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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What to buy your favourite PhD student for Christmas

Your hard working editor is off on a round the world holiday with the rest of family Thesiswhisperer, so this will be the last blog post until the 17th of January. I plan to go dark on email and all social media while I am away, but that’s more of a guideline than a rule… (where there’s a wifi there’s a way!).

While in the UK I’m giving a lecture at the University of Sussex on the 15th of December called: “What I learned about doing a thesis from reading trashy novels”. The kind people at Sussex have made some places available for students from other universities to come along; if you are interested you can book online here. I’m looking forward to seeing some of you there

I thought I would go with the holiday theme for this post and offer up 5 Christmas gift ideas for PhD students so you can email it to your nearest and dearest. Hopefully you will end up with something a whole lot more useful than socks!

When I put the call out for gift ideas on Twitter I got some funny gift suggestions worth sharing, such as “a life” (@Peparda); “absolution  from thesis guilt” (@Tim_E_H) and “20,000 words” (@andideen). I laughed when @witty_knitter  suggested a gag because she thinks she is: “becoming a Thesis Bore. I’ve taken to checking for eye-glazing at social occasions. But it’s ALL SO INTERESTING”. I’ve separated the rest of the suggestions into 5 themes:

1. Books

I have been compiling a set of suggested readings in Amazon, but if I had to buy only one book for a PhD student on doing a thesis it would be “The unwritten rules of PhD research”. If you can’t get hold of that (it’s not something that bookstores generally carry) I recommend “How to write a better thesis”. The 3rd edition is out today in fact; Melbourne Uni press kindly sent me a copy, so I will review it in the new year.

@amelieguay reminded me that most students have some: “big methodological handbook they just can’t afford and from which they keep photocopying pages”. I remember I had one on loan for about a year until they made me return it… These  “nerdily big books”, (as @409mallaway put it) are a feature of PhD student hood; usually expensive and hard to find. Your family and friends will probably have no idea which one you want, so I would suggest making a wishlist on one of the many book store sites (family members, if you are reading this here’s a link to my Amazon wish list!), or ask for a gift voucher for your university bookstore, who are sure to be able to get in anything you need.

Finally, @tassiegirl suggested “anything from @phdcomics”, I would think a compilation of PhD comics in book form  would be a cheery addition to any PhD student stocking.

2. Gadgets

Not every thesis student wants a book, as @Tim_E_H begged: “please, nothing more to read!”. Instead he suggested an  iPad – “because we’re material, despite poverty”. In fact gadgets, like laptops, were prominently featured in PhD student wishlists.

If you aren’t feeling so flush with cash, @smythos suggested the IrisPen, which scans text right of the page and like a great nerdy present. I know many people, including @kyliebudge are fans of the Live Scribe pen which synchs speech with notes and @MeganJMcPherson suggested the matching livescribe notebook, which has the controls printed on the bottom of the page. There are also a few new ebook readers on the market, including a Kindle with the student friendly price tag of $79

3. Stationary

Speaking of notebooks, stationary made a strong showing in the responses, especially Moleskine notebooks ( my own favourite). I think it’s a good idea to check first before you buy someone a notebook, because everyone has a preference. I only like Moleskines with thin, un-ruled pages while @pollytext specified: “a beautiful, hard-covered, ring-bound, A5 notebook, with the kind of paper that makes any pen a joy to write with. $20-30.”

If you are a real cheapskate, or you happen to get a PhD student in the Secret Santa draw at work, consider these sticky post it note things from Kiki K designed for studying. These have ‘read’, ‘ revise’, ‘important’ and ‘reference’ printed them. Useful I assure you; I went through packs of these while studying.

4. Clothes and other stuff
My favourite item of clothing while I was studying was a long sleeved top with my University logo on it. I wore that thing to death, mostly because I was poor and couldn’t afford to replace it. @karynfulcher  made the sensible suggestion of a cosy hoodie, for those in the northern climes; us southerners could be treated to any number of geeky t-shirts. Going with the grammar theme again, I love this tshirt featuring the mythical ‘Alot’ from Hyperbole and a half’s hilarious grammar rant “Alot is better than you at everything. Of course, cool PhD parents, like @bronwynhinz, have bought the ‘Thesis Baby’ onesie for their kids.

