Category: Getting things done

Since completing her PhD 5 years ago, Nilam Ashra-McGrath has been running workshops on The Ups and Downs of PhD Research. She begins the workshop by sharing her PhD journey using a timeline, and has finally put some of this into a Prezi format. In this guest post, she explains some of her thinking and …continue reading.

As many regular readers of this blog will know, I am NOT a huge fan of Microsoft Word for writing. For writing journal articles and books I use Scrivener, which is a word processing program invented by a PhD student (true story). The genius of Scrivener is that it is designed with the work of …continue reading.

This post is by Dr Judy Robertson who is a senior lecturer in computer science at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland and Chief Cat Herder for the undergraduate computer science programme there. Judy is a blogger as well as a contributing author to the amusing collaborative internet novel in progress “Granite University”. In this post Judy …continue reading.

Just before I handed in my thesis two things happened, which, up to then I had thought were PhD student urban myths: A whole journal came out full of articles that ‘scooped’ my thesis topic (gah!!) Endnote bugged out and turned all my 400 odd references into gibberish (instant coronary!!!) My supervisor solved crisis number …continue reading.

This post was written by Paula Hanasz who is currently writing a thesis on the geopolitics of water security in South Asia at The ANU. She is enrolled at the Australia National University but currently spends more time on her couch than in her office or the library. I’m going to take a moment out …continue reading.

Carina Wyborn recently completed her PhD at the ANU and is now based at College of Forestry and Conservation at the University of Montana. Carina wrote the story of handing in her PhD for her blog “The pacific exchange” and sent it to me. I loved it and asked if I could cross post here. …continue reading.

Recently @indecisionpersonified asked me a question in the Thesis Whisperer feedback forum: “… I have just moved continents and been accepted into a PhD program and have six free months before I start. I was wondering whether you had any advice to give people like me on how best to use the time before starting …continue reading.

Jerry Booth is a sociologist who was a Head and Faculty Director in departments of art, design and media until joining a medical school. He is particularly interested in the organisation of learning through practice, and is writing a PhD on how learning outcomes are translated through the curriculum into clinical placements. The title of …continue reading.

This post was written by Linda Murray who recently submitted her PhD on Maternal Mental Health in Central Vietnam through Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. Her thesis was completed on nine desks, in four cities and two countries. She now lives in Hobart, Tasmania and works part-time at the University of Tasmania teaching Global …continue reading.

This post is by Cassily Charles from Charles Sturt University – a fellow thesis Whisperer. Cassily is the academic writing coordinator for Higher Degree Research Students in the CSU Academic Support Unit. Cassily discusses misunderstandings about writing style and how they can lead to conflict between students and supervisors. This post is enlightening to me as an educator – I hope you will be enlightened too.

This is a story about a doctoral student named Laura (a real person, but not her real name) and how she came to pull her hair out (well a few hairs anyway).

Laura began her PhD this year and really hit the ground running – within a few weeks, she was giving her supervisors many many pages about the literature on her topic. Laura’s supervisors are conscientious, organised and well-intentioned. They gave her masses of feedback on her drafts, with many helpful comments about content, style and structure, including comments such as: ‘good observation – now relate this to an over-all argument’ and ‘engage critically with these definitions’.

This is where things went wrong and Laura pulled some hairs out…