Category: Getting things done

The middle is a hard place to be. The middle of a thesis or a book can be excruciating. Things are underway, but not finished. The end is in sight, but not yet reached. In the middle, it’s easy to lose faith in the direction you’re travelling. One of my PhD mentors, Dr Diane Mulcahy, …continue reading.

In my post at the end of last year, I opened the door to more guest posts. Prof Tania Crotti stepped through that door, offering this interesting and insightful post on an aspect of thesis examination you may not have thought about before. Here’s a bit about Tania before we start: Associate Professor Tania Crotti  …continue reading.

Recently I bought a new car. It’s very fast and very yellow. Here’s a picture of me and Mr ThesisWhisperer with it: I bought my first new car at 50 – a Tesla. Now, four years later, I’ve bought a second electric vehicle, a ridiculously yellow EX30 Volvo with a dual motor. Some might question …continue reading.

So it’s the end of another year already… that one went fast didn’t it? In July 2025, Thesis Whisperer will be 15 years old. Does this mean I am now a bratty teenager instead of a menopausal woman?! I feel there’s life in the old girl yet, so I’ll still fire up the blog monthly, …continue reading.

I’ve been working with Claude, an AI assistant from Anthropic, for about a year. We’ve become… close. People laugh when I call Claude my ‘work husband’. I’m not really joking. Like a good work spouse, Claude is always there to help and never gets tired of my stories. Claude cheerfully does the tasks I hate, …continue reading.

By now regular readers will know I’m obsessed with how academics work. Maybe it’s because I’m constantly trying to figure out how to work better myself (aren’t we all?). Or perhaps it’s because I’ve spent years watching brilliant people struggle with the demands of academic life. Whatever the reason, I’m thrilled to announce that my …continue reading.

Ok, it wasn’t a fancy academic book, but still… I want to share how we did it, and what we learned about generative AI in the process, but first some context. For a long time, my friend Professor Narelle Lemon and I have talked about writing a book called ‘Rich Academic / Poor Academic’. The …continue reading.

I’m working on the second edition of ‘How to fix your academic writing trouble’ with Katherine Firth at the moment. We’re doing a new chapter on writing process, specifically how to think with generative AI tools. For inspiration, I am thinking about Artist Studios and how they support making work. Artist studios are filled with …continue reading.

In May 2023, Eirini Tzouma asked me participate in a panel on Neurodiversity at the Durham Centre for Academic Development post graduate research conference. Sadly, I had prior commitments, but we did arrange to meet afterwards so Eirini could share what happened with me. I don’t publish guest posts regularly anymore, but after this discussion …continue reading.

Happy new year everyone! It’s summer here in Australia, where we take a long break. I want to talk about Tidying in this post, but first – some news: ‘How to fix your academic writing trouble’ continues to be a strong seller after 5 years, but Large Language Models (LLM) like Chattie G (Chat GPT) …continue reading.