Category: On Writing

I have a friend, let’s call him Darryl. Darryl used his skills from a former life as a project manager to bring his PhD in on time and on budget. This involved carefully setting constraints around his project so it was doable and collecting data in a time efficient fashion. When this was done Darryl …continue reading.

I love books on writing. I have many, many books on the subject, but I continue to buy more because, well – I simply can’t resist them. Just as it’s more relaxing to watch people cook and do gardening on the TV, often reading about writing is so much nicer than actually doing it. One …continue reading.

This letter was written by an experienced academic at ANU to her PhD student, who had just presented his research to a review panel and was still licking her wounds. The student sent it to me and I thought it was a great response I asked the academic in question, and the student who received …continue reading.

This post is by Cassily Charles from Charles Sturt University where she is the academic writing coordinator for Higher Degree Research Students in the CSU Academic Support Unit. (ie: another thesis Whisperer). In this post Cassily picks up on an earlier post from February on the topic of PhD student as Meerkat – a powerful …continue reading.

This post is by Susan Stewart Loane, who is a PhD student at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.  Susan left a career as a management consultant when her first child was born and now juggles family life with research and a little adjunct teaching.  PhD study while also parenting can’t be described as easy.  Of …continue reading.

This post is written by Dr David Alexander, who has recently been awarded his PhD at the University of Queensland. He is currently taking a well-deserved break and pursuing some non-academic endeavours, including motivational speaking, trivia hosting and professional calligraphy writing. In this blog, David writes about his experience of producing a thesis composed entirely of …continue reading.

This post is by Cassily Charles from Charles Sturt University and fellow Thesis whisperer. Cassily is the Academic Writing Coordinator for Higher Degree by Research students in the CSU Academic Support Unit (ccharles@csu.edu.au). In this post, Cassily follows up her eariier post on misunderstandings about personal writing processes, and how they can lead to conflict …continue reading.

It’s officially summer here in Australia! Seems like an appropriate time to sing the praises of summer school. This post is by Tamara Cumming who is a Doctoral Student, at Charles Sturt University, Australia. Her thesis explores the work of early childhood educators in practice assemblages. She spends her time writing furiously, attending fabulous summer …continue reading.

I often make my doctoral students cry, but I hasten to add it’s not because I am mean. The supervision work I do is emotionally intense because I seem to have (accidentally) become a specialist in helping people who have had difficult candidatures for one reason or another. Gina Wisker calls these people ‘doctoral orphans‘ …continue reading.

In case you didn’t already know, this week is Open Access Week. To celebrate, this week’s post is by Belinda Thompson,  a PhD Scholar in the Menzies Centre for Health Policy at the Australian National University. This post originally appeared on the Open Access Support Group blog and I’d like to thank Danny Kingsley for …continue reading.