5 things to do in your first week

Last week Lucinda posted this question on my Facebook wall

“I’m planning on starting my PhD on 5th March. Do you have any tips on what I should be doing before starting and what do I expect when I start?”

It’s a good blog topic. In fact, I was a bit surprised to find I hadn’t written about it yet. That first couple of weeks of study can be confusing. Without the structure of an undergraduate course and other classmates to guide you, simple things like finding the closest bathroom to your office can be challenging. Or you may find you don’t actually have an office at all! Roaming the halls and haunting the library with your book bag and a laptop is hardly conducive to settling in well.

It does help if you start out with a checklist of sorts. In the interest of brevity I have stuck to my top five tips, but I’m hoping some of the helpful and experienced people who I know read the blog will add extra ones in the comments section.

1) Get thee to Facebook (even if you hate it)

In a recent study of research students we did at RMIT we found that students who were more socially connected to others were better at solving problems with their candidature, so there is a clear incentive to get to know people. Of course, people are your best guide to any new place, but the challenge for you in your first couple of weeks is to FIND the people with the knowledge.

The most obvious place to start the search is with your supervisor. Ask them how to find out about the department social functions; you will probably find that there are more than you have the time or wherewithal to attend. As the mother of a young child I was unable to participate in the regular Friday drinks in my department and consequently always felt a little sidelined. If you are a part time student or a parent you will know what I mean.

I found that Facebook came to my rescue here. A lot of people don’t like Facebook for various reasons, but I found following the minutia of  other student’s lives and doing some virtual whinging was enough to make me feel involved. It also helped me to get to know some of the other people well enough to do small talk when we did meet – and, now we have finished, it has been a way to keep touch as we move on with our lives post PhD.

2) Make friends with administrators

Find out the names of the people responsible for taking care of students in your department, in particular the administrators. These are non academic staff who are responsible for looking after the management and data entry for research and researchers. At RMIT we call them “HDR administrators”. These people know EVERYTHING there is to know about the endless paperwork that pervades academia; they can usually point you in the right direction if you encounter a road block or need extra resources.

It’s a thankless job and not that well paid. Like childcare, nursing or the other caring professions you have to really love it to do it well. This might explain why this people are, almost without exception, some of the nicest, most helpful people you will ever find in academia. Engage in a charm offensive – know them by name, buy them coffees and Christmas presents. This effort will be more than repaid believe me.

3) Do a library tour and make an appointment with your Liaison librarian

Librarians are multi-talented people. You may not have had much contact with them during your undergraduate years and therefore might not be aware of the range of things they can help you with. Although Google scholar is brilliant, it is not, by far, the only or best tool for finding references; librarians can introduce you to the full suite of resources.

At RMIT we have a group of people called ‘liaison librarians’ who are specialists in discipline areas; what they don’t know about database searching isn’t worth knowing. As a research student you can make an appointment with them and get some quality one-on-one database nerd time. Use this service to help you search more effectively and set up alerts so information is pushed at you with minimal effort.

4) Crank up that software.

The liaison librarian will be able to advise and train you to use standard bibliographic software. At a minimum you should get to know the software which the library supports (probably Endnote), but there is more that you can do to get yourself organised.

The internet is truly a treasure trove of handy software solutions to the problem of keeping track of your information and making sense of it – and the vast majority of it is entirely free (I am currently writing a book about this topic with Dr Sarah Quinnell of Networked Researcher fame, so I could bore for Australia on this topic). Last week I asked people on Twitter what free software they used and came up with a list of 42 applications and sites. By far the most popular were: Dropbox, Evernote, Google Docs, Mendeley and Slideshare. Set up an account with each one and have a play to see if they will work for you.

5) Don’t panic

This is more of a general comment: it’s easy to psyche yourself out and start thinking you can’t do this thing.  At BBQs and parties you will regularly hear things like “wow! You’re doing a PhD?! I could never do that” or, worse: “So and so started their PhD and never finished; I heard it broke up their marriage”. Don’t buy into the PhD Hype.

