Writing collaborative publications during your PhD

This guest post is by Kylie Budge, a PhD student in art/design education at the University of Melbourne in Australia. She is on the editorial team of the theteachingtomtom, in her role at RMIT University as a Learning and Teaching Advisor

Writing comes hard to some of us but, like most things, it does get easier with practice. One thing’s for sure, if you’re interested in an academic career post-PhD (or are employed in one now) writing and the ability to produce academic publications is a critical skill. Inger wrote a post a short while ago about why publishing during your PhD is a must for enhancing your career prospects. This post is more about how to get started in publishing and a look at collaborative writing as one way to make this happen.

Academic publications (journal articles, conference papers and so on) are either collaboratively written or sole-authored. I would strongly suggest trying the collaborative route for your first experience. However – and this needs to be emphasised – I’m not suggesting starting with a collaborative publication because it’s easy to do and sole-authored work is difficult. It’s not as simple as that. Despite the difficulties that can arise, generating and bouncing ideas off your writing partners is often less lonely, more interesting and more productive than doing it alone. Especially for a first-timer.

Getting started means finding people to write with. In my discipline, collaborative articles are often written by very small teams (2-3 people). In other disciplines (eg. the sciences), it’s common for large groups of authors to publish together. Even if you’re brand new to academia you already know one or two academics – your supervisor/s. You could consider writing with them, especially if you’d like to write about something stemming from your PhD topic. Chances are they will be interested in it too if they’re supervising your PhD project.

If you’d rather not write with your supervisor, then seek out people who are interested in similar topics and talk to them about what they’re writing about and your ideas. Over time your common interests will clarify and they might invite you to write with them,or you can be brave and suggest a writing project to them. Once you’ve got a couple of people (or more) to write with and a project in mind you’re ready to start. But before you do, there are a few other things to think about.

Collaborative writing involves a combination of writing and process styles. Not everyone works or writes the same way. It may take you a few experiences of writing collaboratively before you work out what your preferred writing process is and the kind of writing that suits you best.

Conceptualise the project with your fellow collaborators as much as you can before you start writing the article itself. This means talking together about what the article is going to focus on, particularly the contributions to knowledge. Try white boarding together as a group as you synthesise your ideas and clarify purpose of your article.

As you conceptualise the focus of your writing project, choose a publication or conference to target the final product of your labours. Wendy Belcher’s “Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success” has some great strategies. Consciously focus on the style of the publication or conference you are targeting as you write.

Set a timeframe to work in. What period of time suits the authors to have the finished article written in? Twelve weeks? Longer? If you’re writing for a conference a deadline will be set by the organisers, which can make this decision easier.

Make use of the great collaborative writing tools out there. I’ve used Google Docs for two recent collaborative projects with great success. Any collaborative writing tool that enables you all to write in the one space (thus saving version control headaches involved when emailing drafts to each other) is worth its weight in gold.

In the draft stage, ask each person to write in different colours so that it’s easy to see who has written what. This way if you want to clarify, or question, a part of the writing you know who has contributed the area and can work from there. At the final stage, when all writers are happy, you can then change the text colour to black.

Work out what the collaborative writing process will be in advance. Will each person write a section or not? Some collaborative writers are able to work quite fluidly, dipping in and out of various sections without carving out sections for specific authors to write. Other combinations of people are not able to work like this. There is no one right way in terms of process. But it is important to talk about and to work out an agreed process to try.

Discuss and review the article you are writing at regular points during the writing project. This keeps everyone on track.

When you feel ready, give a good draft of the article to a ‘critical friend’ to read and ask for feedback on aspects that you (the group of writers) nominate – eg. structure, flow, engagement of the reader etc. Ensure the critical friend you approach has academic publications and can give feedback with a degree of experience.

Collaborative writing can be hugely rewarding for early career academic writers, however, communicating honestly and well with your writing partners is key! An added bonus is you can establish some strong networks which can lead you into more exciting writing adventures in the future.

Have you written papers with others? Or with your supervisors? Do you have any tips or techniques to share – or traps to look out for?

Related Posts:

Publications and your PhD

Is the University a Bad Boyfriend?

Is a PhD like a reality TV contest?

Last night Denise, my boss, sent me a link to a New York Times article about two new reality TV shows starting up in Malaysia:  “Solehah” (pious female in Arabic), and “Ustazah Pilihan” (ideal female preacher in Malay). In these shows, Muslim women compete to be the best Islamic preacher. I’m imagining a Malaysian Islamic X factor vs Malaysia’s got (Islamic) talent, or something. I think you’d be hard put to think up a more extreme cultural mash up.

As Denise remarked: what an amazing world we live in.

Anyway, it got me thinking (again) about the similarities between doing a PhD and taking part in a reality TV show. I have an unhealthy obsession with reality TV, which I have accepted as part of the brain damage I suffered while doing my PhD. While I’m selective about which ones I watch, I find the whole genre endlessly fascinating for the way it portrays learning as a process of self discovery and transformation. Bear with me here, I think I’m onto something and want to throw these ideas past you in the form of an academic mash up of my own before I go all academic and write a paper on it.

