Category: On Writing

Calvin Ho (@calvinhyj) is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He researches skilled labour immigration policies in Western countries. Through the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program at UCLA, he also mentors minority students planning to pursue doctorates in the humanities and social sciences. Calvin is an avid blogger and …continue reading.

Paula Hanasz  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. The first time we met Paula she was experiencing PhD lifestyle guilt. Next …continue reading.

This post is from Calvin Ho, a social scientist interested in the effect of international migration policies on individuals, communities, and industries studying at UCLA in the United States. You can catch up with Calvin’s latest work and thoughts on his blog. Academics don’t often talk about how they write. By how, I mean the nitty-gritty how. …continue reading.

We often talk about ‘searching the literature’ – but how do you actually do it? Literature searches are one of those skills that we assume students already have when they get into a PhD. As a consequence we rarely make time to explicitly teach the skills, so it’s probably not surprising that I meet many …continue reading.

Early this year the Australian Prime Minister, who was under a bit of pressure about a questionable decision at the time, dismissed social media as ‘electronic graffiti’. People in my networks were outraged and, of course, took to social media to express their outrage. For a few days feelings were high, which resulted in a …continue reading.

One of the most popular posts on the Thesis Whisperer is How to write 1000 words a day and not go bat shit crazy. Last year a Twitter follower brought to my attention a post called How I went from writing 2000 words to 10,000 words a day by the fiction writer Rachel Aaron. I …continue reading.

I believe it’s important to find a reference manager that fits your working style. Most university libraries teach and support Endnote because it was one of the first to market. Many people end up with it because it’s the default, but it’s not your only choice – or, in my opinion, the best one (I’ve …continue reading.

Most creativity involves theft. Take Thesis Bootcamp as just one example. Dr Peta Freestone and Dr Liam Connell from the University of Melbourne, didn’t really invent the Thesis Bootcamp, but they did steal it creatively appropriate it in a rather special way.  I watched Melbourne University Thesis Bootcamps at a distance, via social media updates. …continue reading.

Juan Castro wrote to me earlier this year to show me his new, free application ‘writefull’ designed for people who are doing their thesis in English when it is not their first language. I’ll admit, as a native English speaker and confident writer I’d never thought to use the Google technique he described, but it …continue reading.

I often get asked if students are allowed to use professional editors. In most universities you can and there are even funds provided for this purpose in some cases. Brendan Brown, Director of The Expert Editor, an Australian professional editing company that specialises in thesis editing, sent me this article recently. I thought the article …continue reading.