If you feel funny about buying someone clothes, there are plenty of work place accessories. Agnes Bosanquet first gave me the idea for this post when she sent me a link to 17 gifts for grammar geeks which has many knick knacks for the desk. @kerstinsailer suggested super-size coffee mugs, or you could think about a nerdy desk tidy, like the super one made out of lego pictured at the top of this post.

5. Experiences

We have a lot of stuff, in the western world at least. There’s a growing trend to give people experiences as gifts, which emerged amongst the PhD students on Twitter too. @kerstinsailer made the excellent suggestion of a gift certificate for a massage, while @lizith made the interesting suggestion of: “something to get folk away from the desk – tickets for must see show or invite to supper with non-phd friends”. A nice idea! You could even extend the idea of a break with what @pollytext describes as “the piece de resistance: find or pay for a quiet retreat, away from phones & interruptions, for final write up.”

What would you like to see in your stocking on Christmas morning? Will you be buying your supervisor a gift? What do you think are good supervisor presents? I hope Santa is kind and grants your wishes – have a great Christmas everyone!

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5 ways to look more clever than you actually are

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

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

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

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

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

1) Wherever possible, be the one to speak last

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

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

2) Have some ‘pocket facts’ handy

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

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

You’re welcome.

3. Learn the lingo

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

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

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

4. Beware of jargon

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

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

5. Turn the problem around

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

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

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The Metaphors That Research Students Live By

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

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

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

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

Metaphors of Space

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

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

Metaphors of Travel

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

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

Metaphors of Action

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

Metaphors of the Body

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

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

Metaphors of Ordeal

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

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

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

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

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Why you should keep a PhD notebook

This guest post is by Eloise Zoppos, a PhD Candidate  in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University who is researching social media use by young adults. In this post Eloise offers some tips for keeping a research notebook.

Recently I had a life – or at least research – changing experience…I began keeping a PhD notebook! By PhD notebook I don’t mean a workbook where meetings, seminars, results and research progression are recorded, I mean a good old fashioned notebook where essentially anything that comes to mind can be noted.

Although this is probably already common practice for most people, for me the lesson to accept and embrace the messy, the illegible and the plain nonsensical was a hard one. However once I began to realize that it’s perfectly okay to scribble, deviate, muse, draw and think (or write!) out loud, keeping a PhD notebook solely dedicated ideas, thoughts and reflections changed my research life.

Here I want to offer some easy tips for other students who may be finding hard to see the benefits of a notebook, and may be finding it even harder to actively maintain one.  So here are 5 tips that I’ve found helpful in making a PhD notebook an effective part of my research life which I hope some of you may find helpful:

1. Use one book for all your notes

If you’re anything like me you probably you have various places where you note down ideas, thoughts and reflections about your research ranging from a formal notebook to pieces of scrap paper that are handy at the time! When it comes to actually embracing these ideas however, having one notebook – or at least having one notebook for each subset of your research – is one of the easiest ways to ensure you can easily keep track of your thought process.

I’ve found that documenting my ideas, thoughts and reflections – no matter how minor – in one notebook has not only helped me to become more organized in the way I conduct and approach my research project, but it also meant that I no longer have to worry about misplacing or just downright forgetting a potentially significant idea.

2. Take your notebook everywhere

When I first began rigorously keeping a PhD notebook one of the first mistakes I made was not taking it whenever I went to work. This of course defeated the whole purpose of having a notebook as I resorted to writing my notes on scrap pieces of paper, which as I mentioned above was not conducive to tracking the progress of my research project. So if you’re starting a PhD notebook or just wanting an easy way to make it an effective part of your research life, then this is one of the easiest things you can do!

3. Avoid using white out or ripping out pages!

When it came to maintaining a PhD notebook one of the hardest things for me was accepting (and embracing) that in this designated notebook the process of writing and the writing itself was allowed to be messy and/or plain nonsensical! At first I would spend time whiting out words and whole sentences either because they didn’t quite ‘flow’ or even because the writing was not neat enough. It even came to the point where I was ripping pages out and yes, in some instances even re-writing pages that were too messy! Not only did this mean that I was not using my time effectively, but also that I was missing out on one of the great aspects of having a notebook; being able to track both the thought process as it happened and the evolution of the research project itself.