Image: courier mail

Some years ago I picked up a book at the local library called “Makeover Television: realities remodelled” which contained a bunch of essays on reality TV shows that – well – do make overs on the participants (what fun those cultural theorists have). These are shows like “What not to Wear” where the fashionable Trinny and Susannah ambush unsuspecting women, convince them they have horrible taste in clothes and take them shopping. In the process of undergoing a wardrobe transformation, the women seem to be transformed too; from shy retiring dowdies to confident, take charge women.

At least that’s how the show portrays it.

In Australia, the reality cooking show ‘Masterchef’ is something of a national obsession (at least for some of us). Our version of the show, as distinct from the version in the UK, has a group of 24 amateur chefs who live in a house together and compete for the grand prize, week by week, through a series of challenges. The challenges are designed to test their cheffy abilities, usually under some kind of insane time pressure. If the contestant fails the challenge they must go into an elimination round; in this way two people leave the show each week until the final two have to battle it out for the title of Masterchef. I love it because, as an amateur cook myself, it’s kind of like watching sports; I get involved in the contestants failures and successes.

What’s interesting for me is that the participants on the show talk endlessly about learning. The learning shown to the viewer seems to be full of failure. The price of failure is high, potentially being sent home in disgrace and having your foibles taken apart by the news media for the entertainment of the whole nation for the next week or so. The learning is obviously painful, with many a sweating brow as the participant tries to make a baked alaska in an hour, or re-create some insanely fiddly French sauce with no recipe. At certain times professional chefs will come in to compete head to head with the hapless amateurs, usually demolishing them in a dazzling display of virtuosity. Over time you can see the people who have the ability to hold their nerve and learn from their mistakes beat those who might have superior natural talent.

What’s clever about the Australian Masterchef is the role of the hosts, who are all professional chefs themselves. The hosts judge the dishes each contestant makes by looking at and tasting them. I think this is the best part of the show; as each judge chews the food the contestant looks at them hopefully, trying to guess from the expression on their face (which the audience on Twitter calls ‘tasting face’) what the verdict will be. The judges are often brutal in the words they use to describe a failed dish, but will generally deliver constructive criticism and comments which are meant to help the participants learn and improve. The show is on every night (yes, we love it that much) and the Friday night slot is dedicated to a ‘Master class’ where time is set aside to learn a particular technique through demonstration from the hosts and invited others.

The parallels with doing a PhD are obvious, but worth reflecting on. Most of us start the degree with some skills in writing or researching, but we are likely to be amateurs. We are asked to perform tasks we might only partially understand, often with little instruction, and all with a looming deadline. Sometimes these tasks are more than we can handle and we fail – sometimes spectacularly. The price of failure is high here too; most of us have commitments to others who will be disappointed if we fail. Some of us will end up in debt or worse because of the time we have taken out of our professional careers.

Like professional chefs, professional academics have a whole bunch of tricks up their sleeve, which makes doing the ‘grunt work’ of things link data analysis and writing quicker or easier. A good supervisor is like a good host: they will taste your work and give you their constructive criticism. If you are lucky they will take time to share these skills with you, but often you are just left to watch the displays of virtuosity and try to learn from them as best you can. For example, many supervisors (including myself at times) can make the mistake of thinking teaching someone to write is best achieved by rewriting the paper for them, rather than taking the time to explain the principles or good writing and help the student put them into action. In fact, many supervisors could learn a thing or two from Masterchef and set aside some time to run a masterclass!

Here’s what I think is the key insight from this academic mashup I am trying to perform here. Masterchef and other make over reality shows are about learning which leads to a transformation of the self. Transforming the self takes work, dedication and time; it can also be uncomfortable and risky. We may fail to achieve our aims or end up somewhere we didn’t expect to be. But I take heart from the knowledge that, when it comes to PhD study, as on Masterchef, it’s not the best cooks who last right to the end. It’s the cooks who have the most resilience and ability to learn from their mistakes who go home with the prize.

What do you think? If your PhD was a reality TV show, which one would it be? How can you develop the necessary resilience to go all the way to the end?

Related Posts

What do you learn from a PhD?

Why you might be stuck

Whingeing Wednesdays and bitch buddies

They say that talk is cheap, but is it really?

In a recent paper  (yes – the old fashioned, peer review type) I talked about the phenomenon of ‘troubles talk’ between research students. In Australia we call this ‘whingeing’; in the UK they might call it ‘having a moan’. Interestingly, the word ‘whingeing’ is derived from the Old English ‘hwinan’ : “the sound of arrows whizzing through the air” and ‘hwinsian’:  “to whine like a dog”. This derivation implies whingeing is a form of passive warfare, or social irritant, which is perhaps best ignored. However, when someone tells a trouble to another, the opposite is more likely to be true – telling troubles can bind us together. In fact, sites like PhD Comics or this blog wouldn’t be nearly as popular if they weren’t full of troubles talk! 

