5 ways to save money while you do your PhD

Money has been on my mind lately.

For one thing Family Thesis Whisperer have just been overseas and spent a great deal of it. When we got home we visited the accountant (always an eye opening experience). Lastly we are contemplating moving to another area for Thesis Whisperer junior’s schooling, which sharpens the mind about income and expenditure.

For some years now Mr Thesis Whisperer and I have frustrated our family and friends by being, well, notoriously frugal. We got rid of our car and refused to go to weddings overseas, or visit family living in foreign locales for about 7 years (sorry Rebekah and Judy!). The reason for this was simple: we had one steady income and a PhD student in the house.

Money was tight in those lean years. When I did get academic work it was casual / adjunct and lasted for 3 months at a time at most. Thesis Whisperer Jnr’s childcare centre was not as casual as the University about the hours he attended. We had to pay fees to keep our booked days, and the possibility of me going to work, even if I didn’t have any.

In Australian culture we are uncomfortable talking about money. In the absence of a frank discussion, there continues to be a view that it is a rite of passage to starve in your garret while you do your PhD, which I think is an entirely wrongheaded way to treat some of your nation’s smartest people (are you listening Julia Gillard?). International students are particularly hard up; I honestly don’t know how they do it.

If you are a struggling PhD student, some members of the academy can seem remarkably unsympathetic to your plight. I remember telling one of the Professors at a work function that I had clocked up 10 years of casual work in his department. He expressed surprise I had been “around so long” and told me I was lucky to be a casual staff member, because tenure was like “golden hand-cuffs to someone with your talents”. Inwardly I seethed, but I knew I was achieving some measure of adult maturity when I was able to calmly sip my drink and explain to him exactly why the bank didn’t want to give me a mortgage instead of stamping my feet and screaming.

I’m sure the professor was uncomfortable about the structure of the contemporary academic workplace and meant the comment as both compliment and reassurance.”Lock me up and throw away the key!” is my position on tenure now I have it (or the Australian equivalent at least, which is not nearly as good, but I’ll take what I can get right?). Talk to any group of PhD students and it’s likely they will say the same.

I don’t want to spend the whole post whingeing about my past life. It’s no secret that doing a PhD is expensive; if not in fees than certainly in the income forgone while you do it. But as Maia reminded us last week, at the other end, hopefully, is a new life, or new career; it just may take awhile.

I happened to be up for the live #phdchat on Twitter about finances and the PhD, where students compared experiences and made suggestions – a very interesting session if you can get access to the scroll back. I was inspired by this session to share what I learned about money during my PhD, in the hope that you will share more ideas:

1. Do you really, really need a car?

Our first car was an Audi S3. It was lovely and zippy, but oh my goodness. So expensive. One year that thing cost us $3000 in tires ALONE. We were dual income no kids at the time, so this was annoying rather than a disaster, but that didn’t last. When Thesis whisperer Jnr arrived we sold it and copped a $23,000 financial hit (!) trading in on a reliable Subaru.

The subi was a great car, but when it came out of lease we thought we might try not replacing it and see what happened. Revelation! We realised it wasn’t the car, but the lifestyle it enabled which was the real problem. A shopping trolley and a walk home forces you to think about whether you need to buy things. On family outings we packed sandwiches because you can’t ask the train driver to stop when you are feeling peckish, which leads me nicely to my next point,

2. Watch the ‘walk around’ money

When you have  a disparity of incomes, putting the money all in one bucket makes for marital harmony as there is only ‘our money’. We used to just throw Our Money into a bucket and draw it out as we went, hoping for the best. This does not work. We lost track and we argued about what it was spent on.

We took advice from some more financially savvy friends and started giving ourselves ‘pocket money’. An equal sum of money goes in each of our private bank accounts each month, while the rest goes in the shared bucket. Pocket money is ‘walk around money’ which can be spent on a whim; the other person is not allowed to judge, or even see the accounts. We have very different approaches to money, so this works for us.

Mischief managed. I happily spend all of my money, every month, on clothes, haircuts, books and various other fripperies while Mr Thesis Whisperer buys clothes once a year and saves up to treat himself to a fancy GPS for his bike.

3. Learn to love a budget – even if you don’t make it yourself

I hate doing budgeting. It brings me out in a rash. Lucky for me, Mr Thesis whisperer is awesome at it. I started to love the budget, if not the budgeting process, as the money stacked up in the bank and my stress levels went down. I’m still hopeless at doing a budget, but I accept the limits it places on me are Good, so I don’t fight it.