It’s likely that few, if any, of your family and friends have done a PhD and therefore think it’s a much bigger deal than it is. It is a big deal, but not impossible. I firmly believe that if you get into a PhD program you can finish – on time with your sanity intact  – if you are organised and persistent.

So that’s my top five – how about you? What advice would you give to all the PhD newbies who are starting this year?

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The academic writer’s strike

I have spent years exhorting students to publish as much as possible before they finish and straight after. But lately I am beginning to wonder about my place in the academic publishing system, both as a researcher and a teacher.

I don’t think I can keep handing out this advice with a clear conscience.

Academic publishing is presented as a universal good, without regard to how the publishing system operates. While publications are an essential addition to the CV in today’s competitive job market, the ethics of publishing need to be considered too. Some big publishers are making boatloads of money – in the order of millions of dollars – out of labour we academics willingly give them.

This profit largely goes into the pockets of shareholders, not the researchers or universities.

Essentially this is public money which becomes ‘privatized’. It works a bit like this. Australian citizens are taxed and the government uses this tax to fund my university. My university pays me a wage to write papers, amongst other things. I give my papers, and the copyright to reproduce and distribute them, to an academic publisher. They publish my article in a big database and make it searchable (if you want a longer explanation of the process, read this article on The Atlantic). If I want to be a good academic citizen I also do peer reviews for these journals, thus helping to ensure the quality of the publishing system as a whole.

Of course I am a user as well as a content provider. My university (with more tax payer’s money) pays the journal publishers to let me search their databases and download articles. This is where it gets sticky.

Some journal publishers engage in questionable practices in how they sell the content we produce back to us. You may have heard of the term ‘bundling’. Basically bundling works a bit like a cable television subscription. I like to watch the Lifestyle channel, but Thesis Whisperer Jnr likes the Discovery channel. My cable company is well aware of this and only sells ‘bundles’, not individual channels. I would like to buy a custom bundle with Lifestyle and Discovery, but instead I am forced to buy two bundles in order to get both the channels I want.

Libraries have been facing increasing costs because of these bundling practices and the problem is worse in the developing world. I have had emails from people in Africa and some parts of Asia asking for a copy of an article because their universities have had to cut costs. According to my publishing agreement I would be breaking the law to send it to them – this sticks in my throat, especially after my recent visit to Vietnam.

Unfortunately the academic publishing system is built into the academia DNA. As the QED insight blog argued recently,  the university needs publishers to help them weigh up my merits as a researcher. If I publish in good quality journals they have a way of judging my quality as an academic. I am cutting my nose off to spite my face if I refuse to participate – I will not get promoted and I may even lose my job.

Journal publishers argue they provide value. Maintaining large database systems and editing our papers is not cost free. True. Everyone has the right, I believe, to be paid for his or her work, but the argument can easily run the other way. Journal publishers pay their shareholders, their editors, administrators and software engineers – so where’s my cut as content provider and expert consultant?

Some academics have become so incensed at what they see as the inequities of this system they have signed the Cost of Knowledge petition declaring they will boycott the journal publisher Elsevier. Elsevier are not the only journal to be accused of questionable practices, but they have copped the brunt of the academic anger.

This petition is the academic equivalent of the Hollywood writers strike. I think it could work so, after some hesitation, I signed it. It’s not, of course, the whole answer, especially when it only targets one publisher, but it’s the only way I can send a message loud enough to be heard. But I have to be honest with you: I only signed because the effect on me personally is slight. Elsevier publishes very few education journals. Would I have signed a similar petition against Taylor and Francis?

I’m not sure.

Those of us earlier in our careers have much more to lose being political.

