Pals: The Importance of Friends

You've heard it said before: doing a PhD can be a lonely business. 

Making a few pals along the way is really important: 

a) to ensure that you don't turn into one of those 'eccentric' academics with less than perfect social skills and b) to keep you sane during your PhD.

Although it can be pretty nerve racking when you first start, taking other postgrads up on their offers for coffee or a pint is all it takes. Failing that, just talking to people in your office is just as good.  

I'm the first person to cringe at the thought of awkward silences and nervous eye contact, but it doesn't have to be that way. Remember what you have in common- doing a PhD. 

I've learned loads about what's involved in doing a PhD, from what to expect from the first Annual Progress Review to how to write an academic book review for a journal. Also:

THEY TELL YOU THINGS YOUR SUPERVISORS WON'T/CAN'T/SHOULDN'T

Some of the best advice I've been given this year was to start saving for a fourth year, even if you don't end up needing it. Why? Because despite how confident you are with that Gant chart you made during the submissions period, a lot of projects run over three years, and if your sponsored, that's when your money is going to dry up. 

I don't want to call this networking, because for me at least, that's what you do with other students and lecturers at more formal events and conferences. This is about trying to make a pal or two who you can turn to for advice and support, who you can help out in return, and maybe who'll also just let you rant at them when things get a bit wild.

Of course, sometimes, these friendships do turn into opportunities. Currently, thanks to a well connected pal, a group of friends and I are working as a team of Research Assistants on an arts and humanities project in our local area. Working with your mates, amazing. 

I've made some good pals last year and this year, and seriously, I can't imagine doing this without them. 

Kath

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Linkedin: Developing Your Professional Profile

If anyone had asked me what the deal was with Linkedin before Monday, I would have been like:

It's been around since 2003, but I didn't join until 2012, kind of around the time when it was gaining a fair bit of hype online. 'Get Linkedin or Get Left Out' they said, so I was like O.K.

I'll admit straight off the bat that I'm not the most media savvy person the world has ever seen. I recently experienced something of an online identity crisis and tried to join Tumblr, only to realise that a) I don't know what it is b) I don't know what it's supposed to be used for and c) I've far surpassed the age demographic of the majority of the site's users.

Needless to say, whilst Linkedin was clearly always going to be of more use to me than Tumblr, I always ended up neglecting my profile because I didn't really feel like I knew what I was doing.

On Monday Newcastle University held an interactive workshop in collaboration with the London Alumni Branch to help students get to grips with Linkedin. At the 'LinkedIn Lab' we were given the chance to ask a 'Lab Doctor' questions about our profiles and how to improve them. They also offered a professional photography service for those looking to gain a more professional looking profile picture. I bottled out of this because I hate getting my photo taken (as if the cat face thumbnail doesn't make this obvious) but I wish I hadn't. Talks were also given by London Alumni Branch chairman Sam Waterfall and Linkedin 'guru' Charles Hardy. 

Since starting this blog and using twitter for more academic and professional purposes, the benefits of social networking platforms for sharing ideas and networking with other students and academics have become more obvious. Hence, progression into Linkedin made sense. Anyway, as I found this session so useful, I thought I'd share with you some of the top tips I took away from the Linkedin Lab.

1.Ensure your 'headline' is attention grabbing and precise. Writing 'student at whatever university' is too vague, and won't help you to stand out. Think keywords and include searchable terms to increase your visibility. 

2. Your 'summary' in Charles Hardy's words, is your 'elevator pitch'. There's a 2000 character allowance and he recommends you use it to tell your professional story. Note the word 'story' here. Go first person narrative all the way. 

3. Complete your profile. Users with 100% completed profiles are 40 times more likely to gain opportunities through Linkedin.

4.Giver's gain. That's what they told us. Endorse your contact's skills and write recommendations for them. They should return the favour, helping you to increase your professional kudos. 

5. If your curious about what your professional profile picture says about you, try getting it rated by others at PhotoFeeler but be warned, this is not the place for those whose egos bruise easily!

6. Not looking for job opportunities right now? Doesn't matter. Start now, be future focused and build your professional network whilst you study. When the time comes to look for jobs, you'll already be well connected.

My profile is still 'under construction' as I continue to learn more about how to improve it, but if you would like to view my profile, follow this link!

Kath 

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It's Emotional Work

One of my supervisors gave me a copy of 'Dancing and Wrestling with Scholarship' by Professor Les Back the other day. She kindly gave me a pile of around 20 to hand out around the office, but as they were headed with a personal message that read:

 'This was really useful for me when I was doing my PhD, I thought it would come in handy for you'

 I knew the other 19 copies were there to make me feel a little less like I was being bureaucratically flagged as 'on the edge'. Which was appreciated. 