In this guest post Dr Shari Walsh, careers counsellor extraordinaire at Queensland University of Technology, talks about the benefits – and drawbacks – of whingeing. Shari introduces us to the idea of ‘whingeing Wednesdays’ and ‘bitch buddies’  as well as a few more positive strategies.

What do you talk about with your PhD colleagues? Are you supportive of each other or do you tend to complain about the PhD process, supervisors, administrative procedures? Often, it is easier to bond with people by sharing and empathising with problems. Although this can be constructive and supportive it can also lead to a ‘culture of complaint’. So, is this a bad thing?

Not necessarily. The sharing of difficulties can lead to offers of support, shared understanding, and start the process of managing and solving the problem. The difficulty arises if complaining is the focus of most conversations and a negative or toxic environment develops. Giving time to and sharing difficulties is an important strategy to keep your sanity during process of completing your PhD and some student groups I have encountered have devised fantastic strategies to enable this to happen.

For instance, one group I know has a ‘whingeing Wednesday’ get together, in which, the group sets aside an hour every Wednesday to simply pour out their problems to each other. Discussion of problems is minimised at any other time and group members hold on to their problem until that time. This allows problems to be heard and gives a dedicated time for this to happen. It also encourages positive talk outside the time.

Another group has regular coffee catch ups throughout the week with each other. The catch up starts with the difficulties of the time and ends with a good news session. Another strategy is to find a ‘bitch buddy’. This is someone with whom you can simply let it all out (rant and rave) for 15 – 20 mins. Then it is their turn. While each buddy is talking, the other one is not allowed to say a word, simply to listen, nod, acknowledge etc.Obviously the buddy has to be someone you trust and the conversation remains confidential.

Similarly, it is important to find time to acknowledge and share successes. Here are some ideas:

• Having a weekly or monthly good news time where every person mentions something (anything!) that has gone well for them.
• Writing a piece in every School, Faculty, or Divisional newsletter about what the PhD cohort is achieving. This also reminds everyone within the university about how great you all are!
• Organising a regular celebration with your colleagues and/or supervisor.

So take regular moments to look around and listen to the conversation. Are the themes negative or positive? If skewed either way, then you have the power to take corrective action!

Thanks Shari! If you are interested in how complaining can be a bonding experience, have a read of the user friendly version of the paper I published on the RMIT blog called “Why do academics complain so much?” or tell us in the comments – why do you love to have a whinge?

Related Posts

PhD grief

The perils of PhD Parenting

5 ways to look more clever than you actually are

Not so long ago I missed my flight back from Sydney to Melbourne. When I realised I was eating dinner instead of being on a plane on the way home to my family I flipped out. Luckily I was with the wonderful @witty_knitter, who made me take some deep breaths and finish my sausages while she looked up the number for the airline. When I finally got through to a person at the call centre the conversation went something like this:

Call Centre worker: “It says here ‘Dr Mewburn’ – is that correct?”
Me: “That’s right”
Call centre worker: “And why is it that you missed your flight Dr Mewburn?”
Me: “I misread the ticket”
[a short pause]
Call centre worker: “How did you misread the ticket?”
Me: “Look, I have a PhD ok? It doesn’t make me immune from stupid”

Sadly this is true. A PhD involves an ability to learn new things and a certain amount of gritty determination, but it doesn’t make you immune from stupid. If anything, getting a PhD makes you  more aware of your limitations than you were before. The more you know, the more you know you don’t know, if you know what I mean.

In my job I have the privilege to work with some extraordinarily intelligent people. I mean – really clever. Intimidatingly clever. Clever to the point where  I dare not open my mouth in some meetings for fear someone will discover I shouldn’t really be there. It’s not easy to live in a university and be of average intelligence so I have some coping strategies, developed by watching how clever people behave. The general principle here is: if I act like a clever person, I may become clever – or at least I will appear to be clever (which, existentially speaking, is the same thing).

So here’s 5 of my coping strategies – I hope you will write in with some of your own. Those of us who live by the ‘fake it until you make it’ principle need all the help we can get!

1) Wherever possible, be the one to speak last

When I first started going to meetings at the University I was always the first one to jump in and give my opinion. I think this was a hang over from my school days; I was the nerdy girl at the front of the class, always out to prove that I was smarter than anyone else. But being too eager to give your opinion all the time just doesn’t work in the professional world; more often than not people will think you are annoying rather than clever because you appear to monopolise the conversation.

I don’t always succeed in holding the nerdy girl inside, but at least I try. I can’t remember who gave me this advice, but I have tried it now for years and found it to be sound. If you wait and listen carefully to what others are saying it gives you time to reflect on and digest the conversation. If you speak last you are more likely to be the one who comes up with the unexpected, novel or creative suggestion at the end, rather than being the one who is just stating the obvious. If you can’t think of something creative, speaking last gives you the opportunity to connect what other people are saying together and offer an explanation or over riding principle which others will usually agree with – instant cleverness guaranteed.