4. Don’t buy books until you are sure you will read them

Books are the academic’s crack cocaine. If you are anything like me even the smell of a bookstore gives you a rush. But those blasted academic books are expensive my friends. The problem is that “I gotta have it NOW” feeling. Answer? Borrow them first. If a bookstore have it, the library can get it for you if you are prepared to wait. If I have extend it more than 3 times and it has sticky notes all over it, then I buy it.

5. Marry Rich (if you don’t manage that, marry Kind)

Now I get to the end I realise that Mr Thesis Whisperer features heavily in this post. He’s always had a decent, steady income and been willing to share it. Without that support I would surely have gone broke long ago. I know there are many partners out there like Mr Thesis Whisperer; your country salutes you.

It’s tougher financially, I think, to do it on your own. However there are other benefits to solo study, such as being (largely) the master of your own social life. If you are single and crap with money, don’t despair. Someone, somewhere in your social circle is great at it. Spend some time learning from them and, hopefully, some of the canny PhD student saving secrets, which I hope will appear in the comments!

Related posts

Is the University a Bad Boyfriend?

PhD Rage

The ‘few months post’ post

This is a guest post by Maia Sauren, a Ph.D. student at RMIT who submitted her thesis a few months ago.  Maia has written quite a few guest posts for us now about the process of doing a PhD, how to make writing one more efficient and strange feelings provoked by the period immediately post submission. In this post she reflects on how she feels now that a few months have passed – was it all worth it?

There is so much you can achieve with your life when all you do is work full time. I’d forgotten what it was like, not to feel guilty and scared all the time. Compared to a thesis, forty hours a week is a laughably small sum of hours to be spending on work.

The first six weeks after submission I spent having what I like to call a slow motion nervous breakdown. The further I get from that part of my life, the better my decision-making becomes, and the clearer I see my own craziness during that period. Spending a good few months locked in a room with nothing but pyjamas and tea gives you a very odd perspective. My ability to make good decisions was, shall we say, diminished.

And then – well, maybe the thing to do is show you the change in my desktop image:

Before:

After:

(Editor’s note: I had to substitute Maia’s real desktop photos with royalty free images, but these capture the spirit of the ones she sent)

My attitude at the moment can be summed up as, ‘life can just never be that shit again’.

In terms of work, I’ve been doing short contracts as a data analyst – a month here, two days there. The low-commitment lifestyle is suiting me well at the moment. I do a great job, but I have no connection to the overall projects beyond my part. Was the data collected accurately? Was the survey designed to provide statistical significance? Do I agree with the project aims? Who cares! I liberally and gratuitously avoid knowing. I’m starting to feel the itch of doing a project I’m passionate about, but it’s still tentative.

After so many years of being body-and-soul invested in the quality and outcome of my work, it’s a relief to be unattached.

Some of that has been consciously re-training my instincts. I’ve made sure I have evening plans, otherwise I find myself at work at 8pm.

You know what I’ve realised? I’m smart and capable. My resume could’ve told you that, and I’ve known it intellectually. My emotional response for a few years has been that I am not worthy of taking on any ‘real’ job, because I haven’t completed… something.

I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time feeling I was crap at things. There is no substantive difference between who I am now, and who I was six months ago, but today I feel confident and strident. I apply for jobs with clarity about how my skills fit, how quickly I can learn the systems and provide usefulness, and that I can do All The Things.

The issue wasn’t ability to learn or apply knowledge. The problem was my attachment to the equation: when I have a Ph.D., then I become a Good Clever Able Person, and until then I am not those things. Which is utter rubbish, clearly. I wish I could explain this to my past self, and to all the tortured souls around me still in thesis-land.

Ph.D. may not worth it for you. I’m still not convinced I haven’t wasted my time. But here I am, and there’s no point regretting it. As my supervisor said once, it may not always add anything to your circumstances, but it certainly can’t hurt. I’m a little jaded right now, so maybe ask me again in a couple of years.

Meanwhile, I’ve been procrastinating doing my minor corrections. Oh yeh – I passed! With nothing more than a few ‘rewrite this bit a little’! I’m stunned. It hasn’t sunk in yet, but I’m certainly enjoying the after-effects.

(and may we say, belated congratulations from The Thesis Whisperer Maia! – Ed)

Related Posts

The nowhere, everywhere place

PhD detachment

How do I start my discussion chapter?