Publishers seem blissfully unaware of the challenge to their business model posed by social media and easy, free publishing tools. If I wanted to I could start my own peer reviewed journal tomorrow. I have the tools and the contacts, just not the time… Recently, in a public forum, I challenged a member of the Elsevier board to tell me how the company is responding to changes in the publishing landscape. He told me they are thinking about it, and in the meantime they were generously providing, free of charge, a guide to publishing in journals for first timers.

Wonderful, but how about some more tangible sign of your appreciation for our work?

I think we academics need to start learning from other creatives, like the music industry. Most pop stars get paid ludicrously small amounts for their creative work it’s true, but they do get paid something. I have no objection to journals making some money and providing work for editors and other talented people. We don’t have to throw the baby out with the bath water, but we could pressure the publishers to kick back some of that profit to the people who make research happen and advance human knowledge. Us.

So Elsevier, I will start publishing with you when you start sharing the love. I have some ideas for what you can do.

Let’s start with simple profit sharing. For instance, you could pay my institution a nominal amount per download. Perfect capitalist solution: the more popular my papers get, the more my institution benefits and they can reward me with a promotion. Or you could pay me directly for each download of my work and I could use that money to buy out teaching time and buy in research assistants.

If you don’t want to pay me or my institution, you could show me that you are a good corporate citizen in other ways. How about ‘angel investing’ in cutting edge research? You could even benefit by IP arrangements.

Or you could think about providing some grant money from your profits which content providers like myself could bid for on a competitive basis.

Elsevier – you could BENEFIT by being generous – if you play this right you could get the first pick of all the best work because I would have an incentive to choose you. By the way I am available as a consultant if you need more ideas at your next board meeting.

For a small fee of course.

At the time of writing the petition had 6268 signatures. How many will it take to make changes happen? I doubt many early career researchers or students will find themselves in a position to sign right now- I’m not judging. Whatever gets you through the night. I do, however, applaud the senior members of our community who are providing leadership and showing the way. If enough of you with little to lose sign, those of us at the bottom of the academic pecking order might feel more confident to pile on.

It seems to me that journal publishers need to be a bit more creative – or they will die. I think this is a pity because most journals provide an excellent service for academia and I’m not sure we academics have the resources to replace them. How about you – what do you think? Have you signed the petition? Why – or why not?

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A (belated) Valentines Day post

This guest post is written by Magdeline Lum – Chemist, Metallurgist & Photographer and blogger. Last year, in honour of Valentine’s Day, Magdeline told us about her experience of dating a Thesis. In this post she tells us what it’s like to experience the other side now that she has a boyfriend and a thesis of her own to manage…

Last year I wrote about that being in a relationship with a PhD student meant also dating their thesis. The shoe is now well and truly on the other foot. I added my Masters thesis to the mix of our relationship last year. It was awful. I had a breakdown that I didn’t see coming. My boyfriend, Dave, did and he dealt with it better than me.

There are some dreadful times in research where nothing goes right. I’ve had them and gotten out of them with project intact. Studying was different. It was my project and therefore mine to get done but obstacles were everywhere. Despite my best efforts my academic woes spilled out into other aspects of my life, mostly into my relationship with Dave.

I became moody and snappy, even on date night. Dave would pull me up on it every single time and I would stop. No defense mechanism. I knew I was being unfair. And mean. It’s not easy doing this but the skill of biting one’s own tongue when a thoughtless remark is thrown your way during a research group meeting has to be good for something right?

It was at this point Dave would ask me what was wrong. You know what my reply was to someone who has finished a PhD and now has students of his own? The ever classic, “You wouldn’t understand.” Stupid or what? If anyone was going to understand my private hell, Dave was. And even when he didn’t understand, he listened. Sometimes what I needed wasn’t someone who understood, I just wanted someone who would listen without saying anything. Just voicing things to someone who wasn’t going to judge was what I needed.

The best thing about talking to Dave was that he didn’t tell me what to do or what I should do. It was a relief. And sometimes it was all too much and I was reduced to tears. I was an utter mess and when this spilled over to a date night, something inside me snapped. I realized I needed to do something.