2) Have some ‘pocket facts’ handy

As Mr Thesis Whisperer is fond of saying, the plural of anecdote is not data. Throwing a few choice statistics about your field of expertise into a conversation will make you look extremely clever, without too much extra effort. For instance, I have lost count of the number of times I have sat in meetings where someone says that such and such must be true about doing a research degree because it was true for them, or because they have heard so often they assume it is true. Statements like “research students are poor communicators and need to be taught transferable skills” drive me really crazy, so I try to have some ‘pocket facts’ on hand to counter these common assumptions.

Recently my friend Nigel Palmer did an analysis which showed that most research students think they bring skills into their PhD, not the other way around. The only skill that students consistently claim they developed while studying for a PhD is library and information retrieval skills. This shouldn’t surprise us because 55.2% of students come to research degree study from the workplace, not from undergraduate degrees and a significant number of them have had a gap of more than 10 years since they last studied. That little statistic usually stops that particular line of criticism of research students dead.

You’re welcome.

3. Learn the lingo

Every place I have ever worked or studied has had its own dialect. At RMIT university we are extraordinarily fond of acronyms. Here’s a list of the ones I use on an almost daily basis when I talk with colleagues:

• ATN
• DDogs
• RTS
• TEQSA
• AQF
• DIISR
• DEEWR
• PREQ
• CES
• DVC R&I

And that’s not counting the more esoteric ones, which I recognise, but don’t have to use often. Mr Thesis Whisperer calls these ‘TLAs’ (three letter acronyms) and they populate most advanced knowledge fields and institutions. Sadly, knowing the right TLAs, what they mean and how they relate to each other, makes you look clever. Luckily acquiring this sort of information is a bit like learning to spell: you only have to learn it once, and if you have a  decent memory, you will look clever for years and years.

4. Beware of jargon

Despite the fact that knowing the TLAs  is advantageous, if you speak in jargon too much the truly clever people will get suspicious. There’s an excellent chapter in Howard Becker’s book “writing for social scientists” (which should be renamed “writing for everyone”) which talks about the urge to “write classy”. It’s a trap thinking you can copy language you see in books and papers and it will make you appear more intelligent.

Now, I have absolutely no data to back this up, but in my experience of university life, most academics are not going to admit they don’t understand you, they just wont really listen to you (or cite your papers). People who can translate difficult concepts into language that others can understand are often more persuasive. Since persuasiveness often conflated with cleverness, speaking clearly and concisely is a winning strategy.  This is true as much for thesis writing, in my view, as it is for meetings and presentations.

5. Turn the problem around

Sometimes problems need simple solutions, not more complex ones. One trick which my boss shared with me recently is to ask: “what should we do less of?”. A disarmingly simple question, but an extremely powerful one. Take your thesis as one example: what can you do less of? The pomodoro technique is a good example of this principle in action. By working in shorter bursts, but with more focus and concentration, you can achieve more than sitting at your desk all day banging your head on the screen.

What do you think? Have you watched clever people in action while you are studying? What have you learned from them?

Related posts

How to win (academic) friends and influence people

Why you might be ‘stuck’

A PhD is like a pilgrimage

This guest post is from Linda Kirkman  a PhD student in Health Science at La Trobe University, researching baby boomers in ‘friends with benefits relationships’. This post is partly the story of Linda’s experience of walking an ancient pilgrimage route and beautifully extends our recent  ‘why do a PhD? theme.

A PhD is like a pilgrimage; a solitary journey where we value our companions.

This time two years ago I had just started walking the Camino de Santiago, a 1,000 year old pilgrimage across Spain…

I did the walk for a number of reasons; for the adventure, the spiritual experience, and to try to let go of some personal baggage. I wanted a transformative experience; to feel a sense of freedom.

It was the start of five weeks in what felt like an alternative universe, the world of the pilgrim. We had an instant community, as all of us were undertaking the same quest to reach Santiago; we were recognisable to each other by the backpacks and walking clothes, and many people tied the scallop shell symbolising St James on their packs as an additional token. We were united by the common daily concerns of sore feet, the need to find daily food and accommodation, and coping with whatever weather happened that day.

Physical concerns were not what made the pilgrim community special, it was their attitude to life that stood out. Simply by being on the Camino it could be assumed the other people had a similar approach to questioning the big things of life, an interest in spirituality and a desire for self-transformation.

I had many conversations when I fell in step with a complete stranger for a short period of time, and with minimal preamble, would discuss philosophy, human rights, history, art or culture, share ideas or insights, even personal motivations or traumas, then move apart as we walked at different speeds. Another pilgrim was a spiritual sibling and it was a safe place to explore deep things. If you happened to meet up again it was like greeting a long lost friend, and conversations would be resumed and connections built on.

The PhD journey is similar in many ways. The journey is solitary and intensely personal, but there are others who we encounter on the way who share the same quest, have the same desire for knowledge of universally understood insights, self understanding, and seek to achieve a major goal.

We eagerly connect with fellow travellers, share tips and ideas about strategies and pitfalls to avoid, and intersect meaningfully with culturally different strangers about specialised areas of common interest. Those connections are precious, and give great support and encouragement to keep going.