On Twitter this week two people asked me for advice for starting the discussion chapter of their thesis / dissertation (I’m going to use the word thesis from now on because I am Australian). I didn’t feel up to answering in 140 characters or less, so I promised a post on it today.

If you are feeling anxious about the discussion section rest assured you are not alone. It’s an issue that comes up time and time again in my workshops. There’s no one answer that can help everyone because every project is original, so I thought I would offer a few thoughts on it by way of starting a conversation.

Evans, Gruba and Zobel, in their book “How to Write a Better Thesis”, describe the discussion chapter as the place where you:

“… critically examine your findings in the light of the previous state of the subject as outlined in the background, and make judgments as to what has been learnt in your work”

Essentially the discussion chapter tells your reader what your findings might mean, how valuable they are and why. I remember struggling with this section myself and, looking back, I believe there were two sources of anxiety.

The first is scholarly confidence. At the University of Melbourne we used to talk about how a good thesis has a ‘Ph Factor’. The Ph factor is somewhat elusive and hard to describe, but basically it means you have to make some knowledge claims. You need to have the confidence to say something is ‘true’ (at least, without getting too post modern about it, true within the confines of your thesis). This can feel risky because, if you have been approaching the thesis in the right spirit, you are likely to be experiencing Doubt.

The second source of anxiety is the need to think creatively. Most of the rest of the thesis asks us to think analytically; or, if you are in a practice based discipline, to make stuff; or perhaps, if you are an ethnographer, to observe the world in some way. Creative thinking involves your imagination, which means you have to switch gears mentally.

So the problem of the discussion chapter is a problem of creative thinking and confidence, but there are some stylistic conventions and knowledge issues that complicate the task. Every thesis needs to have discussion like elements, but they may do it in different ways.

In a conventional thesis, what we call the IMRAD type (introduction, methods, results, discussion and conclusion) the discussion chapter appears a discrete chapter. Before you worry about the discussion chapter too much, consider whether you need to treat the discussion as a separate section at all. You need to keep in mind that the IMRAD structure is best used to write up empirical research work (the type where you collect data of some kind).

In the past I have referred to the IMRAD formula as the ‘dead hand of the thesis genre’; a phrase I picked up from my colleague Dr Robyn Barnacle. It’s a dead hand because of the role it plays in the imagination of the research community throughout the world. The IMRAD formula is the most widely understood format because it is the type most widely described in the ‘how to’ genre and has a close and abiding relationship to the scientific method. Many students try to make their research fit into the IMRAD format, when it is not appropriate to do so.

I can be easy to feel ‘blocked’ if you are a non scientist trying to separate out the discussion from the rest of what you are writing. Remember there are many ways to skin the discussion cat. For example, an artist may discuss each project and what it means separately. An ethnographer might devote a chapter to each theory they have built from observation. Likewise a historian may break the thesis up into time periods and do critique and evaluation throughout the whole.

So I have diagnosed some of the problems, are there any easy solutions? Well, the best way to start in my view is just to write, but perhaps start to write without the specific purpose of the discussion chapter in mind. Write to try and work out what you think and then re-write it later.

You can use a couple of basic techniques to help you with this process:

•  Try the old ‘compare and contrast’ technique. Draw up a table describing where your work is similar to others and where it differs. Use each of these points as a prompt to write a short paragraph on why.
• Use the “The big machine” trick as suggested by Howard Becker in his book ‘tricks of the trade’ (now only $3.99 on Kindle? Bargain!). Pretend your results are produced by a machine then describe the machine. How would the machine work? What would it look like? What parts would it need? What might make the machine break?
• Another useful suggestion from Howard Becker is the null hypothesis technique; write down why the results mean nothing. Sometimes forcing yourself to argue the reverse position can highlight the relationships or ideas worth exploring.
• Sometimes having an audience can help. Explain the results to a friend and record yourself, or use voice recognition software to tell your computer some of your preliminary thoughts. Many people find talking an easier way to get ideas out. Alternatively write them in an email to someone.
• Explain the limitations of the work: what is left out or yet to do? Sometimes, like the null hypothesis, talking about the limitations can help you better define the contribution your study has made.

I hope some of these suggestions help to get you started. Do you have any more? Are there ‘tricks’ you have used to help you get your creative juices flowing?

Related Posts

The Dead Hand of the Thesis Genre?

Ambivalence: can it help with your PhD?

