** Apologies to email subscribers – I accidentally sent a draft version of this post on Saturday. The fully edited piece is below. Thanks for your patience and understanding.** —————————– Before I start, big news! Long time readers will know that I have been working for years with a team here at ANU on PostAc: …continue reading.

A little content warning first: I talk about depression and anxiety in this post. If that’s not for you today, click away friend. I’ll see you another time. I have been trying to work out how to write this without sounding like a privileged white lady, but I can’t, so I’ll just say it: I …continue reading.

Hello dear reader! It’s been a busy winter and I am suffering a bit of post-election exhaustion. Last month, For the first time in 12 years, I did not get around to doing a Thesis Whisperer post. While I felt bad about breaking such a long streak of self-imposed discipline, I consoled myself that the …continue reading.

Language warning. It’s fruity in here people! On the back door of the Greens office in Braddon, where I’ve been spending a lot of time lately, there’s a sticker with ‘unfuck the future’ right at eye height. This sticker made me chuckle each time I opened the office during this long election campaign. The election …continue reading.

I’ve often compared the last part of your PhD to putting your head in a bucket. In the Researcher developer trade we call this last bit of the PhD ‘The Write Up’. ‘Writing up’ involves hours and hours of detailed work; to end up with a manuscript ready for examiners. There’s a sameness to Writing …continue reading.

Academics are always worried about having their ideas ‘stolen’. This deep cultural anxiety affects PhD students more than almost any other member of the community. There’s a good reason why PhD students should be anxious about protecting their ideas – examination. A PhD is meant to be a signal that you’re fit to be a …continue reading.

As regular readers will know, I am a working researcher with an interest in post PhD employability. For nearly 10 years now my research focus has been on job advertisements for researchers. this post is a detailed update on the academic and non-academic job market, 2 years into the pandemic. If you don’t want to …continue reading.

It’s been a funny old start to the year hey? As I write this, in mid January, the Omicron variant is raging here in Australia. Supply chain problems are resulting as key workers either get sick, or have to isolate. Every visit to the supermarket is an adventure – you don’t know what you are …continue reading.

Did you have a break over Christmas / New Years? I hope so. It’s summer here in Australia, so we are rolling into the quiet month of January. For the second year in a row, we have a low fire danger summer, instead of a repeat of the horror of 2019. In fact, it pretty …continue reading.

It’s the end of #acwrimo!! Did you take part in Academic Writing Month this year? I certainly did. It was lockdown, so this year we made a big deal of it at ANU. Not to put too fine a point on it, I taught my ass off. You can see some of the workshops I …continue reading.