What not to wear: the academic edition

As you may or may not know, I will shortly be heading off to the UK for a few weeks by invitation of Herriot Watt University, the Vitae North West hub and Bangor University. I’m very excited about the trip and I’ll tell you more about it in my next post, but it did present me with an unusual dilemma:

What exactly does one wear when giving a Keynote Lecture?

Deciding what to wear is not easy when you are an academic; we don’t have the luxury of suit-as-uniform like our counterparts in the corporate world. We often have to front classrooms full of people barely out of puberty and then go to a committee meeting. For some time now, my twin sister, and fellow academic, Anitra (@anitranot) and I have been creating our own ‘clothing taxonomy’ to deal with this complexity.

The academic clothing taxonomy is basically a series of silly wardrobe nicknames expanded beyond the classic Little Black Dress (LBD) to encompass any number of occasions. Presently it includes: “The definitive white shirt”, “The sexy librarian number”, “The meet the people dress”, “The Last Minute Tute” and “Perfect Pants”, to name but a few.

(Stay with me now – there’s a serious point coming up later I promise!)

Each of these items of clothing fit certain social and academic workplace challenges. The “definitive white shirt” goes with anything, including jeans, and makes you look put together with minimal effort. The “Meet the people dress” is the sort of outfit which takes you from classroom to drinks before an evening lecture without looking like you are trying too hard (The “Spring Show” is  the  art / design exhibition version of the same thing). The “Last Minute Tute” (LMT) was developed when Thesis Whisperer was under 3 and I needed to pull off casual and classroom ready 10 minutes after getting out of bed. It was therefore crucial that the LMT was good at hiding the inevitable toddler ‘yogurt hand’ marks.

These wardrobe Types are like Platonic Forms; @anitranot and I are always on the hunt for new and more perfect manifestations of them. We have been known to ring each other excitedly when we find a Fine Example of a Type and, since we are basically the same shape and size, sometimes we buy two – just so the other wont miss out (it’s a twin thing).

The “Sexy librarian number” (SLN) is perhaps the most elusive; it’s the kind of dress you need when presenting a paper; a dress which makes you look ‘academic’ without being frumpy and, despite the ‘sexy’ label, this dress must not be too revealing. The Keynote Dress (KND) was the older sister to the SLN. The KND needs to step it up a notch in the ‘serious academic’ stakes, but doesn’t need to be as over the top as my one and only “I’d-like-to-thank-the-academy awards night ensemble” (a fiendishly difficult dressing challenge let me tell you – luckily I have only had to do this once).

Anyway, I found the Keynote Dress unexpectedly, on my lunch break, and remarked on Twitter that I was relieved that this wardrobe challenge had been achieved. I was surprised by the number of responses by people who could relate to and were interested in the numerous challenges of academic dressing.

It seems my sister and I are not alone in the nick name thing; @trishmorgan told me about her “lucky conference blouse” (must add that to my list). As usual, PhD Comic s has been there before as @jasmine_z  pointed out. I was interested when @alisonseaman told me that her creative dress sense was too creative for the other Fine Art academics and when @deborahbrian started to talk about the ‘bloke fashion’ trend in Archeology I realised this academic dressing thing deserves some serious attention.

Does what we wear have career implications? This article from The Chronicle  sent to me by @fashademic suggests it might:

“There was just one problem with the English department’s job candidate: his pants. They were polyester, green polyester, and the members of the hiring committee considered that a serious offense. For 10 minutes they ranted about the cut, the color, the cloth. Then and only then did they move on to weightier matters”

They say you should dress for the job you aspire to, not the one you have, so should you have to dress the part to get an academic job?

If we are to believe Pierre Bourdieu, the French social theorist, the answer would be yes because we all possess ‘cultural capital’. With apologies for the gross simplification to those of you reading this who are experts in this area, cultural capital can be thought of as an asset, just like money, property, jewelry and other possessions. We accumulate it by immersion; by being in a world where you constantly watch how others dress, behave and act – and (mostly unconsciously) mimicking what you see.

An example of cultural capital at work is ‘good taste’. Who decides what ‘good taste’ is? Well, everyone and no one. It is something that arises between us and owned by no one, which is why it’s possible to have so many personal definitions at the same time. However, if Bourdieu is right, those personal definitions of good taste will start to converge when groups of people spend a lot of time living and working together. Every academic discipline will comprise different sorts of cultural capital – no group is homogenous, but there will be ‘tribes’ that share values and ways of doing things (as Becher and Trowler pointed out). PhD study is the perfect time to spend some time studying these tribes and acquiring your own store of academic cultural capital.

