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The Thesis Whisperer is now over 10 years old! An older blog is a big, confusing attic full of content. On this page you’ll find a selection of low cost books created from the blog content – and a few other surprises. All sales help me sustain the blog. Take a look!

The uneven U

Publishers often send me academic writing books to review. I happily look through every book, but if I think I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it, I just don’t write a review. I don’t want to crush a fellow author’s soul. The rejected titles sit sadly, in small piles of guilt, on the bottom of one of ...continue reading.

Latest articles

December 2, 2020

While you scream inside your heart, please keep working.

So, 2020 hey? What a trip. I don’t know about you, but concentrating on my work when the world feels like it’s up in flames, literally and figuratively, has been, well – difficult. In order to keep my shit together in front of students and co-workers I’ve been, as a Japanese theme park put it,continue reading.

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November 4, 2020

#whisperfest 2020

The Research Whisperer blog has the tagline ‘Just like the Thesis Whisperer, but with more money’. A lot of people ask me if The Research Whisperer is one of my aliases or a group of people who are trying to rip me off. In fact, it’s neither. Tseen Khoo and Jonathan O’Donnell who run Thecontinue reading.

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October 7, 2020

Imposter syndrome is not real, but I call mine ‘Beryl’.

I hate to fail. My failure avoidance leads to a tendency for overwork. I drive myself harder than any manager will, mostly out of fear of failure rather than love for the work. My feelings of insecurity make me a good employee and student, but they also put me at risk for burn out andcontinue reading.

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September 2, 2020

Do you need clown shoes? Finding a research job during Covid lockdowns

The other day I had an actual 3D, face to face lunch with a colleague, let’s call him Simon. After months of 2D Zoom catch ups, it was lovely to be in an actual cafe on campus, eating steaming hot noodles. Simon and I were meant to be discussing business, but of course the conversationcontinue reading.

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August 5, 2020

Rich academic, poor academic? Making an academic living in Covid times

I put this post on ice in February this year when the great Covid crisis hit. The post is about how to supplement your sessional teaching income with academic flavoured ‘side hustles’. Back in March everything was going to hell and it just didn’t seem that… relevant? Now, at the start of semester two incontinue reading.

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July 8, 2020

How NOT to be an academic asshole during Covid.

Close to half of PhD students are contemplating leaving their studies in the next six months. We need to talk about quitting with kindness and empathy – and some people just need to stop being assholes.

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June 10, 2020

Why academic writing sucks (and how we can fix it)

Academic writing, as a genre, sucks. It’s ritualised, peculiar, archaic and does almost as much to hide knowledge as it does to share it.

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May 13, 2020

Where I call bullshit on the way we do the PhD

There’s a looming economic crisis in higher education. Perhaps you have lost work already and you’re wondering how you will support yourself (I’m really sorry). It’s hard to know if you’ll get more or less teaching next semester and what form it will take. Will it be online? Or face to face? Maybe your coursescontinue reading.

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April 22, 2020

The Valley of Deep (Covid) Shit

In my last #pandemicpost I asked – should you quit (go part time or pause) your PhD in this global pandemic? One month later, not to put too fine a point on it: the world is in pretty deep shit. Everyday life has not got back to anything resembling ‘normal’. There’s a dawning realisation that wecontinue reading.

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April 8, 2020

Should you quit (go part time or pause) your PhD during Covid-19?

Some of you might have noticed I recently put the blog on ‘pause’ –  for the first time in ten years. I am not a week by week blogger. I like to make space for creative inspiration to strike. For this reason, I always have at least six months of content ‘in the pipe’, waiting tocontinue reading.

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