Hogmanay and Ne’erday

Continuing our New Year’s celebration theme, this post is by our regular contributor and Librarian extraordinaire, Dr Karen McAulay. What can we learn from old Scottish traditions which can help us start the new year in top shape? 

Actually, I’m a bit of a fraud here.  I’m an ‘English’ living in Scotland. Although I’ve been here plenty long enough to know how important Hogmanay is, I must confess that I grew up in a home that enjoyed a modest glass of sherry as the clock reached midnight, then all occupants went to bed.  New Year’s Day, therefore, dawned upon a clear-headed and stone-cold sober household.

In Scotland, on the other hand, Hogmanay has traditionally been a time for partying throughout the night.  My husband remembers his aunt and uncle coming home in the ‘wee sma’ hours’, and the first-footing round friends’ and neighbours’ houses.

The First Footer, or person who crosses the threshold of a house for the first time in the year is meant to be a harbinger of good luck. My husband was on occasions prevailed upon to do the first footing, chunk of coal in hand (the best luck for the household was thought to come from a dark-haired stranger). Scottish housewives would already have made sure their houses were spotless to welcome in the new year. When people did eventually surface the following day, more visiting would take place, whisky bottle in hand.

A century ago, Hogmanay was actually more important than Christmas, to many Scots.  Seems hard to believe now, doesn’t it?

During my doctoral research, I came across some early 19^th-century correspondence in which a ballad collector was a bit dilatory writing a preface for a song-collection, because he had been so preoccupied by the festive season. Around the same time, my own great-grandfather-in-law went missing one Hogmanay, being fished out of Greenock dock a couple of weeks later.  Urghh! I hope he enjoyed his last Hogmanay celebrations before he slipped  (or was he pushed?!).

Well, this is all very interesting, but what bearing does it have on a 21^st   century researcher?  Can I suggest that lessons can be learned from the Scottish traditions?

For a start, you’ve hopefully had a chance to let your hair down, socialise, catch up with friends and family, and take a brief break from your solitary research existence.  ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’, the saying goes.  I truly believe that it’s good to take a bit of a break from time to time. Maybe you received some lighter reading matter over Christmas?  Great!  Or had the opportunity to get outdoors and stretch your legs?  A bit of physical exercise is very beneficial to the average stressed-out doctoral student.

The turn of the year is also a good time to review your own progress.  Maybe you could set aside some time to assess where you’re at.  Have you reached a dead end?  Or are you facing so many interesting opportunities that you’re frankly a bit overwhelmed?  Sometimes it pays to write it all down, and look at your options.

The spotless housekeeping part of the tradition hardly sounds appealing, but if you’re anything like me, you might feel a lot less overwhelmed if you at least spring-cleaned the area around your desk, and tried to catch up with your filing!

Lastly, of course, there are the traditional ‘New Year’s resolutions’.  As Inger discussed in the previous post – does anyone actually make them, let alone keep them?  Hmmm.  Ah well, here are a few tangible and specific ones to consider:

•  I’m going to keep my bibliography up-to-date, perhaps using electronic software to impose some discipline on the chaos and make things easier for myself later.
• I’m going to try to keep on top of current literature.
• I’m going to [try to] avoid social media while I’m meant to be working …
• I’m going to plan my writing so I can keep to my deadlines.
• I’m going to write a paper/ speak at one or more conferences this year.
• I’m going to make sure my CV is up-to-date.

So there you are, rested, relaxed and all organised for the New Year.  Doesn’t  that feel good?

But if you don’t manage to be quite this virtuous on the first of January, don’t worry: William Motherwell did get that preface finished, so he obviously got back to his desk eventually.  Just don’t emulate Great-Grandfather McAulay.  Celebrating New Year is one thing, but it plainly can be taken too far!

Related posts

Drinking and your PhD

Mens sana in corpore sano

My name is Inger and I have a commitment problem

Happy new year everyone!

Today is my first day back after 5 weeks overseas and powering up the Whisperer is the best thing about being back at work But before we get into all that thesis-y goodness I’m wondering: are you still sticking to your new year’s resolutions?

When I asked on Twitter last week most PhD students said that “finish my thesis!” topped the list of goals for 2012. The second most popular resolution was “write something everyday” closely followed by “publish some articles”. A couple of people said they planned to tackle their ‘To Be Read’ (TBR) pile – which is a goal of mine too, but already I am falling behind.