Acquiring academic cultural capital is much more than a matter of learning how to dress the part. Consider the problem of the literature review. In the literature review you display your knowledge of what constitutes ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in a particular academic field. You do this by choosing and talking about the ‘right’ key authors, in the ‘right’ way. Knowing what is ‘right’  is a form of cultural capital you have acquired through reading and talking with other academics. It is difficult to acquire academic cultural capital outside of the academy.

Possessing and displaying the right cultural capital – in your writing at least – is essential for building trust and credibility with your academic colleagues, so why not clothes too? Or should they not matter? What do you think? Do you have ways of dressing which you think help you ‘fit in’ with your academic tribe? I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments.

(Late addition: on the suggestion from ‘Ozzietassie’ in the comments below, I have started a board on my Pinterest account called ‘academic dress?‘. I can’t make it collaborative very easily, but please put links to images you want to add in the comments and I will pin them)

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Things they don’t tell you about writing

One of my favourite new blogs is ‘Patter’, authored by Prof Pat Thomson who co- wrote the quite wonderful “Helping Doctoral Students to Write” with Prof Babara Kamler. I was fan-girlishly excited when Pat appeared on Twitter. After a few 140 character conversations Pat asked if I wanted to co-write a post with her and I jumped at the chance.

This piece was authored, surprisingly painlessly, from Pat’s original idea to finished post, over a couple of weeks using Google Docs. We planned for it to appear simultaneously on both blogs which, given that Pat and I live on opposite ends of the world and have busy travel schedules, ended up being the one unexpectedly difficult part of the process.

If you haven’t started to read Patter yet I hope this post will encourage you to pay a visit!

Did you plan to be a professional writer? Most academics we meet in our work don’t. What usually draws people to academia is teaching. When you think about it, teachers talk at least as much as they write. And their writing is related to planning and assessments, not the kind of extended paper writing that professional writers do.

It’s only when they start a research degree that many people realise that writing is more than ‘ passing phase – it is the key to a successful academic career. It is hardly surprising, then, that writing is a source of much anxiety.

There is a great deal of advice around about how to write and indeed, we have written some of this ourselves. Some people claim that it takes 10 years to become an expert at anything, but we would argue that one probably never really feels like an expert writer. Being a writer is an endless process of discovery. It is a little like becoming a professional musician; committing to being a writer means a lifetime of honing your technique through practice.

Becoming a writer is  also a bit like becoming a parent. It’s not until you have walked the floor with a screaming infant at 4am that you can truly understand what all the talk about ‘tiredness’ is about.  But there are many aspects of parenting that no one tells you – or doesn’t think to mention. Like ear infections, strange phobias, weird little habits and so on.

So it is with writing. Only by indulging in the practice of writing, day in and day out, do you really understand what it means to be a writer. Like parenting, writing can be full of surprises – both pleasant and unpleasant. We thought we would compile this list of  “Things they don’t tell you about writing” in an attempt to prepare you for what is coming!

(1)    They don’t tell you that once you get used to writing with a computer you can’t go back to pen and paper again – or only with great difficulty. They forget to mention that you become obsessive – and snobby – about the tools you use to write with and will bore for your country to unsuspecting graduate students about what they SHOULD use.

 (2)    They don’t tell you that writing ends up written not only on the page but also on your body – shoulders, neck, arms, wrists, back. Pat’s PhD led to carpal tunnel syndrome, which makes your hand go numb . You wake up with a dead appendage on the end of your arm. Inger’s PhD ended up in her right shoulder and has never left. They don’t tell you how writing will affect your sleep patterns either. In the middle of a project you may find yourself waking at 3am with too many ideas whirling around your head. Indeed, some of this post was written in that witching hour.

 (3)    They don’t tell you to learn touch typing at school. When we were at school typing was only available to girls who they thought ought to be secretaries. The rest of us did Physics and Chemistry. Now we both do versions of typist hunt and peck. This would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that kids in school still don’t seem to be taught keyboarding. All over the UK and Australia kids type on desk tops with two fingers. It’s no wonder that they prefer txting

 (4)    They don’t tell you when you buy your first computer that now you’re locked into an endless loop of consumer desire. You have to have the desktop, the tablet, the notebook and the phone… regardless of the fact that they all now work together. We both have cupboards full of old discs, disc drives, CDs, CD burners… which eventually end up at the local waste transfer centre.

 (5)    They don’t tell you that regardless of how intuitive it seems some software is always just a bugger to get to work properly. Case in point – TOC, tables, auto-formatting, auto-spelling. And don’t think that transferring from PC to Mac is entirely seamless either, despite what the blurb says. The professional writer has to be the professional digital trouble shooter.

