Watching Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks facing the UK’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee, surrounded by media hounds and with the world’s TV cameras scrutinising every breath, I couldn’t help reflecting that a doctoral viva voce (or defense) is really very civilised by comparison…
Monthly Archives: July 2011
Have you presented at a conference and suddenly heard a snide remark from the back only to find it’s your supervisor? Believe me this happens, I’ve seen it and I’ve seen the poor students try to defend themselves and been totally lost. This is not best practice, have a word. Better still, show them the door.
Maia tells us: “I submitted my thesis. About three weeks ago. I still don’t quite believe it. Hate me yet? I would. Every time a friend submitted theirs, I wanted to kill them. Or die. On the up side, it’s really possible! Until it was almost over, I didn’t think so….”
“Demystifying Dissertation Writing” sits on my shelf of ‘how to’ books. Stylus publishing donated a copy to Dr Charlotte Frost and Dr Sarah Quinell, of PhD2Published, kindly organised for a research student to receive a copy and review it for the Thesis Whisperer. This review was written by Linda Baines, a part-time researcher, who is […]
… recently I’ve started to think about Slow and how it might apply to academic work, because there are aspects of doing a thesis which just cannot be rushed…
This is the first guest post by Dr Shari Walsh from the Careers and Employment service at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. Shari is one of a very small number of careers counsellors who specialises in helping PhD students. Here Shari talks about the importance of developing a vision about your future career path post PhD.
In a long, extended project like a doctoral dissertation, it’s all too easy to allow ourselves to get distracted, both by potentially interesting research ideas, and by humdrum everyday interruptions.
Editor’s note: One of the nicest things about running this blog is that I often receive ‘thank you’ letters by email from PhD students, especially when they complete. Often they tell me the most important thing they have learned, or give me tips and ideas for a post based on their experience of doing a […]