I don’t know about you but I have a habit of creating long lists of resolutions and, inevitably, disappointing myself by not sticking at them. It really takes the fun out of New Year’s eve. The first few seconds seem so full of promise of change and renewal, but really the clock ticking over heralds just another day. I wake up with the same problems as well as, perhaps, a raging hangover to complement them. To tell you the truth I have given up on trying to be cheery and almost always go to bed before midnight.

So what’s the trick to making sure you do finish your thesis, see the end of your TBR pile or write everyday? How do you make those New Year’s resolutions last?

I don’t think there’s easy answers, but while I was away Kati at the SGR office sent me a link to an excellent blog post called “Your problem isn’t motivation” by Peter Bregman which I think helps us understand the problem better. Bregman starts by clarifying the problem of the resolution in a succinct sentence:

“We have a misconception that if we only cared enough about something, we would do something about it. But that’s not true”

He goes on to point out that the real problem we face is not motivation, but commitment. The problem is that thinking is easy; acting on thought is hard. Deciding to get through your TBR pile can happen in your mind where with little effort and cost; actually reading it all and making sense of it is a practical problem involving both effort and cost.

Bregman goes on to argue that thought is the enemy of action. Let’s take the TBR problem as an example. The TBR is the dirty laundry of academia. If you are anything like me, that pile of articles, book chapters and text books grows daily. Unfortunately that unread pile is more likely to provoke feelings of guilt than pleasurable expectation. It’s easy to be motivated to want to get going on it, actually doing it is kind of … dull. I would rather do something else, so my mind starts making excuses:

“I could read another chapter of Foucault’s “Birth of the Clinic” … OR…. I could catch up on all that email…”

Although the email is no doubt the more boring of the two, it does have the advantage of being easier and, seemingly, more urgent. So I clear out the email, but by then the Procrastination Fairy has sprinkled her Can’t Be Bothered dust. The last thing I want to do after replying to 30 emails is read heavy post structuralist theory. “Tomorrow” I promise myself.

Yeah right.

I think Bregman is right – we don’t have motivation problems, we have commitment problems. Committing to something means setting tangible goals and working out the practical details so lists need to be carefully thought out. PhD student and productivity literature junkie (and I mean that in the nicest way!) Jason Downs, was kind enough to send me his list of resolutions which I think are instructive:

1.  Download an read an article every day.  Do this first.  Everything else can wait.
2.  Write 250 words every day.  Do this second.  Everything else can wait.
3.  Create milestones with supervisors.  Attach dates.  Hit.
4.  Publish progress publicly.
5.  Raise profile within and beyond School.
5(a).  Connect with luminaries in sub-discipline.  Begin the courtship.

Most of the items on Jason’s list are actions, not aspirations. Clearly Jason is having trouble with the reading, so that comes first. Reading one new article each working  day means 5 a week, around 20 a month or 240 a year – impressive. I know I don’t have 240 things on my TBR pile. If I commit to one a day I can get through that sucker in about 6 weeks.

Hmmm.

Cleverly, Jason also sets a time frame and a simple statement of the priority on the action items. He commits to write 250 words and, although he notes this will be the second thing he will do each day, he makes sure to remind himself that ‘everything else can wait’.  250 words a day is approximately 65000 a year; that’s a whole thesis without having to work on the weekends. Notice what Jason doesn’t say – he doesn’t say those words will be good or even what they will be exactly: drafts, notes, reflections are all possibilities. In this way he keeps the goal of 250 words a day both modest and approachable.

If I have any problem with the rest of the list it is that the last three items are conceptual aims, not tangible actions, however there is a simple way to convert concepts into actions using keywords.

My sister introduced me to the idea of generating a key word for each year instead of a list of resolutions. One year her theme was ‘brave’; another year was ‘elegant’. When she had to make a decision she would test it against her keyword: “is this an elegant pair of pants to wear to the staff meeting?’ or “Is that a brave way to speak to my boss?”.

The keyword idea is simple, but powerful. Jason’s last three resolutions could be grouped under a keyword like “connection”. Jason can ask himself: “what is the best way to connect with the people who matter?” and use this to start generating a list of actions, or even make everyday decisions: does attending this conference / writing this book chapter / going to this meeting  help to connect me with people who matter?”. In this way his efforts build incrementally towards his overall goal.

Bregman also notes the power of accountability – telling others your goals is one way to make yourself commit to them. So why not share them in the comments section? What are your new year’s resolutions, or the things you would like to achieve in 2012? Do you have a list of actions to go with them or a keyword which might help you reach them?

Related posts:

A visit from the Procrastination Fairy

Why you might be ‘stuck’