Category: Getting things done

This post is by Judy Redman who is a Uniting Church minister and, as part of her role as a university chaplain, has been minister of religion on the human research ethics committees of three different Australian universities. She has qualifications in Agricultural Science and Human Nutrition as well as Theology and is currently working on a PhD. Her university-related work experience has also involved being a research assistant and academic editing.

A group of academics across the world set out in November 2011 to write a negotiated word limited of up to 50,000 words (give or take according to what you decided your focus, capabilities and commitment could be) for a book or set of academic papers. A commitment was being made to a task that is a part of our roles as academics. Writing. It can be tedious and a challenge in itself to find the time, dedicate focus, and complete in a reasonable time. So in committing to prioritize writing for the month of a November a learning curve was set, and a steep one at that.

My professional life is endless blog fodder. I imagine it’s kind of annoying to be friends with me if you are doing your PhD because sooner or later you are going to Get Whispered. What you thought was a casual conversation over coffee and a muffin will be turned into a blog post while you weren’t looking.

So, to my latest victim…

Yesterday on Twitter ‏@kikidotca asked me “was wondering if you have some advice about making a list of possible examiners for a PhD?”. I contemplated answering in 140 characters or less, but I wanted to avoid writing a journal article, so I volunteered a blog post instead.

Wal Reinhardt is a second year doctoral scholar at The Australian National University, Canberra. In this guest post he takes a moment to share his office’s quest for a gong (literally). I hope you enjoy this post as much as I did.

This is a guest post from Rod Pitcher, a PhD student in Education at The Centre for Higher Education, Learning and Teaching 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. In this post he shares a particularly useful metaphor with us.

I’ve occassionally written about parenting through a PhD and some of the perils of PhD parenting. Since the average age of those studying for a PhD is 37 most of you will have some kind of family commitment, and yes – pets count. I find it mystifying that so many of the ‘how to get a PhD’ books offer precious little advice on how to cope.

This post is by Dr Alex Hope, a Lecturer in Sustainable Development and Project Management at Northumbria University in the United Kingdom and was originally post on his blog. Alex is also on Twitter where he tweets about sustainability, academia, PhD advice and life. I hope you will head on over there and check out what he has to say!

If work is invisible, Star argues, it can come to be de-valued. This concept of articulation work is powerful because, by naming it, we recognise all kinds of work which might otherwise remain invisible – or not be seen as a legitimate use of time.

Every month a plastic wrapped wad of paper, sometimes 300 sheets thick, used to land on my desk. This wad contained the ethics committee paperwork, usually around 20 applications and supporting documents, for me to review.

This pile of paper drove me nuts.