Last time we met my friend, PhD student and working academic ‘Dave’ he was walking through the Valley of Shit. Dave emerged from the deathly valley soon after I published that post, but he has now hit the last phase of PhD study, which I call “PhD detachment”. Dave, somewhat more colourfully, calls this phase “Screw you thesis!”. He tells us why in this post, but caution – there’s some strong language!

Last week, Charlotte Frost of the wonderful PhD2Published blog declared November #acwrimo (academic writing month). The concept of #acwirmo comes from NaNoWriMo where the aim is to write a whole book in month.

At a dinner not so long ago I got into an interesting conversation with a third generation academic. She complained about her father giving her advice on how to do her PhD. I joked that this was bound to be Thesis Whisperer Jnr’s fate, but I couldn’t help contrasting her stories with my own experience.

My father was sincerely impressed when I started my PhD and pleased as punch when I completed, but he would never have dreamed of giving me advice on how to do it. You see, I’m a first generation academic. An academic migrant.

Everyone loves dogs don’t they? How would dogs go about doing a PhD? This light hearted piece is by ‘Florian’, as told to Professor Peter Downton, a very experienced supervisor from the School of Architecture and design at RMIT University. Florian is a very handsome poodle, as we can see by the picture. I think …continue reading.

So… I wrote an ebook. Or, more precisely, I compiled one out of blog posts and put it up on Amazon for $3.99 AUD – a price point carefully calibrated to match the cost of a cup of coffee in my home town, Melbourne. I thought I would write a quick post to give it a shameless plug let you all know it’s out there and what’s in it, so you can decide if you want to buy it or not.

… to celebrate my new phone I thought it was time to revisit my list of top five phone apps for researchers, which I wrote about a year ago. On that list I included a PDF reader, Evernote, Book catalogue app and ‘Loot’ for managing your money. Many more apps have appeared since then. I now wonder how I ever lived without this little computer in my pocket.

This post is by Judy Redman who is a Uniting Church minister and, as part of her role as a university chaplain, has been minister of religion on the human research ethics committees of three different Australian universities. She has qualifications in Agricultural Science and Human Nutrition as well as Theology and is currently working on a PhD. Her university-related work experience has also involved being a research assistant and academic editing.

I have a friend, let’s call him Peter…

On Wednesday the whole doctoral education community was saddened to hear of the death of Professor Alison Lee.

Alison was a fine academic of the best kind: a huge intellect coupled with a generous heart.

A group of academics across the world set out in November 2011 to write a negotiated word limited of up to 50,000 words (give or take according to what you decided your focus, capabilities and commitment could be) for a book or set of academic papers. A commitment was being made to a task that is a part of our roles as academics. Writing. It can be tedious and a challenge in itself to find the time, dedicate focus, and complete in a reasonable time. So in committing to prioritize writing for the month of a November a learning curve was set, and a steep one at that.