Modern technology has made sharing the PhD journey much easier. Through the thesiswhisper  blog, and hashtag #phdchat on Twitter I have made friends, given and received support, learned about software and study tips from people all over the world who I would not have met otherwise. The desire shown to meet these fellow travellers in person, and the happy and excited tweets that result when they do, is an indication of the strength and value of these relationships.

Every journey is solitary, but the friends we make along the way are what carry us through. I’m feeling much love for both my fellow pilgrims and fellow PhD tweeps right now. Buen Camino (a wish for a good walk, but also an approach to a thoughtfully lived life) to all.

PS: I made it to Santiago, and even  to Finisterre, the end of the earth, with an increased self confidence and self awareness. Still carrying some of the baggage, but it is lighter now.

Related Posts

The loneliness of the long distance thesis writer

Marginalised in PhD land

PhD derision

Some years ago, while I was still studying, I took Thesis Whisperer Jnr’s to a party for one of his little school friends. While watching our youngsters get sugared up, I took part in the inevitable “so what do you do?” conversation, which, for middle class parents at least, is the equivalent of talking politely about the weather.

This was going fine until I told one of the mothers what I was studying for my PhD and she laughed in my face. Not kindly interested laughter either – out right derision. She paused after this and said “Why the hell would you bother doing that!” To add insult to injury, she went on to tell me she had a really difficult job – as a make up artist (seriously – I am not making this up). Taken aback by her breath taking rudeness, I just stood there with my mouth hanging open. To this day I regret not coming back with a snappy reply. Not that I have anything against make up artists, but I think doing a PhD must be at least as difficult as getting up early to put make up on cranky morning television hosts.

I was reminded of this incident during twitter conversations which followed Ehsan’s post:  “what to say when someone says – should I do a PhD?” (which also was ‘Fresh Pressed’ by WordPress – an honour!). In response to the post @fashademic remarked:

“Now we just need an answer for when people blankly ask, “what’s the point of that research?… my favourite was when someone asked, voice dripping sarcasm ‘how are you going to write 100 000 words on FASHION?’ (!!)”

It seems @fasademic isn’t the only one to suffer through these awkward social moments;  @airminded tweeted back:

“A friend’s 10yo son, when shown my bound thesis, was told I took 3 years to write it. His response: “What a waste of time!”.

It struck me that a list of ready answers, prepared in advance, about the value of PhD study would be helpful, so I asked people on Twitter how you might defend the choice to do a PhD and got an interesting range of responses.  I decided to break them down into ‘moods’ so you can pick the kind of response you fancy depending on the circumstance

1) The smart arse response

@boredpostdoc, whose research is actually sponsored by industry told me how sick she was of people questioning the point of her research. She suggested the sarcastic approach:

“Oh, you know, I want to research something pointless and waste taxpayers money”.

As a scholarship holder I too had to deal with people who thought there were better ways to spend money. My reply would be a flippant: “I am your tax dollars at work”. This always felt satisfying, if a little snarky.

2) The annoyed response

I don’t judge people for being make up artists – so why should they judge me for doing a PhD? @tassie_girl suggested the line:

“Because without people like me, people like you can’t advance your intelligence”.

Another good ‘annoyed’ response came from  @DrBekMarketing: “Only 0.01% of Australians have a PhD, do you want to be part of that group or the other 99.99%?”. Neither of these would have made me popular at the party, but I think I would have enjoyed myself more

Others on twitter pointed out that it’s too easy to get angry, so the next three responses are for when you are feeling more charitable.

3) The “saving the world one PhD at a time” response

Some people are studying how to cure cancer or how to make solar power more efficient – I think these people must have an easier time at parties than @fasademic or myself. But even my topic could be said, in some small way, to be saving the world. In one of my three minute thesis workshop I spend a lot of time helping people connect their research with bigger issues. Climate change is a great one because it touches on so many aspects of contemporary life.

For instance, my PhD looked at how architects gesture while they were doing design work. This had some implications for how you might help architects work and teach in online spaces. If you can help people work online, you don’t have to fly professionals around the world. Better online communication means we can have the best people working on our buildings – no matter where they happen to live.

Ok, it’s a bit of a stretch, but no one can argue that helping to tackle climate change, even in a small way, is a pointless way to spend your time.

4)The ‘let me make it interesting to you’ response

@bfwriter pointed out that part of the reason people tend to be dismissive of PhD study is that they don’t understand it. It’s a good idea to try to find the common ground hidden within your topic, as @saraktrigger remarked:

“I usually mention the lack of research and drop in a few interesting stories. Most people can relate to WW2 so that helps!”

Conveniently for me, everyone gestures when they talk (try not doing it and you will see what I mean), so potentially everyone could relate some of what I told them about gesture to their everyday experience. However, not everyone’s topic is that easy to translate.