I soon began to realise that often the things I disliked and felt uneasy about such as the words that I had crossed out and replaced, and the arrows swapping paragraphs and ideas around, were the most telling of how my thought process and my research project had evolved. And this point leads on nicely to my fourth tip:

4. Hand-write notes

Although most of my writing is done on a computer, when it comes to note taking I almost always rely on hand writing instead. I realise that many readers will not agree with this and that’s fine, however I found that by taking notes by hand I was able to see my thought process as it happened rather than relying on a set of perfectly typed notes.

For me, typing notes on a computer may have been faster, but it was less spontaneous and it became too easy to merely delete something that I didn’t like or something that I deemed as unimportant. I also found that with computer notes I missed the nuances that emerged from various word choices, sentence re-writes and structural changes that were evident with hand written notes. Although this aspect of the research process can be easily overlooked, it can be one of the most formative parts of the research process in the early stages of the formation of the project right up to the stage of writing up the final product.

5. Re-read your notes

The last tip for making a PhD notebook an effective part of the research process is continually going back and re-reading your notes. Although this seems obvious, with the amount of notes you produce (especially when you start documenting them in one book) the number of pages starts to build up. When you start working on something else, it can become easy to forget all the various notes that you actually took. Looking over them when you start on a new sub-project or section, or even just looking back through them every week, can be inspiring, reinvigorating, or may even spark a great idea that you may forgotten about or just didn’t have time to chase up!

So that’s 5 quick and simple tips for making a notebook an effective part of your research life! For those of you who have a notebook or are thinking about keeping one, what are your useful tips for making it an effective part of your research process?

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5 ways to Poster = Fail

This week I overheard @VGoodyear asking on Twitter about tips for doing poster presentations at conferences. I thought it would make a great post topic because there’s so little guidance in the ‘how to do a thesis’ books.

A poster is a good starting point for your conference career. It’s less confronting than giving a paper because you don’t get peer reviewed and you don’t have to get on stage and defend your ideas. Most of the time posters are looked at during breaks when everyone is milling around, so it’s likely that more people will see your poster than a verbal presentation. You will probably have to stand in front of your poster at least some of the time, so it’s a great way to meet people, especially if you are new to a recurring conference.

But doing a good poster is surprisingly hard. My first conference poster was an utter failure. This is a shameful admission because I am no stranger to the concept. I endured 8 or so years of pin ups in architecture school and worked in advertising.  But I’ve seen plenty of terrible posters since then, so I feel better about it now. I’m no graphic designer, but I consulted with my sister Anitra who is and I feel confident enough to tell you what NOT to do.

Here’s 5 things to avoid:

1. No story

The poster reading experience is more like being at an art gallery than reading a book. You need to tell a story of your research (or part of it) with images and text. Both have different design considerations.

Your poster must accommodate multiple people reading it at the same time, so breaking the text up is a good idea. However many posters end up with a lot of disconnected bits of text on them because the author hasn’t thought enough about the ‘story’ that holds it together. You can use standard story structures to create logical ties between each part; a time line is a good way to do this, or outline steps in a process.

Use images sparingly – more on that later – and consider what purpose they serve. They aren’t mere decoration, but every image adds more ‘noise’ to your poster. Excess noise, at the expense of ‘signal’, can make your poster hard to read. Image placement is a complex issue, so don’t be tricky with angles unless you feel confident; if in doubt line them up with imaginary grid lines. Remember that it’s hard to read detailed text at the bottom of a poster and hold a cup of tea at the same time, so the bottom of the poster is a good place for images and the title.

2. Badly chosen text

Where do I start with this one? It’s hard to know how much text you need, you want people to stand there for about 5 – 10 minutes at the most. Less is more in this instance – resist the urge to tell them everything. The idea is to provoke interest and questions, not tell the whole story of your research.

Sometimes people cut and paste text directly from their thesis draft, which is almost always a bad idea. At the very least your poster should contain an abstract that describes the purpose of the work and write it as plainly as you can – you can’t rely on all conference attendees having the same knowledge and background as you.

3. Horrible typography

It’s hard to manage the text on a poster, but remember that people are reading it at two scales: from far away and close up. You should aim for no more than three kinds of text: one for the title, a second subheading style and then body copy for reading. You will need to have a few headlines to guide people around the page, but not so many that they compete with each other – hierarchy is important.

