This post is by Evelyn Tsitas, who is, amongst other things, completing a PhD at RMIT about werewolves, vampires and the nature of being human (yes, I have Topic Envy). The idea for this post emerged when we were having lunch one day and I complained that some of my academic colleagues didn’t like blogs […]
Category Archives: Presenting
We tend to think that doing a PhD is all about writing – it’s not
For years and years I taught 3D computer modelling and animation to architects and interior designers. As you probably know, when you have been teaching something difficult for a while you start to see the same mistakes over and over again. It’s easy, dangerously easy, to forget that it’s new people making these same mistakes and get, well – grumpy…
This is another great post from PhD student, full time gallery worker and mother, Evelyn Tsitsas … who decided a while back to do 3 conference papers just 8 months out from submission. She is now questioning the wisdom of her decision! It seemed like a good idea at the time. Somewhere, among the photocopied […]
Like all of you I’m sure, I receive an almost constant stream of invitations to academic events and conferences by email.I rely on mailing lists to keep me informed about what is happening, but lately I have started to get irritated about how difficult event organisers make it for me to share information. I have even started replying with ideas for how they might improve their communications strategy. These replies were, of course, politely worded suggestions.
This is the sarcastic letter I wrote in my head.
My colleague, and ‘go to’ person on all things teaching related, Ruth Moeller was kind enough to write a guest post for those of you who are looking for some tips to improve your teaching. Ruth is the Senior Advisor on Learning and Teaching in the Design and Social context college at RMIT University and editor of the Teaching Tom Tom blog. This post is written from the point of view of a student in your class who has some ideas for making your teaching better. Enjoy!
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 around all these clever clogs and be of average intelligence, so I have some coping strategies. These strategies have been developed by watching how clever people behave. The general principle here is: if I act like a clever person, I may become more clever – or at least I will appear to be more clever (which, existentially speaking, is the same thing).
“I told one of the mothers what I was studying for my PhD and she laughed in my face. Not kindly interested laughter either – out right derision. She paused after this and said “Why the hell would you bother doing that!” To add insult to injury, she went on to tell me she had a really difficult job – as a make up artist “
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…
How do you create a digital identity for yourself?
How can you design a beautiful poster for a conference? I’m not sure, but here’s what not to do.