One technique I teach in my Three Minute Thesis workshop is to look for the surprising or counter intuitive facts and ideas lurking in your topic and turn them into a ‘bit’. The concept of a ‘bit’ – or individual routine on a certain topic – comes from stand up comedy. Add many ‘bits’ with a similar theme together and you get a comedic monologue.  Here’s my gesture is really strange, here’s why bit:

It’s tempting to think that gesture exists to help us communicate, but that idea is troubled by the fact that even blind people gesture – and they gesture when they talk on the phone – to other blind people! Children who gesture in certain ways while trying to work out maths problems are better at it than those who don’t. In some mysterious way we don’t yet understand, gesture helps us to make speech in the first place – it might even help us to think.

During workshops people have told me amazing things they know as a result of doing their research, like that eating silver will turn your skin blue and that more males are prostitutes than females. In my experience developing a ‘bit’ around these kinds of facts is well worth the effort; I had many fabulous and illuminating conversations with complete strangers at parties after telling them my little gesture is really strange, here is why bit.

5) The philosophical response

Finally, some things are worth doing just because they stretch the boundaries of human knowledge and satisfy our curiosity. As @jazzlinguist put it, so poetically:

“Until space travel is viable, a PhD is how we explore strange new worlds and boldly go where no one has gone before” (then she added: “The problematic Question I get is more often “what job will you get at the end of it” so maybe I’ll start saying starship capt”)

I’m definitely applying for star ship captain if the job ever comes up! Now I’m wondering how wide spread this phenomenon of PhD derision  is -  have you had to defend your right to do a PhD? What did you say?

Related Posts

Are you getting in the way of your PhD?

PhD Rage

What to say when someone asks you: “Should I do a PhD?”

“Do you think I should do a PhD?”

It seems like I can’t go to a party without at least one person asking me this question – does this happen to you too? I probably shouldn’t be surprised; according to a recent government report the number of people undertaking a research degree in Australia has increased by 41%  over the last 10 or so years.

There’s no doubt that some students start without realistic expectations of the amount of work that is involved and how it may affect their life, which is why I was pleased when Dr Ehsan Gharaie, a lecturer in the school of property Construction and project management at RMIT, sent me this guest post.

As a recent PhD graduate in a field which is relatively new to this form of education, Ehsan tells me that he is often approached by people who ask him how to get into a PhD program. Ehsan tells me he replies: “tell me why and then, I will tell you how” – this seems like a good answer because PhD study is not for everyone.  I hope you will send you Ehsan’s list of diagnostic questions to the next person who asks you: “should I do a PhD?” (American readers please note – this post refers to the dissertation writing part of the PhD Program only)

Can you work without anyone telling you what to do?

A PhD is way different from Bachelor and Master Programs. There is no lecturer telling you what to do and you are not asked to do an assignment or sit for an exam. If you have been working in industry or government, you have probably got used to having a boss who tells you what to do and having staff who help you do your work. Here there is no boss, and no one helps you out. You have a supervisor who, if you are lucky, advises you and guides you through the process and that is all. Thus, think about yourself and see if you can work without anyone telling you what to do. There are many decisions that you have to make in the process and you should be ready to take on that responsibility.

Are you ready to work by yourself for four years?

Many PhD students work in isolation most of the time. There is no official classmate or peers. Your first and best friend is your computer and you have to spend years with it. The second person in your list of acquaintances is your supervisor which you interact with probably dozen times a year. Are you looking for the third person? The answer is none. Thus, be ready to work alone for four years.

Have you thought of your family commitments?

When you are an undergraduate student, your main concern is your study and the rest is just fun. But PhD usually happens when you have more important commitments. If you are not married, you are probably thinking of it. If you are married and have not had children yet, that is probably the next thing you are thinking of. Do you have children? Then you certainly think about them way more than your studies. There are even PhD students who have to take care of their parents. Further, you probably have a good job and thus, income and financial comfort and you should think the effect of your studies on your financial situation. You see, there are always life commitments, and the issue of study-life balance should be extremely important in your decision in doing PhD. You have to get your head around them before you start doing your PhD.

What is your career plan?

People usually study at universities to become trained and get a degree which has a clear set of professions or jobs attached to them. A PhD, like other university programs, is a training process; you will be trained to be a researcher or an academic. You learn how to do literature review, how to find a research problem, how to figure out a research methodology and method, how to follow and implement that method, how to present your result and at the end how to write a thesis that covers all your arguments and demonstrates all your efforts during past four years of your life. Thus, if you are interested in these “how tos” and if you want to become a researcher or an academic in the future, that would be the path to go through. But if you are thinking of some other things, you better think it twice.

And finally, why do you want to do it?

Getting PhD is not easy. It needs passion and patience. The only driver in the whole journey is your self-motivation. So what is your motivation? Is it the title of being a “Doctor”? Do you have a brother or sister with PhD and you feel you have to have it? Are you pushed by your family? If you are not convinced yet that you really need to do a PhD or you have doubts about it, wait for a while and do not rush to it. After all this is going to be at least four years of your life and you need to make sure that you will not run out of steam at the middle of way.