Make it easy for yourself by arranging the bits of text in a way which takes advantage of the way English speakers tend to read: it’s the same way they write – from left to right and top to bottom. Anitra suggests you start with 15pt font for body text and 24pt font for subheading and more for the title, but be sure to test it out in a full scale mockup and see how it looks. Remember that text is easier to read if it’s flush to the left and ragged to the right (ie: not justified to both sides, which can create unsightly ‘rivers’ down the paragraph).

4. No ‘hero’ image

Images are great to illustrate your text and provide interest, but remember trying to emphasise everything usually means you end up emphasizing nothing. One of your images should be the ‘hero’ – it should be eye catching and bigger than all the rest. The purpose of the hero image is to seduce people to your poster, so it should speak about the project in some way. Don’t be tempted to put it at an angle to make it more obvious and never run text over the image unless you have a good grasp of basic graphic design principles.

5. No takeaway

I recommended having a more detailed handout pinned up next to your poster, or ready to hand, which people can take away with them. This should be beautifully written and include all your contact details – clip a business card to it if you have them as people are more likely to file these. Forgetting to include a takeaway means missing a fantastic self promotion opportunity. You never know where that piece of paper will end up – maybe in the hands of someone who wants to give you a job!

So that’s my top five – does anyone have any other tips to offer? Have you seen any good ‘hacks’ to the poster presentation format which you want to share?

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What the Wiki?!

If you have a devilish sense of humour, you can derive endless amusement by engaging your supervisors and your librarian in some earnest discussion about Wikipedia.  Next time you’re searching for a vital piece of information, just try asking an innocent question along the lines of, “My girlfriend/ flat-mate/ brother said I should just do a Wikipedia search, but I don’t know how reliable it is – what do you think?” Then sit back and enjoy the fun.

Maybe you’re unaware just how contentious the subject is, but it won’t take you long to find out.

You might argue that, as a sensible and responsible librarian myself, I ought not to encourage you in such mischief.  Well, maybe you’re right.  But the point I want to make is that you need to take care when you’re web-searching. Many librarians vehemently oppose the use of Wikipedia and other similar sources for scholarly research.  Why might that be?

First let me give you Wikipedia’s own definition of itself, so we know what we’re talking about:-

Wikipedia … is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its name is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning “quick”) and encyclopedia.

Now, when I started thinking about this blog post, I intended to alert you to the dangers of putting too much trust in Wikipedia.  However, if I’ve inherited one trait from my late father, it’s the ability to appreciate more than one point of view.  So I looked at a few entries on subjects that I reckon I know well; I felt it was only fair to see what Wikipedia said about itself, and to do a bit more delving into the way entries were put together.  After careful consideration here’s what I think on five key areas:-

1. Not a bad place to start.  If you’re looking for basic facts, and you’re happy to verify them elsewhere, then there’s no harm in going to Wikipedia.

You’re looking for biographical dates?  Or a definition of some technical term?  Then why not take the easy option?!  On the other hand, if what you’re looking up might be controversial, then you need to know more about what you find there.  As a researcher, you have to develop inbuilt antennae to detect where there might be bias, and to handle such information with caution.

2. Reliability.  Can you rely upon the information you find in a resource that has evolved by communal effort, and is not peer-reviewed in the conventional sense, with entries edited by nameless individuals of unknown reputation, and citations drawn from all manner of sources, both old and new?

It doesn’t sound too hopeful, does it?  However, if you look at Wikipedia’s own entry on Reliability of Wikipedia, you’ll find that at least some research has found Wikipedia’s “self-healing” properties to be surprisingly effective – in other words, errors are often (not always) picked up and corrected by subsequent self-appointed editors.  But take care: omissions of key facts or areas can in themselves lead to undesirable bias.  Ask yourself: Would you recognise a gap?

3. Unpicking the stitches.  If you’re serious about discerning how reliable a Wikipedia entry is, then you need to do some detective-work.  I view this as a similar exercise to unpicking a garment in order to establish how it was made.