I decided to take a break from my Masters. It wasn’t easy. When I told friends, most of them said, “You’ve been through worse, it’s just another six months.” with the best of intentions. They hadn’t seen me when I detoured from going to uni. Nor had they seen me wolfing down a cheeseburger with extra pickles as the only solid meal of the day. They didn’t know how late I stayed at uni some nights trawling through journal articles. I barely recognized myself.

During an office reshuffle with advice to stick out another six months ricocheting around my hollow brain, I decided to take my belongings home. There was no fanfare, I just left. I didn’t even see my supervisor on my way out. I needed a break. The sooner, the better.

It was just after lunch when I made a phone call to Dave while loading my car boot. Telling him what I was doing tore me up inside. A feeling of incredible stupidity hit me. I didn’t feel like I was good enough to be his girlfriend. I felt like I had screwed up and had no options left in life. Any sense of self-worth was gone. He said, “Take a break. Take as long as you need before deciding what to do next.” This was the only time Dave ever told me to do anything during my Masters. I listened.

That was six months ago. I am now typing this from a mine site after work. I am still on my break from my Masters and in full-time employment. I have started to feel good about myself again and I’m regaining my confidence. The best part is that I am being paid to do research as well as day- to-day tasks. I could have written about a happier time during my Masters but what is the use in that? We’re all too cynical for posts spewing forth rainbows and unicorns especially on days like Valentine’s Day. Postgrad life isn’t conducive to having a relationship or much else. It demands long hours and unyielding commitment.

The thing is I am lucky to have had enough sense to know that Dave is someone who will always listen to my rants and be there for me. It isn’t easy to step back and apologise for being a moody cow but the more I’ve done it, the easier it’s become.  I have also had to remind myself that my relationship with Dave is separate from my Masters and that I won’t be crucified for being less than perfect. I was safe from that. I did my best not to take out my woes on him. There were times when I failed miserably and was admonished. I learned there was a fine line between venting and just being aggressive, usually when Dave asked questions to fill in gaps of something I was telling him. It wasn’t an attack on my integrity, it was a request for more information. It wasn’t as if he was there when I was aggravated.

I owe a lot to Dave for sticking out 2011 with me. It was a horrible year. There was very little fun in it but the bits that were fun, I relished. Dave would come by with cheeseburgers when I needed them with episodes of Doctor Who to dangle in front of me for much needed breaks. There was the time when he bought me a plush Totoro after I sat him through My Neighbour Totoro. By some quirk, Dave always knows when I can do with a hug. These are the little things that made me happy and got me through 2011. The huge thing that got us both through was being able to listen to one another.

How does your partner cope with your study commitments? Do you have any advice for someone who is in a relationship with a research student?

A little hiatus…

Your hardworking editor will be working with PhD students at the RMIT campus in Vietnam next week – and hopefully getting to eat large bowls of pho!

I’m not sure that I will have ready internet access or time to blog as the schedule looks very busy. Instead I will wish you “tốt bằng văn bản” (good writing) for next week and catch you on the 21st of February.

The piece of dissertation wisdom that made me want to scream

This piece was written by Ben from the Literature Review HQ. Ben describes his blog as a “Literature review how to – from beginning to end”. Ben has a straight to the point style that resonates with me – and many other readers. Ben kindly submitted this piece on the difference between ‘Marathon’ workers and ‘Sprinters’. As a Sprinter  myself, I appreciated some of the advice he has to offer. You can find a permanent link to the Lit Review HQ on the right side bar of the Whisperer under ‘Blogs like us’.

“It’s a marathon not a sprint…”

*Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrh*

I have been told this so many times, as I’m sure you have too. In fact I’ve even said it to other people. The fact is, as an analogy, it’s pretty accurate. Writing a dissertation is a lot like a marathon – and not a lot like a sprint. So what’s my problem you ask… well I’m no marathon runner, I’m a sprinter.

