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It’s incomplete in places and riddled with errors, but I have it! A full thesis draft! I can’t believe it!
…and now, to the massive, tedious task of editing.
This one’s for all you gorgeous female scientists out there…
Hiding Your Research Behind A Paywall Is Immoral
Thumbs up to Mike Taylor, a research associate at the University of Bristol who wrote this great article on the Guardian Higher Education Network this week. The gist is that many scientists publish their research in journals that require subscription payments, blocking the majority of interested readers from accessing their work. Keeping their research behind these types of ‘paywalls’ can’t be justified given that scientists’ job is to produce knowledge and make it freely available to all. The current ‘lack of prestige’ associated with open access publishing outlets must end; Scientists publishing in high-impact paywalled journals for their own career advancement must end; and we must fundamentally change academic culture to focus on free and open availability of knowledge for all people.
I’ve been writing, writing, writing away for days on end. A few weeks ago I was dreading this, thinking I’d never survive through such a massive writing task. Yet here I am, writing away, and I feel great.
At the moment, I have another chapter coming along steadily.
It’s actually progressing.
It feels surreal that the work I’ve been working on all these years is finally culminating into a tangible, touchable thesis. And that, in total contradiction to everything I had imagined might happen (dropping out, failure, ending up homeless and penniless on the streets, going mad), I am actually succeeding. Well, maybe the ‘going mad’ one did come true…
Onwards and upwards, as they say.
Well, I’m taking 5 minutes off my tedious typing today to bring you a thought-provoking comedic list of reasons why my buddy God up there doesn’t have a PhD.
Religious fundamentalists, read at your own risk.
First thing’s first – here’s Assange’s address from last night: http://wikileaks.org/Statement-by-Julian-Assange-after.html
Secondly, while I’m aware some of you follow this blog more regularly than others, I should probably say that I won’t be blogging as regularly as I usually do for the next few months. That’s because ‘crunch time’ has finally arrived – I have run my last study, analysed the data, and now I must go into the self-imposed solitary confinement I’ve promised myself I will, I must, go into, to finish writing my thesis.
Writing my thesis.
It has a funny ring to it when you say it out loud. I’ve been doing the field work, the desk work, the paperwork for this thing for two and a half years; there’s so much work piled up that’s been done. Everything’s done, and just waiting around to get written up. I terrifies me.
Come March, I must have the full thesis written, complete, reviewed, edited, formatted, and ready to go. I am in a state of disbelief that this could even be possible. And yet, I know, it can and must be done.
And if you are working on your own thesis right now, take heart, and keep working with the faith that you too will reach your goal in the end! A PhD is a long and lonely journey. That’s what my supervisor warned me at the very beginning, when I was first considering putting an application in to grad school. But I said I’d take the hit, and so, here I am. I have come this far, and now I am going to give it one last shot to make the home run. And so are you! We will accomplish this, all together.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go write my thesis.
Onwards and upwards!
My supervisor is going to be here in just over 4 hours. Perhaps I should clarify – my second supervisor, with whom I am meeting this afternoon, is a retired emeritus professor and lives in a small village in the middle of nowhere, a good three hours’ commute away from London. Fortunately, after several distasteful altercations with our head of department, she got permission to claim for travel expenses to come to London once in a while and discuss stats with me. She wouldn’t hear of me being given a replacement supervisor. “I will supervise you no matter what,” she said. God bless.
Except that now that she lives three hours away (on a good day), however much she has much more time to spend on our own research, I feel guilty about calling her in to see me because of all the time and stress it involves. And now that I have called her in for our meeting today, the pressure is on to show her that it was worth it!
My second supervisor is a little different from my first, although ironically, the two have known each other for donkey’s years and are the best of friends. My second supervisor is very focused, likes to get down to business immediately, and hates it when you make a fuss about anything. Until recently, she seemed to be irritated even by simple social conventions like saying “How are you?”, at the start of a meeting. I always felt silly asking her this, even though I would ask out of genuine interest rather than just paying lip service to British politeness, because she would give me a cold reply like “OK.” and not even return the enquiry. Fortunately though, perhaps because we have had some very in-depth debates about stats and psychometric theory in which she really seemed to enjoy herself, she has warmed up a bit and now actually asks me how I am back.
Now that’s progress.
Anyway, the fact that she has warmed to me isn’t the point here. The point is that she has a very focused way of working in which she likes to examine things in detail in advance, have a think about it, and only then hold a meeting. I’ve known this for some time and have, since then, always emailed her my datafiles and notes in advance. Whilst this helps her understand my questions better, and allows her to come prepared, I’ve found I feel very stressed between emailing her my stuff and meeting her, simply because of my anxiety about all the embarrassing mistakes I imagine she’ll find in my work. I keep thinking, “I’m a psychologist. Psychologists have rigorous academic training in statistics and research methods from year 1 right up to PhD level. I’m supposed to be on the ball with everything stats related. And here I am still having to look up ANOVAs in a textbook! I’m hopeless! My supervisor is going to eat me alive! I’ll never amount to anything! My thesis is going to suck! I’m going to fail my viva! And end up homeless and penniless on the streets!”