Look at the structure of the article – has some thought gone into the compilation of the entry, including the coding and hyperlinks etc.  Are there references?  (More of this in a minute!)  Additionally, can you establish the author of an entry?  Sometimes, yes.  Go the tab, View History, from there to Revision History, and finally click on Contributors.  If you’re lucky you can click on their name or pseudonym and find out more.  You’ll also be able to see just how many times the article has been edited. All these are clues.

4. Identify the sources.  Towards the end of the article, there may well be footnotes, references and external links.  See if you can establish how up-to-date the information is, and where it came from.

If you’re looking for historical facts, then it may not matter that the information comes from a very old edition of Encyclopedia Britannica.  On the other hand, if that information is judgmental, then maybe there’s an undesirable bias that you won’t want to perpetuate.  Again, with a historical figure, it might be that their contemporaries viewed them one way, but that modern historians see things otherwise.

So, don’t just look for the dates of the sources and nod sagely.  Decide for yourself whether you’re happy with the dates of the sources, and keep an eye open for missing decades or centuries!  Remember that country boundaries can move, place-names can change, and even spelling conventions can change.  (We used to refer to the composer Tchaikowsky; now it’s usually Tchaikovsky.)  How crucial is currency in your particular discipline?  What’s acceptable?

5. Don’t accept the citations blindly without checking them.  Remember my example of the undergraduate looking for three books by a particular author.

Wikipedia didn’t tell her that one “book” was an article in an Italian journal (journal title, date, and volume number would have been useful); a second book had gone out of print so quickly that few libraries seem to hold it. Better bibliographical details would certainly have helped establish that fact; and a third book was still apparently being written. “Unpicking the stitches” just might have established whether there was a chance the book had now been completed – or, conversely, was unlikely ever to see the light of day!

If you see a promising reference, check it out. You can do this in many places: subject-specific abstracting/indexing database, a national library catalogue, a union catalogue (in the UK, we have COPAC, which allows you to search all the UK University and national library catalogues simultaneously) – or, indeed, even Google books, Amazon, Alibris, or another bookseller that deals in both current and out-of-print titles.

After careful consideration I can’t adopt a  black-and-white view either for or against using Wikipedia. Notwithstanding all these warnings, I must admit that I was quite impressed by Wikipedia’s “Reliability” article, and by the care that has gone into setting it up as a collaborative resource.  But at the end of the day, information is only as good as the diligence and reliability of the entry’s creator, and you need to satisfy yourself that you can depend upon the information that you’ve found.

Finally – Can you, or indeed, should you cite Wikipedia in your own work?  Again, Wikipedia concedes that opinion is divided on this.  (Of course, sometimes you can get round the problem by citing the source from which the Wikpedia author derived their material.)  But I’d advise you to ask your own supervisor, or journal editor, if it’s acceptable to cite Wikipedia – and, of course, always to ensure that your own citations are impeccable in their detail!

Have you tried to cite wikipedia? What happened?

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Don’t type ‘format c:”

Don’t type “format c:”

Lately I have been asked by various people to help them make better use of technology in their academic work – or at least write a post about it.

It seems I have developed a reputation as the ‘technology expert’ and, lately, the ‘social media expert’  in my workplace. This is not a new experience; throughout my working life I have been the ‘go to’ person when people have technology problems and new ideas. I find this curious, because this is not how I think of myself. I will admit to being an ‘early adopter’ and being fascinated by the Shineys (new gadgets). I’m always looking for new ways to use computers in my work, but I have spent my life around true geeks. I have high standards as to what ‘geek’ really means and it usually involves being able to program UNIX.

My dad studied to be a dye house chemist in the 1960s, but  became a computer programmer in the late 70′s . His first job involved looking after mainframes, so I spent my childhood playing making necklaces out of punched cards. But even though computer geekery is clearly in my blood, I have never become a proper computer nerd. Despite a brief addiction to Zork in the 80′s, I never really got into computer games, nor did I display much aptitude for computer programming – much to my father’s disappointment (I did marry a computer programmer though, which cheered the old man up a bit).