Sprinter? Marathon runner? Dissertation? What are you talking about?

So writing a dissertation is a lot like running a marathon. They are both endurance events, they last a long time and they require a consistent and carefully calculated amount of effort to complete them and not burn out.

Some people are naturally good at this. You know if you are and you recognise it in other people. They tend to be super-organised, and always concentrating. They also tend to be able to get all of their work done in a very rigid time frame. Most people however, myself included are not like that.

Does this sound familiar?

• The mere thought of completing a large writing task often makes you freeze into inaction.
• You can easily procrastinate if the deadline is far away, “I’ll do it tomorrow”.
• You occasionally panic and have a spurt of writing activity before needing a week off to recover.
• You are more than familiar with the concept of an all-nighter.
• You don’t work consistent hours. The hours you do productive work tend to revolve around feelings of guilt or panic and/or a looming deadline.
• You can actually write pretty fast when you want to / have to.

Are you a sprinter too?

Did you answer yes to any of those questions? Chance are you have sprinter tendencies. If you answered yes to most of them, there’s no doubt – you’re a sprinter.

So you see my problem with the advice “it’s a marathon not a sprint”. I was not built to “run a marathon” in the traditional sense, it’s just not the way I work. I used to think this meant I could never write a dissertation. The truth is, as a sprinter, it is a bit of a struggle. I always used to feel like I was having a much harder time of it than the natural marathon runners I knew. However, it is possible for a sprinter to run a marathon – in fact, I even think there are some advantages.

Marathon Running – the Sprinters Guide

Make a plan – NOW! One of your fist bouts of sprinting activity should be spent on making a good plan. Get the plan checked over with a supervisor. The most important thing is that there are clearly marked and SHORT sections. By short I mean a “sprintable” length. Something that you could complete in one sitting if you’re focused.

Make a timeline. This goes hand in hand with the plan. Make a timeline of when you want to achieve writing goals. It is important to be detailed and to make yourself aware of the deadlines. I always find that as a deadline passes, even if it’s self imposed I feel a bit guilty which strongly motivates me to work.

Make lots of self-imposed deadlines and make yourself accountable for them – in any way you can. Be creative on this one. Is your supervisor a bit of a slave driver? Tell them you plan to submit a section of work by the end of the week. Tell your friends, put it on facebook, blog about it – whatever. You need to feel that people are going to hold you to account if you don’t do what you said you would.

Sprint and then slow right down.

This is golden. Most sprinters have a burst of activity and then stop completely – this can be crippling. You don’t have to stop, and you shouldn’t. It doesn’t matter if you go at a snails pace. If you write one sentence a day for a few days. You need to keep the work ticking over, so that as each day passes, you get a little bit closer to your goal. This is a huge mental boost for when you have your next burst of activity as you’ve been working a little but resting at the same time.

Beat the “I’ll do it tomorrow” attitude. Well you don’t have to completely. You can still do it tomorrow – as long as you start it today. Whenever you feel yourself putting off the work, make a simple compromise. You can put it off until tomorrow, as long as you make a start on it today. The start might only be 30 minutes but it makes a difference. Firstly, you will often feel that you want to spend longer than 30 minutes on the work once you get started. Secondly, you will be able to hit the ground running when you do get round to doing the work “tomorrow”.

The sprinters advantage…

Multitasking. I think it is easier for a sprinter to do more than one project at once. However, you need to make sure you have made a thorough plan of all the different things you want to achieve. Changing writing projects can actually be quite stimulating and allow you to sustain high intensity periods of work for longer.

So there you have it. If you’re a natural marathon runner – congratulations and carry on. If you’re a sprinter, you can use your natural abilities to successfully sprint your way to dissertation success. Are you a sprinter or a marathon runner? What do you do to help you last the distance?

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Under-graduate baggage?

This guest post was written by Prof Denise Cuthbert, the Dean of the School of Graduate Research at RMIT University (and my manager).