(6) They don’t tell you that … Well – what do you think? Are there aspects of writing that you are only now discovering? Let us know in the comments!

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I’ll have what she’s having: hottie research envy

Do you ever suffer topic envy? I did – I still do.

From designers, writers,  animators and dancers to computer geeks, nano particle engineers and bio-scientists: there’s an incredible spread of research here at RMIT. I am forever hearing about amazing PhDs and sometimes thinking “I wish I could do THAT one!”.

So it was when I got talking to Evelyn Tsitas at a work function last year. Evelyn used to be a journalist and works at the RMIT Gallery. At the same time she is completing her PhD in Creative Writing in the Media and Communications school here at RMIT. When Evelyn told me about her topic I was so jealous I asked her if she would write a post. She wrote this wonderful piece about the perils – and pleasures – of having a ‘hot’ research topic. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I thought I had the hottie research topic until I heard of the woman who was reading Vogue for her PhD.

Damn. Suddenly werewolves felt so – pedestrian. I need not have worried, however, judging from the response I got when I showcased my research at two  Animal Studies conferences last year.

As I got in the lift to head down to another room for a session after my own presentation, a senior academic got in with me. Her paper had inspired awe in me and I hung around her during the break, stuffing myself with vegan cake while listening to her views on human animal representation in literature.

“I enjoyed your paper,” she said to me, graciously. “Especially the images on your powerpoint of the hunks with their shirts off from Twilight, loved it!”

Yeah! Go werewolves!

However, not everyone thinks the human animal character in science fiction is worthy of research at the doctoral level – for instance, the woman in whom I induced research envy early on in my PhD. I was at a parent’s school dinner and the other mums wondered why I had been absent from the social calendar for the past year.

“I’ve started my PhD – and still working as well, so there’s not much time for anything else,” I mumbled, in between hurried bites of my curry. I was aware I had a deadline for my supervisor to meet, and a book extract to analyse, and the tad worrying prospect of having to return very useful but sadly unread books to the library as the overdue fines meant no extensions were possible.

“I am doing my doctorate too!” said the woman opposite me, whose daughter had just joined my son’s class that year. I was in the company of a fellow traveller.

“What’s your research topic?”  I asked, politely. She seemed so confident, and I a newbie, on shaky ground. I had only tentatively started to announce my own research and it hardly felt legitimate.

“Quantitative analysis of educational research papers from – “ she rattled off a long and impressive title. It sounded, however, like a worthy but alas dull, topic. She had made no attempt to “sex it up a bit” for the average punter in her conversation with the rest of us. She looked at me smugly and took a sip of wine.

“And what’s your research about?” she asked me. There was a glint of a challenge in her eyes. I gulped.

“Oh, werewolves,” I said. “Mutants, post humans, hybrids…”

At this point, the entire table turned, riveted, to me. “Oooh really?’ Werewolves!” or “I prefer vampires!” and “I love Twilight!” and “That’s so cool!”

The woman glared at me. I had trumped her with a hottie research topic. It was like the showdown between a commercial fiction writer and a revered literary author. One gets fans and book sales; the other is invited to literary festivals and is bestowed with awards.

My supervisor tells me that I am “tabloid to my blood”, a reference to the decade I spent at the Herald Sun newspaper as a journalist. But the thing is, I didn’t go into the PhD thinking “I need a hottie research topic”.

It was actually an organic progression from my MA exploring organ donation and reincarnation in my creative writing, and an exegesis looking at the lifecycle of the scientifically created human character in science fiction. It was an intense time with two young children, and as all postgraduate parents will know, your research filters to them on many levels.

At the time my youngest son went to a Cubs Halloween party dressed as Frankenstein’s Creature and announced that, as the Creature had been created and then rejected by another and had no society of his own, his search for identity was bound to turn violent. The other seven year olds looked at him in bewilderment and then ran around with their arms stretched out in front groaning “I am a monster…oooh…”

I was an enthusiastic conference participant and often the lone writer at many bioethics conferences. It was perhaps inevitable that I would hear a paper about xeno transplantation and start a five year love affair with the idea of animal parts in humans and the speculation about how that may change what it means to be human. So, no – my hottie research didn’t come from reading Twilight and wanting to jump on that band wagon.

That didn’t stop a rather vile shade of green spreading over the woman’s face as she sat opposite me at the school dinner. As the rest of the guests pumped me for more detailed analysis of the role of science fiction in bioethical debates – and werewolves – she finally blurted out “don’t you realize that werewolves aren’t real!!!!!”

“What do you mean?” I asked. It seemed pretty real to me as a topic; I’d just done my confirmation.

“I can’t believe you are doing a PhD in something that doesn’t even exist!” she yelled.