So when I get asked to share the knowledge with my colleagues – which I am always happy to do – I try to explain that it is not software proficiency which makes me ‘geeky’, but the attitude to technology I developed in my childhood. I think this attitude is best summed up by the conversation I had with my father when he sat me down in front of our family’s first PC, sometime in the early 80s. As I recall it went something like this:

Dad: “We’re going to learn ‘Basic’. Type: 10 print “hello world”
Me: “What if I hurt it?”
Dad: “What do you mean?”
Me: “What if I kill its brain?”
Dad: “You can’t kill it. It’s not alive. It doesn’t have a brain”
Me: “Then how does it, you know – do stuff – if it doesn’t have a brain?”
Dad: “The computer is stupid. It only does what you tell it to do. The only way you can hurt it is to type “format c:”
(pause)
Dad: “please don’t do that by the way”
Me: “OK.  Can I play Zork now?”

In retrospect, this conversation was almost the most important I have ever had with my father. He gave me the confidence to face new software without fear. I jump in and fiddle around, break some stuff and eventually work out how to use it – with the comforting knowledge that nothing I do (except typing “format c:”) will cause lasting damage.  Technology isn’t scary, but it isn’t that special either; computers are stupid – humans are smart. When it comes to ‘working more effectively with technology” I try to think of the problem before the tool – and be open to the idea that technology is not always the answer.

This approach works best if you take the time to really understand the nature of your problems. Let’s look three problems you definitely have and how they might be solved with technology:

The Information Problem

Researchers have to collect information from various sources: books, journal articles, interviews, experiments, artefacts and so on. Storing this information and finding it again is obviously a problem, but there’s a larger problem lurking: how to make sense of the information. Specifically, how to make connections between pieces of information and your own thoughts in order to come up with original ideas.

I’ll admit to being old school and keeping a journal, but I rarely transcribe what I write there into the computer, or even look at it again to be honest with you. I used to worry about this, but I’ve come to accept that the act of writing is important to helping me to remember and understand what I hear or read.  The information I wrestle with most is in electronic form – there’s so damn much of it and bookmarking is inadequate as a way of retrieving and using it.

One way I solve this problem is Evernote, a free online database application. You can store random webpages, pdfs, images and notes which appear as little thumbnails in the viewer; these can be arranged and viewed in different ways. Evernote is a ‘cloud app’ which means I can use it from any computer or my phone, which is handy, but it’s key advantage is that you can ‘tag’ ideas with keywords. This means you can store multiple sorts of information in ways which are meaningful to you – and start to see the connections between them.

The Reading Problem

Researchers have to read. A lot. Again the problem is twofold: managing the sheer volume references, and reading them efficiently.

Most researchers use bibliographic software to store references (if you don’t, you really should) and most universities support Endnote. People tell me Zotero is better and I see the appeal, but I like Mendeley; mostly because it works a bit like itunes (I like being able to make ‘play lists’).

Reading efficiently is an art. I’ll admit to ‘surface reading’ most of it and ‘deep reading’ only what’s interesting, but it’s still an enormous task. If you take it seriously, reading inevitably leaks into every corner of your life. I read on public transport, in waiting rooms, playgrounds, while cooking and even at parties (ok – boring ones). Making your reading material portable is solved by printing it out – but then the article is ‘off line’ and the notes can get lost. This is where an e-reader and something like “instapaper” or Calibre can be useful. Mr Thesis Whisperer recently bought me a Kindle (which I LOVE), both these programs will make the webpage into a kindle document, which I can then write notes on.

The Writing Problem

I’ve written previously about Scrivener, which I think addresses many problems of research writing better than MS Word. However the other problem with writing is that it can be arduous – I have tendinitis from my PhD and a sore back. I find it physically painful to write at times. On the advice of Paul Gruba and @sadistician I have started using the built in speech recognition capabilities in Windows to talk my first draft straight into MS Word (thank you Microsoft – you still totally rock). I then transfer the text into scrivener. This doesn’t solve the writing/pain problem entirely, but it’s a significant improvement.

So how about you? Do you use technology to solve these kinds of problems? Or do you have ‘analog’ techniques which are just as effective? I’d love to hear about them.

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Elephants never forget, sadly most PhDs are not supervised by elephants! How to deal with forgetful supervisors

We’ve all been there; walked into our supervisor’s office and they look at you perplexed, or enter into some kind of weird conversation and then look blank when you sit down because they have completely forgotten your meeting.

