Tag: Writing

Most creativity involves theft. Take Thesis Bootcamp as just one example. Dr Peta Freestone and Dr Liam Connell from the University of Melbourne, didn’t really invent the Thesis Bootcamp, but they did steal it creatively appropriate it in a rather special way.  I watched Melbourne University Thesis Bootcamps at a distance, via social media updates. …continue reading.

Juan Castro wrote to me earlier this year to show me his new, free application ‘writefull’ designed for people who are doing their thesis in English when it is not their first language. I’ll admit, as a native English speaker and confident writer I’d never thought to use the Google technique he described, but it …continue reading.

As I’ve noted before, PhD parenting can be difficult. But do we sometimes ignore the positives? In this lovely post, Rebecca Turvill, PhD student and parent, considers the positives. Rebecca is a 1st year PhD student at Brunel University, London. Her research focuses on how young children develop ‘number sense’ in schools, for which she …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 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.

Dr Evelyn Tsitas used to be a journalist and works at the RMIT University Gallery. Last year she was awarded a PhD in Creative Writing in the Media and Communications at RMIT about Werewolves and Vampires (amongst other things). In her first post for the Whisperer Evelyn told us the fun side of having a …continue reading.

In a blog post a while back I suggested being a fast writer can be a career ‘edge’. Afterwards a surprisingly large number of people wrote to me wanting to become faster writers, or questioning whether learning to write faster was possible. I was a bit taken aback by the questions as I assumed there …continue reading.

The other week I got a chance to just sit and chat with a group of new ANU PhD candidates. The subject was problems. As you can imagine, I totally loved it because as the students talked I wrote about 20 blog posts in my head. Amongst the many topics we discussed that night was …continue reading.

This post was written by Paula Hanasz who is currently writing a thesis on the geopolitics of water security in South Asia at The ANU. She is enrolled at the Australia National University but currently spends more time on her couch than in her office or the library. I’m going to take a moment out …continue reading.

For some inexplicable reason, perhaps to do with Woodstock, kaftans, free love and the rest, the education department in Australia decided to abandon the teaching of grammar in the late sixties and didn’t start again, as far as I can tell, until the mid 80s. I am the ultimate product of a 1970’s education, therefore …continue reading.