When you do a PhD, life doesn’t just … stop. Most of us start a PhD later in life (the average age on entry is 32), with family and financial responsibilities. Everyone has a role when a crisis hits – supervisors, administrators, family and friends. How can we support each other better? This post is […]
Do you struggle with commas? I certainly do. In my defence, the 70’s was not a great decade for grammar education. I was taught commas were ‘where you breathe’ in a sentence. Wrong, wrong mc Wrongtown! If you’re as confused as I am sometimes, Dr Janene Carey is here to help. Before taking up her […]
In June I will have been blogging for 8 years, which is a pretty decent run for an original content blog that aims to put out useful, high quality material 48 weeks a year. One of the key success factors in blogging is trust. If you publish roughly the same sort of post, at regular […]
Some years ago now, I wrote about self doubt this way: “The Valley of Shit is that period of your PhD, however brief, when you lose perspective and therefore confidence and belief in yourself. There are a few signs you are entering into the Valley of Shit. You can start to think your whole project […]
This post is by Miriam Wharton, a part-time doctoral student at the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at Massey University in New Zealand. She is writing her thesis on the relational approach within New Zealand Special Operations Forces. She is also employed full-time. I think this post speaks to the rapid collapse of certainty you […]
This post is by a Phd student who would prefer to remain anonymous. As we go through life (and for many of us, go through a PhD), we naturally accumulate adversities. When a new hardship rolls around I tend to respond in three steps: Step 1: Grieve. All seven stages. Step 2: Find a community […]
I have worked exclusively with PhD students for over a decade now. I have clocked up the 10,000 hours Malcolm Gladwell says you need to be an expert, so I hereby declare myself an expert in the problems of research education. One sign that you can genuinely claim the title of ‘expert’ is when you […]
This post is by Dr Katherine Firth, research fellow at Latrobe university and fellow Thesis Whisperer. Katherine blogs over at Research Voodoo. This is another in our series of posts about our upcoming book “How to fix your academic writing trouble”. If you are interested in getting advanced news of the book before it’s published, […]
Are you close to submitting your PhD? Genevieve has some excellent pointers for you to smooth the process. In 2016 Genevieve Simpson completed her PhD, which examined community, industry and government perceptions of residential solar energy technologies and policies to support its adoption. She is excited about the opportunity to take her findings out into […]
Welcome to 2018! I wish you all the best in achieving your PhD goals this year and commit to continuing to support you in my own, small way. The New Year (whenever that happens for you culturally) is the time many set aside for reflection and goal setting. For some reason, people like to change […]