I wasn’t brave enough or confident enough to say what I would now. Which is – what’s real, anyway? Folklore, legend, myth and story are the basis of the world’s cultures and part of what makes us human. I am researching the stories about our nightmares, our hopes, fears and desires. The things that we dare not say and how we use animals to stand in for the things that cannot be said. We create myths of werewolves rather than talk about the person who abducts a child from the village and rapes and kills her. We say a vampire rose from the dead and slept with his wife and left her with child rather than say a widow found a lover.

But I was too new at the game, and she was too angry. What can I say? Research envy – it’s a bitch.

Do you ever suffer from research envy  – or suffered fallout from it? Tell us in the comments!

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Following the ‘rules’ (or not?)

This guest post is by Mary-Helen Ward, a PhD student who also works as a manager in eLearning at the University of Sydney. Her PhD is investigating the process of doing a PhD at an Australian research-intensive university, using blogs to gain data about students experiences in real time. In this post Mary-Helen reflects on PhD writing and risk – what does it mean to ‘follow the rules’?

A PhD involves production of a scholarly text. However, it is a truth universally acknowledged that PhD students find writing this text hard. Tara Brabazon, writing in Times Higher Ed nearly two years ago,  lays the situation on the line: if you want to get a PhD based in any discipline (she includes creative-based disciplines in this) you have to follow the rules.  It isn’t personal, the rules apply to everyone. The scholarly text, whether it is called a ‘thesis’, ‘dissertation’, or ‘exegesis’, must explain the work you have done, why you did it that way, and what your work contributes to new knowledge in a discipline. While, superficially at least, these rules seem simple, they do not really help you make decisions.

This is where a lot of the trouble starts.

For instance, how do you decide how long this scholarly text should be? It may surprise you that a thesis does not have to be very long; it may even consist of a single page. The text will always be considered as part of a larger research project. The range of disciplines that have found their way into the academy over the centuries means there is a huge range of possibilities for the form the larger project takes. You could, for example, have created a new way to measure ripeness in fruit, or new ways to sculpt a figure. You might have shed new light on the work of a particular writer, or made a film about a writer. You could have investigated how people live within the restraints of a limited income, or demonstrated a leap in the application of gene therapy. You can even compose an opera and get a PhD.

Taken on its own, your PhD project is an amazing piece of work. You have done or found out something that no-one has ever done before – or, at least, has not done before in the way that you have done it. But that’s not what you get your PhD for.

You get a PhD for writing the scholarly text.

As I pointed out in the beginning, the scholarly text explains the significance of what you did, defends why you did it that way, and lays out really clearly what new knowledge your work contributes. This last part is perhaps the most important. You have to explicitly tell your examiners how your work does that and make the claim for originality (and take originality very widely – it might be your method that is newly applied to work previously done).

Brabazon wants to see a sentence beginning “The original contribution to knowledge of this thesis is…” in the abstract; this is a bit extreme for me, but I do think a sentence should appear no later than the introduction.  Such a statement is crucial – it shows you are displaying confidence in your work and it gives the examiners something to measure the thesis against. You are telling them what you think you’ve done, and they can read on and find out if that is what you did.

In addition your thesis should showcase what you have learned. You have gained other skills in doing your project, but you will demonstrate their development in your scholarly text.  The problem for you, as a thesis writer, is to decide how to do that. And here’s the heart of the matter: to do a PhD is to take a risk.

How much risk do you want to take?

Most students, reasonably, take the conventional path, following established practices and methods in established disciplines. Their contribution to new knowledge may be small, although important when seen in a bigger picture. They might find a new way to measure something; a new widget that might move an industry into a more green direction; a new idea about teaching young children how to estimate in maths. If this is the kind of thesis you are doing, and you take care to explain clearly what they have done, why you did it that way, and how it contributes to new knowledge, it’s highly likely you will be successful.

Not all students have it so easy. The relationship of the thesis to the project work can be more difficult in disciplines where you ‘make’ something: the visual and performing arts and applied science, for example. One of the members of my family was recently awarded a PhD in science. He tried to make a portable device that would measure fruit ripeness without damaging the fruit, using NMR. He was not successful; the device he was able to create with the resources he had was not sufficiently robust. But in calibrating the device using different molarities of sugar solutions he discovered something about the behaviour of water that has never been published.

The scholarly text he produced was not a conventional ‘five-chapter thesis’; after his ‘methods’ chapter it was structured as a series of considerations of all the factors that might have made the device he was designing work. This conceptual design thinking, along with his chapter on the behaviour of water (which was unrelated to his research question and was almost a side issue) meant that his PhD was passed easily, although his project work was not technically a success.