I hope this post will be read by a lot of people thinking about doing a PhD, so do you have advice you would like to offer? Pop it in the comments!

Related Posts

Another way to write 1000 words a day

Advice for Newbies

How to give good meeting (there’s an app for that!)

The other day I was strolling back from a leisurely gossip session coffee with @ researchwhisper at Pearson and Murphy’s cafe when I ran into one of my favourite academics, let’s call him Ned. Why is Ned one of my favourites? Well, I know this sounds like a stupid reason, but Ned knows how to rock a meeting.

I’m always happy to go to a meeting run by Ned (and not just because he always has a spare pen when I have forgotten to bring one). Ned always has a good reason for calling a meeting and knows what he wants to achieve from it. He is ruthless about keeping the meeting on time and on topic, while appearing to listen to all points of view. I have learned a lot about how to give good meeting from Ned: a skill that’s vastly under rated in academia in my opinion.

If you think about it, running a meeting is an essential skill for a PhD student. You will need to have regular meetings with your supervisor during your study and it’s likely, if you go on to a career in academia, that meetings will be a fact of life. As with anything these days however, there’s technology which can help you communicate and be more organised. So here’s my 5 steps towards better meetings – with an extra helping of apps!

Make sure you need a meeting in the first place

We have amazing technology in universities these days: email (as much as I hate it), instant messaging, phones, Twitter, Facebook. We do not lack ways of speaking to each other. Face to face meetings are good for discussing ideas, making decisions and talking things out – but should be saved for best so they don’t interrupt work too much. Weeks may go by when you have just been reading stuff and noodling around. If you are more or less happily immersed in your work, there may be little point in meeting with your supervisor in person. Write a short status report in email and ask them if they think anything warrants a face to face meeting.

There’s plenty of creative ways to share work in progress between, or instead of, having meetings. Sometimes you wont have writing to share, just a bunch of reading and notes as well as other cool stuff you have found. Consider using cloud databases for this – evernote is excellent for keeping track of web pages and photos of things (like the state of an experiment or something you have built), photos and audio notes. You can share the database with your supervisor; just tag stuff which might interest them so they can visit anytime and see bits of your work in progress. You can share and build bibliographies together in Mendeley and other cloud referencing apps. Photos can also be stored as a kind of journal / database using Tumblr - excellent for those in art and design disciplines. Other people I know keep a private blog, which they invite the supervisor to make comments on – great if you like to write in ‘chunks’.

Pick the right venue for the meeting

I never met my PhD supervisor outside of his office the whole time I was studying. I found this odd because with my masters supervisor it was entirely different. We were both working mothers and found it easier to meet in our respective homes, complete with our kids running about (sometimes naked except for their gumboots – don’t ask). Location just doesn’t matter to me, but clearly it did for my PhD supervisor. I’m sure part of the reason we were always so professional and polite with each other was that meeting was always on ‘work turf’. This set up boundaries, but useful ones – horses for courses as they say. There’s not really an app for that yet, but of course you don’t even have to leave your office for face to face meetings if you have Skype. If you do, check out the crowdsourced Thesis Whisperer map to thesis writer friendly cafes if you want to mix it up a little.

Be prepared

It goes without saying that if something has been circulated before a meeting your supervisor should endeavour to read it. Sometimes supervisors just can’t read it in detail because of the sheer amount of other reading that must be done (my ethics committee paperwork sometimes exceeds 700 pages…). If you want a deep reading, say so and, better still, highlight the areas you are worried about using the comments and highlighters in Word or the notes function in Scrivener. Alternatively you can try any number of shared document sites like Google Docs, a.nnotate or Freedcamp to work on documents collaboratively. I use ‘good reader’ to go through student work, which enables me to mark up and save PDFs on my ipad.

Make good records

Part of being prepared for a meeting with your supervisor is generating a list of questions or problems. Share this in advance of course and bring a copy to the meeting (if your supervisor is anything like me, they will forget to print it out). Make sure you have a good way of remembering the discussion and the decisions you make. Several of my friends have a light scribe pen, which allows you to touch the notes you have made and listen to what was being said while you wrote it. I always have technology envy when I see @scottmayson use this gadget, so I recently downloaded an app called ‘audio note’ that purports to do a similar thing (but I haven’t used it yet, so I can’t comment on its functionality).

Close the loop

The best way to record the outcomes of the meetings is to make a list of ‘action items’ and ‘items outstanding’ and circulate minutes to your supervisor and yourself containing these items. I use an ipad app called ‘errands’ for keeping track of things I said I would do for people – I like it because it’s really simple and pings at me when I forget stuff.

Occasionally I have been asked to help resolve disputes between supervisors and students. One thing I have noticed is that there’s a lot of “He said / she said” going on – people claiming something about the other person, usually with no evidence. Now please listen to Aunty Thesis Whisperer: I can’t stress enough the importance of making a note in your diary of the time and date of each and every supervision meeting, as well as an outline of what was discussed. There’s any number of online diaries for this purpose – you should automatically get a calendar with your uni email address. Never – ever – throw out a single peace of email or paper correspondence to do with your degree.