Et cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
These irrational thoughts are still stuck in my head even now, as I write this. It’s maddening. I know I have put in a good effort to try my hand at the analysis, so as not to make my supervisor feel like I am dumping my work at her feet and saying “Here. Just tell me the answer.” She hates that. She hates dumb, needy students coming to her and begging her to just tell them the answer, or, worse, to actually do their work for them. But still, I feel like I’m not going to be able to live up to her standards, like I have not done enough work to impress her, and like I am going to be left feeling like an idiot – not just for not being smart enough, but for wasting her time.
I have 4 hours to get my head straightened. I have to review my analysis, make sure all my datafiles are saved on my flashdrive, reread my notes, pick up the keys to the meeting room, and get everything set up early. I concede these things will not actually do much to get my head straightened, but they will, hopefully, distract me from the madness that’s brewing inside.
Something many of us fail to remember during our PhDs, while we are busy collecting data, reading papers, and whinging about how stressful, chaotic, and daunting the whole process is, is how rewarding and enjoyable being a researcher has the potential to be.
There are so many people who wake up each morning and feel grumpy because they have to get up and go to work at a job they dislike, and they do everything they can to procrastinate, avoid tedious errands, and get out of work early in order to find time for things that make them happier. Conversely, most of us ended up in research because we have (or at least had!) an interest in our subject area and wanted to work on our own project to advance understanding in that area. How many people work a job in which they are able to read literature and collect data on a topic they love? (This is, of course, with the exception of the nausea that follows reading/data overload…).
What’s intriguing to me about this is that, when you’re a researcher, work and play often become enmeshed, entangled, and intertwined. The same aspects of our work both frustrate and inspire us. We are fascinated by whatever branch of science or art we study, yet at times we come to despise it. We get cranky, and incredulous, and we slink around the lab looking gloomy and sighing a lot.
I for one, sigh a lot.
There’s a thin line between work and play in research. Often it disappears altogether. There are all sorts of perks and downsides. Today a colleague who’s supposed to be at home writing up walked into the office and handed me a box of Belgian chocolates. Now, I am faced with the dilemma of eating the whole box in celebration of all I’ve achieved this semester, or rationing them out over the next few months in reward of each new milestone I reach with my own writing. Decisions, decisions!
Looking back over the last few years, I see I delved into something I essentially enjoy, but I’ve come to have a love-hate relationship with my work. I love Belgian chocolates and the rush of creating new and exciting projects. I hate coming to the end of the box and feeling a sense of stagnation as I near the end of my work, and transition to write-up.
Ideally, I’d like to have a love-hate-love relationship with my thesis.
I want to end this thing on a high.
As a psychologist who thinks she almost has her PhD, I’m conscious that I’m being a little conceited when I say I can redefine chaos theory. But I’m going to go ahead and say it anyway.
I can redefine chaos theory.
Right now, less than 6 months away from the (scheduled) end of my PhD, I am up to my neck in data, analyses and literature that need reading, re-reading, interpreting and writing, up to my eyeballs in anxiety about how I’m actually going to put my thesis together and have a fighting chance of passing my viva in July, and just about buried under my incredulity at being asked to teach a workshop series for 11 weeks next semester to a group of rowdy undergraduates. On top of all that, I also increasingly need to think about my life after my PhD (assuming I actually finish my PhD at some point, which still seems impossible at times) and keep up with a host of irritating errands that seem to keep popping up…like eating and sleeping. And showering. I seem to need to keep showering. According to my mum, these bizarre errands form part of something known as ‘everyday life’.
Huh.
Anyway, what I’m trying to illustrate here is that apart from the chaos of all of the above, I very often feel at a loss with regards to my work because my mind is in a state of chaos as well. This is especially annoying when my supervisors, whom I otherwise adore, tell me with apparent admiration that I am such an organised person. Actually, I have been told I am organised by quite a few people since I started grad school – at least two of my lab colleagues, a professor in another department whose research methods seminars I took for a semester, two of my three supervisors, the Dean of my department, and that bloke from Queensland who processed my passport renewal application at the Aussie high commission in London a couple years ago.
I’m telling you, people, I may seem the picture of organisation on the outside, but my mind is like a minefield littered haphazardly with all manner of academic and non-academic junk such that the phenomenological Me wandering through it in a vain attempt to understand myself and the significance of my work (if it has any significance at all) has frequently to jump, hop, swerve and somersault through the mess in order to navigate it, and even so does not make much progress in comprehending it.
I mean, a mind that can even produce a sentence like the one just above has got to be in for trouble when it comes to writing a thesis – a long, complex document that desperately requires a clear, logical, flowing structure and narrative.
More chaos to be added to my week:
Tuesday: A day trip to Wales to present a paper at a conference. I SWEAR I’m not doing any more of these until I have submitted my thesis!!!
Wednesday: Spending all day running my final analyses and probably getting confused and frustrated.
Thursday: More work on analyses.
Friday: Writing up the analyses and sending off the data files, output, and notes to my supervisor in advance of our meeting next week.
The weekend: Resolving to work on my thesis, but more likely finding something otherwise educational to do by way of active procrastination and convincing myself I’m still being productive…like reading some more of The Condition of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels, as I did this weekend.
Well, bring on the chaos! Let’s finish this thing!
HappySeptember 