Some students – relatively few it has to be said – conceive of projects that cross and even break boundaries. If you are someone who wants to do this you and your supervisor(s) need to be very clear about what you are doing . You need to know why you have done it that way and you must communicate this clarity confidently to your examiners. There is no reason you can’t follow your dream and contribute to knowledge in a truly original way, just don’t expect the examiners to notice by a kind of mind transfer how clever you have been. Spell the contribution out for them as early in your thesis as possible. That’s one rule you must not break!

So what sort of thesis are you writing? Is it a ‘high risk’ proposition, or are you following a more conventional path? Do you have any ideas about what you might do if you have unexpected results?

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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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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?

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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?

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Is the University a Bad Boyfriend?

Sometimes I just sits and thinks, and sometimes …

This post is by our regular library correspondent, Dr Karen McAulay. In this post Karen asks: where and when do you do your best thinking? Are libraries the answer?

Recently I read a blog post by Richard Watson, in which he reported that he had once asked a thousand people when and where they did their best thinking.  And guess what?  Quiet, distraction free places won, hands down.

I must admit that my favourite was, “37,000 feet and half way into a gin and tonic”, but let’s face it, that precise combination of circumstances happens infrequently for most of us!   Similarly, although I find that a single glass of white wine beside the computer at 1.30 am is actually very conducive to the writing of dissertation chapters, I do agree that it’s not a good idea to make a habit of such nocturnal activity.

But about halfway through his blogpost, Richard got onto the subject of libraries.  He mentioned the plight of some public libraries who seem to be struggling with a feeling that they’re irrelevant to a large percentage of the population.  I sat up and paid attention when he stated, quite categorically, that in his opinion libraries should stop trying to be Starbucks and instead cultivate the quiet stillness that is so hard to find elsewhere: “We need to preserve silent spaces”, he said.  And he meant not just in libraries – they were just one example.

Now, it would be easy for me to leap onto my soapbox here.  I am, after all, a librarian.  I personally love deeply quiet research libraries.  My favourite place in the whole of Glasgow is the Special Collections at the top of Glasgow University Library.  What could be nicer than being twelve floors up, with fabulous views over the city and beyond, and – inevitably – an absorbing historic text on the desk in front of me?  If it’s sunny, the views are especially fabulous.  If it’s a howling gale or even a tumultuous storm, it’s still a lovely comfortable haven from which to observe it behind glass! It’s all the nicer knowing that mobile phones aren’t likely to ring, voices will be subdued, and everyone else will be working with the same level of concentration as my own.  Is it any wonder I like studying there?

Now, my own library – well, the one where I’m a subject librarian – has a very different atmosphere.  I work in a conservatoire.  I wouldn’t say it was like Fame Academy, but our students are very sociable, like working together, and interact with each other almost constantly.  Even our research is ‘practice-based’, which means there are lots of composers and performers (although the composers are likely to be at home or in a music studio.)

The only time you get deep stillness in our library is when there’s hardly anyone there…  And for that reason, we have a ‘Silent Study Zone’ in a glazed room at the far end of the library, so that the hermits can get peace while the extroverts are busy interacting.  It’s still not like Starbucks, though.  We don’t mind covered drinks being brought in, but mugs of coffee aren’t welcome and there certainly aren’t any cookies!

If you’re a research student or lecturer reading this, you may already be shuddering at the thought of such a buzzing atmosphere.  But rest assured, we do pounce if groups of students are getting particularly over-excited; singers attempting to sing-along-a-CD are shushed; and – most importantly – regular user surveys confirm that the vast majority of our readers like the library just the way it is!

Recent postings on The Thesis Whisperer have reflected upon places where we like to work.  And the ‘Shut Up and Write’ movement is proof enough that not everyone needs total silence in which to work.  Sometimes a gentle background noise is quite soothing, so long as it’s not intrusive – and here’s the crunch – so long as we aren’t required to interact with it.  If you can sit and write with a few friends, comfortable in the knowledge that they’re not going to interrupt you with chatter, but equally that you expect everyone to be writing rather than checking texts and Twitter, then you’re well set-up to get some meaningful work done.

So actually, I don’t think this ‘where do you do your best thinking?’ question has any single best answer.  Rather, I think you need that indefinable combination of relative peace and quiet, an absence of other distractions, and a bit of self-discipline. Where do you get your best ideas? Is a quiet library your idea of heaven – or not? Now, who’s going to suggest some really imaginative, maybe unusual places for getting those creative juices flowing?

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Office or Cafe: which is the better workspace?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Of hands and minds

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

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

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

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

So here I am… writing on a Mac.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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