I’ve heard of more extreme cases which include the supervisor having to be reminded of the thesis topic at every meeting, even after submission! At the same time I remember seeing supervisor number two in the college coffee bar and sending her into a blind panic thinking she had forgotten a meeting (she hadn’t). We are all human, we all forget from time to time so here is my strategy for helping you help them to remember and stop yourself from having a nervous breakdown at the same time.

Keep emails succinct and to the point

Supervisor number two used to show me the hundreds she got on a daily basis. With that number it is no surprise most are skim read and sadly, that can lead to no end of problems. Try to be as succinct as possible when you email your supervisor. Use bullet points, or alternatively, number each point so they can reply to each in turn.

There are two schools of thought on ‘quantity’ of emails. Either send them one long one with everything you want to say in it or send them by topic. I’ve experienced people who prefer both so there is no hard and fast rule, my inbox today proves it. I have 8 emails from my supervisor all on different topics all sent within minutes of each other! You’ll soon be able to see what your supervisor responds best to or what annoys them and work with that.

When you have a meeting set an agenda … Always set an agenda prior to turning up to a meeting. This helps both you and your supervisor cover the topics / issues you need to discuss, go through them one by one and tick them off as you do so. This means if you do go off topic, and you probably will you can bring it back to the issue at hand easily. This makes supervision sessions more productive in my experience and also stops the ‘oh I wish I’d asked about xyz’ feeling ten minutes after you leave.

After the meeting send them an email

This is particularly important if you have agreed a certain course of action and if the supervisor needs to do something by a certain date. Make sure you outline what you agreed, who is going to do what by when etc. A PhD is a partnership; you need to do your bit as well. This should help both of you clarify what you are doing to move forward.

Set realistic deadlines

This is as important for them as it is for you. As I keep saying it is a partnership and so you both need to meet the goals you set yourselves but be realistic, sometimes life will get in the way, for both of you so the key is to keep each other informed and to change meeting dates or whatever if you need more time.

It is better to take more time and have a productive discussion over a piece of writing that is sub-standard. At the same time they need to be honest with you when they can realistically do things. If you know your supervisor is forgetful or swamped, take their proposed deadline and suggest one that is a week or so on from that. Make sure you can work within that framework but allows them slippage.

Remind them, politely if they don’t do something

You won’t be the only student that your supervisor is dealing with so, as my supervisor suggested in my previous post, it is perfectly acceptable to remind them, politely. It took me ages to actually get into the habit of doing this; I thought I was being rude however; waiting for work to be returned for 6 months is not acceptable. Make sure you give them plenty of time to do whatever it is you need especially if the request is for references. It is your PhD, you need to drive the process.

Make sure you know when they are away … This proved particularly important for me. So make sure you know when they are away, that everything you need has been done before hand and also agree what you should do if something crops up during their period of absence. Seems pretty obvious but it’s amazing the number of PhDs I’ve seen wandering around looking for supervisors who weren’t even in the country, let alone the department.

If you are coming in for a meeting make sure you have something else to do

I lived about an hour by train from my campus and remember how I felt when I had arranged a meeting with supervisor number one and came in specially only to be told he no longer had time. It is fair to say the air went blue. From this point on I always made sure I had several things to do when I came in and sent email or text message reminders of meeting dates to make sure they were ok.

Be visible

Make sure you are ‘seen’ around your department, it is surprising how chatting to another member of staff in the coffee line can lead to them saying to your supervisor I saw so and so and reminding them you are around! Visual stimuli come in all shapes and sizes

If it is causing you stress talk to them

If it is making your working life difficult then talk to them about it. A good supervisor will understand your concerns and should adjust accordingly, especially if you meet every one of their targets, requests etc. You can do it politely by saying what you need / want to achieve in a certain time and that it requires then to do X by Y or just be direct and say your forgetfulness is not helpful to me what can we do to change things. They may be aware of their shortcomings and be able to suggest things you or they can do to remedy it.

The key is communication, don’t let this get out of hand as forgetfulness can easily grow from a mild irritant, to you suddenly requiring my divorce article!

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How to write 1000 words a day (and not go bat shit crazy)

Recently I Tweeted a link to an article called “How to write 1000 words a day for your blog” which I thought had some good productivity tips for thesis writers. @webnemesis wrote back: “ would like to see someone write a blog post on how to write 1000 words of substance for yr dissertation every day”. Of course I answered: “Challenge? Accepted!”

