons’; sentences which set up a standard piece of argumentation. For example, the following sentences could be seen as a ‘kit of parts’ for thinking through the work of others – just fill in the blanks:

• “The evidence about________ shows that__________”
• “The findings of X have important consequences for the broader domain of________”
• “The standard way of thinking about (topic X) has it that_______________”
• “____________ for instance, demonstrates___________________”
• “In making this point I am challenging the common belief that _____________”

You can make your own templates by stripping out words from papers you read. Is this plagiarism? No, because we academics rely on conventional forms of writing and speaking to be understood within our respective disciplines. If you make and use scaffolds they can help you form different writing habits. Over time, the ways of thinking scaffolds encourage become habitual and words start to come out of your hands ‘pre-fabricated’ in a more academically legible way.

If we are to believe some of the cognitive scientists, our bodies can literally change our minds. I think the strong connections between thinking and doing partially explains why becoming a researcher can be so uncomfortable: most of us have to pick up new habits of some kind – or let go of old ones. What do you think? Do you have habitual ways of doing things which help your research? Might some of them be getting in the way?

While you ponder that, I am going to try and make up my mind about this Mac…

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Inject a little chaos

This post is one of a series written by Maia Sauren, an RMIT student who recently submitted her Ph.D. thesis.  In this post Maia tells us how she shaved time off her PhD.

This brooch came from Norway. I have no idea what it’s supposed to represent, but I’ve decided it’s an image of Loki, the Norse god of strife. Like all chaos gods – Prometheus for the Greeks, Coyote for the native Americans – he symbolises change. And not just any change, but the kind of change that derails inevitable processes. It’s a bit like the opposite of tragedy, where the character’s downfall is assured  because their character causes them to react in particular ways to their circumstances. I like having a bit of that element around the place.

This is the somewhat convoluted story of how I shaved over two years from my Ph.D, by choosing not to stay on the path I was on.

I got to a certain point in my thesis where I felt stuck. I was still running experiments at 10pm on Saturday nights, reading papers, writing the odd bit of stuff, but it felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere. I did some projections: at the rate I was going, it would take me three more years to complete.

Panic stations! I spent a few days in despair. You probably know the kind – bursting into tears, being paralysed with fear every time I approached a computer, waking at 3 am wondering if the joy of quitting might outweigh the shame. At that stage I’d already been enrolled for over five years.

My partner suggested that I needed to start approaching my PhD differently. If the problem was in my head, I could make into a different problem, right? I could change it into a problem I could solve a bit easier.

Huh.

I realised that the first I needed to do was stop thinking of it as The Only Thing People Ever Will Judge Me On, Forever And Ever. As long as I approached it with that belief, I’d never submit – it would have to be perfect. I don’t know that I ever managed it fully, but I did untangle my ego from it somewhat. A few people told me that I should hurry up and get it done because it’s ‘just a piece of paper’, which I couldn’t identify with. It may be ‘just’ a qualification, but my worth as a scientist and a researcher is judged, at least to some extent, on the thesis I produce.

One of the most successful things I did was treating the PhD as if it were a paid job. In reality, I had just started a part time job writing a report for the state government, so I tried tying it into that. My partner and I concocted – drumroll, please! – MPI (Maia’s Ph.D. Inc), a company that had just taken on a contract for the state government. I was the company’s star employee, and my job was to write a 200 page report about some research that was done some time ago. By someone else. Someone who was definitely not me.

There was a small problem with that, though. At work, I was busy learning all the difference between technical reports done by scientists for scientists, and government reports written by public servants for other public servants. Very different structures and requirements, let me tell you. The fear of not knowing how to finish the thesis got all mixed up with the fear of not knowing how to do my new job, and it all escalated and freaked me out.

Bad times at MPI.

One aspect did work, though – that of separating the writing from the research. I found that if I pretended the research was done by someone else, I could write about it much easier. It didn’t matter so much that the experiments were good rather than great, or if the results weren’t quite what I’d been expecting. So I changed my job at MPI into one I knew how to do – writing journal articles (well, one massive journal article). I’ve done a few of those; the structure is well simple and defined, and I could do a quick and dirty information dump and edit later.

Looking at the Ph.D as a project I was paid to do, rather than the thing that would define me forever, also gave me permission to treat it less reverently. I ditched three-quarters of the experiments I had been intending to run. I already had enough data to show proof of concept to a reasonable level. Looking back, I can’t believe I was seriously intending to do that much more work! My projected completion time line of three years suddenly shrank to 8 months. (In reality, it took me 14 more months to actually finish).

I think the moral of this story is, if things ain’t working, do something else. The results might not be what you expect, but at least you’ll be in a different place.

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