In our office we make time to have extended chats about the difficulties students encounter in doing research and how we can help. After one such chat, Denise sent me an article she wrote with Amy Dobson and Kate Cregan for “Undergraduate Research News” last November based on some prior research she had done.

I asked her if I could republish a modified version of the article here as it asks an important question: how does undergraduate education affect the transition to research and researching? I hope you enjoy this post and the questions it raises.

For a couple of years I helped to run a course called “Contemporary Issues in Sociological Research” which was designed to provide an ‘authentic’ research experience for third-year undergraduate students in the social sciences. While we had no doubt the unit offered a valuable and even transformative experience for the majority of students who completed, there were some real challenges to teaching it. Some of the brightest students had difficulties in making the transition from one mode of learning (course work) to another (research).

The students who enrolled were inured to highly regimented coursework units, with prescribed readings and circumscribed tasks set for each week of the semester. By contrast our research curriculum was set only in skeleton terms; the ‘content’ was to be largely to be generated by the students and there was a slender reading list. Some students, unable to cope with being handed this responsibility for their own learning, withdrew almost immediately. Several of these students confessed to being attracted to the unit precisely because the prescribed readings were minimal. On discovering that readings needed to be generated by them related to the specific work they were to do in the unit, their response was to walk.

A high degree of self-selection in (and out) of a unit of this kind is to be expected. Those that remained in the course were the best and the brightest, but they still struggled in these uncharted research waters. Notwithstanding their enthusiasm and excitement at doing ‘real’ research (as distinct, in their words, from the sort of research they had done in other units, including a compulsory methods unit), the sense of uncertainty, even danger generated both positive and negative responses. Clearly this transition to another mode of learning was deeply unsettling for even very competent students, despite their clear abilities to think and write at a high level.

We wondered: was the discomfort and inability to cope well with uncertainty a result of the kind of student being produced in undergraduate programs, both in the social sciences and humanities and perhaps elsewhere in the contemporary University? Does the structure of undergraduate programs inhibit students from acquiring the skills they need to become a researcher later on?

Over the last couple of decades Australian higher education has been audited and evaluated by the government with increasing fevour, all in the name of improving quality and avoiding risk. The upshot of this is that undergraduate coursework is much more proscribed and certain than it used to be. Assignments are set with clear expectations and criteria for assessment; reading lists are often exhaustive, reducing the need for students to search for their own literature.

Research degree study is profoundly different from this safe, walled undergraduate garden. You are largely responsible for your own learning. You need to make decisions about what to read and how to spend your time. Your supervisor is there to help you, but they cannot always anticipate your problems; nor can they reliably shield you from them when they occur.

There may be very good quality assurance reasons for the high level of prescription required at undergraduate levels (which looks set to increase under the rigours of the Australian Qualifications Framework). However, when educating to produce research outcomes and future researchers, real questions need to be asked as to whether this approach to undergraduate education fosters the capacities for risk and uncertainty entailed in good research.

It is well documented that getting good marks in coursework programs is not in all cases a predictor of success in research programs. The resilience, creativity and inventiveness required in researchers is more likely to be developed through working in business, industry and the professions. These qualities are harder and harder to foster in the highly controlled world of undergraduate coursework programs.

Perhaps we need to stop trying to straight jacket undergraduate courses into predictable formats, with predictable outcomes and predictable learning objectives. It is possible that we actually underestimate what undergraduate students are capable of. As one of our interviewees commented, once she overcame her initial fears and anxieties about what was being asked of her, our course generated the kind of excitement that she came to university to experience, but found wanting in her other undergraduate studies: ’This is what university should have been like from the start.”

If you are reading this blog you are probably teaching now, or have taught undergraduates at some point in the past. When you graduate you may well become a full time teaching academic. So – what do you think? Do some people start a research career with undesirable ‘undergraduate baggage’? What can we do to help people make the transition to researching from coursework?

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