Have you got any good meeting related tips or technology you want to share? I’d love to hear more.

Related Posts

5 phone apps for researchers

Don’t type format c:

The Metaphors That Research Students Live By

We Melbournians are privileged enough to get a public holiday for the Melbourne Cup. Your tireless editor took a couple of days off so this week’s Monday post is a little late, but I hope it’s worth the wait.

This is a guest post from Rod Pitcher, a PhD student in Education at The Centre  for Educational Development and Academic Methods at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. The focus of his study is the metaphors that doctoral students use when describing their research and other matters related to their studies. I asked Rod if he could make a summary of his doctoral work as it sounded so interesting – what metaphors do research students live by and what does it tell us about research degree study?

There are a number of ways of finding out how students think about their work. I chose to use metaphor analysis of the responses to an on-line survey. In responding to the survey the research students were asked to describe their work as they would to an undergraduate student who had some interest in pursuing a doctorate at some time in the future.

There turned out to be five types of metaphors used in the survey responses. The types should not be taken as absolutely clear cut and independent, as most of the responses tended to overlap two or more categories to some degree.

Metaphors of Space

The largest group of metaphors found in the responses related to space. The largest single metaphor that occurred was ‘field’ followed closely by ‘area’.  Metaphors of space suggest that the students using them see their research as opening up or developing into new areas of knowledge. They refer to their research as being in a particular ‘field’ or ‘area’ which is part of overall knowledge. Other metaphors that appeared in this category included ‘regions’, ‘frontiers’ and ‘byways’, all of which relate to areas and give the impression of openness and somewhere into which to develop the work.

This type of metaphor gives the reader an image of research being an investigation of a space, like a field is an open area of land. Thus there is a feeling of openness and space.

Metaphors of Travel

The largest single metaphor referring to travel was ‘steps’ which occurred multiple times in nine responses. Similar metaphors are ‘journey’,  ‘path’  and ‘track’. Metaphors of travel suggests that the student sees her or his research as a movement, as travelling towards some goal. Other metaphors that appeared in this category included ‘flow’, ‘wading’, ‘embark’ and ‘sprint’ all of which indicate a movement. The destination may not be clearly known but movement in some direction is part of the research.

This type of metaphor gives the reader the idea of exploration, of opening up new areas of research, of heading off into the distance to find new knowledge. It suggests a sense of movement involved in research, that research requires a lot of action to bring it to fruition, that nothing is found by sitting still, only by moving into the unknown.

Metaphors of Action

There was a large variety of metaphors for action. These varied from descriptions of research as ‘constructing’ knowledge, from research seen as ‘struggling’, to research seen as ‘scratching’ for results. All these metaphors refer to actions that might be taken to conduct research. Similar metaphors that appeared in this category included ‘working’, ‘delve’, ‘reap’ and ‘combing’, all which refer to some action involved to make the research develop in the desired direction. The metaphors of action give the reader a much more earthy feeling about research. It seems that the person undertaking it has to get their hands dirty and actually work hard at it.

Metaphors of the Body

There were a number of metaphors that related to a human or animal body. There was ‘body’ itself and ‘corpus’. Also in this category might be ‘virgin’ and ‘drown’. This type of metaphor suggests that the student sees his or her research as manipulating a ‘body’ of material as a body of a person or animal  might be manipulated. Other metaphors that appeared in this category included ‘infancy’, ‘struggling’ and ‘grasp’ all of which refer to some bodily function or action.

This type of metaphor gives the reader the idea of research being constructed in some way like a body, where many different parts come together to achieve some outcome. There is a sense that research is not a simple isolated field but is related across and between disciplines as one might consider the parts of a human body to be a composite of interrelated parts.

Metaphors of Ordeal

There were a number of metaphors that referred to research as an ordeal. One student twice referred to research as  a ‘marathon’ with its intimations of a struggle against the odds and the persistence required to complete the ordeal. Another referred to the ‘struggle’ of research. Other metaphors that appeared in this category included ‘crushing’, ‘drown’, ‘fighting’ and ‘safety net’ all of which give the impression that the research is not easy and involves suffering to make progress.

The metaphors of ordeal give the reader the impression that the student is struggling with the research, that the research is like a marathon race which tests the staying power of the student to the limits, and that the ordeal of the research is something overpoweringly strong that has to be overcome to achieve the doctorate.

It is plain that research students show a wide range of conceptions of their work. Their attitudes vary from the more or less positive view of those who see their work as travelling to some destination to the more negative view of those who see it as an ordeal to be suffered. I suggest that this attitude might also be reflected in the student’s approach to his or her work and commitment to completing the doctorate.

Many thanks to Rod for sharing his research. I what metaphors would you use to describe your thesis and research work? Some people find it helpful to focus on an object which can help them generate metaphors. For instance, if your research was a car what sort of car would it be? I hope it’s not like the car pictured above!

Related posts

The loneliness of the long distance thesis writer

Do you need an academic coach?