Category: Miscellany

This post is by our regular library correspondent, Dr Karen McAulay. In this post Karen asks: where and when do you do your best thinking? Are libraries the answer? Recently I read a blog post by Richard Watson, in which he reported that he had once asked a thousand people when and where they did …continue reading.

Do you ever have conversations with your partner like this?
(While relaxing over a nice meal and glass of wine)
Mr Krystle “Shouldn’t you be studying right now? How are you ever going to finish your PhD if you keep boozing up”
Krystle: “Arrrrrrrggggggghhhhhh!”
If the answer is yes, print this post out and put it on your fridge 🙂

ow is the right time for a Research Student Association. I guess your first question is going to be: Why? Well, simply put: Money. A more complex answer revolves around the need for a student run organization that supports research students and has a budget to do so.

“We did particularly well in the third round when we had to identify international architecture, and as a table we chatted about the conferences that we had attended all over the world. But then things got harder and I realised that while I have focussed all of my attention on my PhD research topic the rest of the world has gone on without me.”

…most academics trust their colleagues to be ethical, upright people who are careful with data. Sure, we look for research design flaws and argue about theories, but no almost no one has the time to check your analysis. It would too much time and effort, which needs to be spent on our own work. We just assume it’s been done properly – and go on to argue furiously about how we would have done it differently. This is why reputation is so crucial within academic communities; doing a PhD is one way to put money in your reputation ‘bank’

How has doing a doctorate changed over the years? Prof Peter Downton reflects: ” Someone undertaking a doctorate at the same time as me was locally famous for reading only about six books. They were well-selected and extremely well read. In those times it was less evident that there was far, far too much material to be accessed. Fears of drowning in material, or horror of being unaware of important papers, were lively issues then as well as now. Perhaps I realised early the difficulty of getting to all the material within a lifetime. I became calm about this. If, realistically, I could not deal with everything, then it was useless to fret.”

A couple of weeks ago I visited Sydney University to give a keynote address during research week. During morning tea I got chatting to the director of the Graduate Studies Office, Simon French, who invited me over to his office to continue the conversation before I left for Melbourne. Simon told me to find my …continue reading.

I was under the naive assumption that finishing my PhD would mean this need to balance my work time with family life would change, but sadly this is not the case. Becoming an academic is like signing up for a whole lifetime of study, so the challenges are still there. I’ve been talking to other PhD parents since this incident and I’ve come up with 5 ways your PhD might affect your school aged child

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….”

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.