When I was nearing the end of my PhD, I added up the number of words I had to write and divided them by the number of days of study leave I had left. Then I freaked out and had to have a little lie down. According to my calculations I had to write 60,000 words in 3 months.

After a  cup of tea (with maybe just a whiff of scotch in it) I contemplated this problem and made a PLAN, which was cobbled together from all the advice books on writing I used in my workshops with doctoral students. A case of eating my own cooking if you will.  This PLAN worked for me and I share it with you here.

The PLAN works best closer to completion, when you have absorbed a lot of information about your topic and have thought about it for awhile. The basic premise is: “there is no such thing as writing, only rewriting” and that half the struggle of a thesis is to get stuff out of your head and onto the page in order to start the rewriting process.

Step one: spend less time at your desk

Now close that Facebook window and listen to Auntie Thesis Whisperer for a moment. The secret to writing at least 1000 words a day is to give yourself a limited time frame in which to do it.

What’s that I hear you say? “Are you crazy Inger??”.

Well, as I’ve said before, just because Mr or Ms Bottom is paying a trip to Chair Town it does not always follow that productive work is being done. If you give yourself the whole day to write, you will spend the whole day writing and, in the process, drive yourself bat shit crazy.

One of my supervisors once said “Doing a thesis is like mucking out a stable”. His point was that you have to tackle it one wheel barrow load of shit at a time - if you stay in the stable too long, the stink will kill you. So dedicate less than a quarter of the day to making some new text and then take a break and return  later to clean it up. This sounds counter intuitive, but trust me – it works.

Step Two: remember the two hour rule

I think most people only have about two really good, creative writing hours in a day - two hours in which new ‘substantive’ ideas will make their way onto the page. Most of us are in the best frame of mind for this after breakfast and before lunch – whatever time of the day that happens to be for you. So writing new stuff should be almost the first thing you do when you sit down to your desk. Personally I find it hard to resist the siren call of the email, but if I am on deadline I do an emergency scan then close it until lunch time.

Step Four: start in the middle

When I am on deadline and need to generate words I don’t even attempt to write introductions, conclusions or important transitions. As Howard Becker in his excellent “Writing for Social Scientists” said: “How can I introduce it if I haven’t written it yet?”.This attitude is echoed in “Helping Doctoral Students to Write” , where Kamler and Thomson recommend that thesis writers think about their work in terms of ‘chunks’ rather than chapters.

A chunk can be anything up to two pages long – the text between each subheading if you like. No doubt you have some scrappy notes which you can transcribe or cut into a new file as a ‘seed’. Once you have planted the seed, just start adding on words around and over it – this builds a chunk. Don’t worry about where it fits yet – that’s a rewriting problem.

Step Four: Write as fast as you can, not as well as you can

This advice also comes from Becker, who points out that thinking happens during writing. The surest way to slow the process is to worry too much about whether your thinking is any good.So give yourself permission to write badly. If you can’t think of a word use another/equivalent/filler words: don’t slow down and start to think too much.

Do this ‘free writing’ in bursts of about 10 to 15 minutes. When you need a rest, review and fiddle with the text – maybe plant a new seed – then move on to another burst. It’s likely you will produce more than 1000 words if you do this for two hours – in fact I usually did around 3000. It’s grueling and bad for your back and shoulders, which is why the two hour time limit is important.

Step Five: leave it to rest… then re-write

Because you are writing without judgment, most of the words you generate in step four will be crap. Carving off the excess crap in the editing process will reveal the 1000 words of beautiful substantive text you are after. But take a break  before you attempt this, or you wont have the necessary perspective. Go and have a coffee with a friend, walk the dog, watch some TV – whatever takes you away from your desk for a couple of hours. Then come back – maybe after dinner – and start sifting through, massaging and editing.

Be strategic about this editing – some parts will be easier than others. But do try to pull some ‘finished words’ – even if it’s only a paragraph – back into your draft each day. This gives you a sense of achievement which is important for morale.

So that’s how I wrote 60,000 words in three months. When I present this method in seminars it invariably horrifies those people who like to write line by perfect line. I’m sympathetic to the reasons people like to write that way, but it seems to me that they suffer a lot more pain than perhaps they need to. I’d love to hear your views on this and any tricks you have to share.

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