This article really got me thinking about the emotion work behind doing a PhD. Those further ahead of me may laugh at this point. Of course I'm only in first year, I know I have barely dipped my toe into the incessant pool of desperation, exhaustion and disillusionment that awaits me, but like all first years, I have just been thrown in to a completely new way of working, and I'm doing my best to make sense of it all.

'When your PhD is going well it is a good dancing partner. When it is going badly it feels like you are being thrown around some intellectual equivalent of a wrestling match'.

How true is this? 

I don't know whether I should be worried at this stage that I am a little too invested in my PhD (is this even possible?), but, 7 months in, I have already experienced great intellectual highs that make you feel like you could in fact change the world (!) and the crashing lows that, on the flip side, make you to feel as though you might as well set fire to your year's work and get down the queue at the nearest job centre.   

It's like nothing I have experienced before. I have had jobs were I have worked independently, I have always cared about whatever job I have been in, but there is something I find far more personal about handing over your ideas and aspirations for review in a supervisor meeting. 

My feedback is always productive and I trust my supervisors unequivocally, but there is always that pinch: 

'A moment of 'pinch' between what one does feel and what one wants to feel (or what one thinks they ought to feel). In response, the individual may try to eliminate the pinch by working on feeling' (Arlie Hochschild 1979).

I really feel like there is a significant amount of emotional labour that has to go into being a PhD student. We have to continuously perform a series of personal management acts for self preservation, to allow us to cope with the pressures and strains, the unforeseen circumstances and the knocks to our confidence.  

I haven't mastered the techniques for successful emotion work yet, but I'm told that eventually, I'll develop a thick skin. 

Kath

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Interrogating Your Own PhD Proposal

I'm a sponsored student. This means that my PhD proposal has been scrutinised at a variety of different levels: by my supervisors, my funder and by the admissions panel of my institution. Guess what though? This does not mean that my research is'good to go'. 

It seems rather obvious now, but my experience as a newbie PhD researcher has taught me one key thing about the nature of social research. It is an entirely ITERATIVE PROCESS. Yes, of course all of the 'Writing Effective Research Proposals' books I read at the very start did warn me of this, but there's nothing quite like experience to really reaffirm the truth of those statements you stumble upon whilst browsing through the yellowing and slightly moth eaten texts the library houses. Indeed, sometimes you have to go backwards, in order to move forwards.

In preparation for my Annual Progress Review in May, I have been continuously revisiting and reworking my research plan in the hope that I can produce a thing of out right beauty before the panel. As you may already be aware, I have a rather startling image of what APR will be like, and so, in light of this, I am endeavouring to be as prepared as humanly possible for any questions or concerns raised as by my research. The faculty training session I attended on what to expect from APR did make the entire process seem like it would resemble a traumatising interrogation scene. 

'What is your justification for the number of participants you have outlined? 20- 25, this is a specific figure, why have you forecast this quantity? What will you endeavour to do to gain this amount? What will happen if you do not achieve this amount? Have you comprised a recruitment strategy Plan B? What are the consequences of said Plan B for the outcomes of your research? Will your aims be compromised?'

...(trying not to hyper ventilate)...so many questions about just one aspect of my design...and breathe...

I have responded to this in the following way: 
Prior self interrogation.

I am aware that this may seem slightly masochistic, but I have now annotated my research plan with a rather extensive list of possible queries, questions and concerns raised by my research, and I am now in the process of writing well-researched and rigorous answers to said questions, and formulating Plan Bs, Cs and (potentially even) Ds simultaneously.

It's a little bit like pulling apart a cake you carefully constructed and very nicely decorated yourself, that or its like, well..I haven't actually resorted to shining lamps in my own eyes and dunking my head in the bath YET. 

I probably could have titled this post 'Deconstructing your PhD Proposal', but it really doesn't have the air of violence and evasiveness I associate with APR...

Kath

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Anticipating Annual Progress Review

Yesterday we had a faculty training session on what to expect from my first ever Annual Progress Review. After attending this session, I believe I have a clear picture of what APR will feel like for a new first year.

I also have a good idea about what the panel will look like.

How I will deal with professional criticism.

And how I will move forward afterwards.

I've got the fear. 

Whilst the session did include some reassuring accounts from second and third year students about their experiences of APR, I feel they were at the same time gaining a reasonable hourly rate for their time and so probably couldn't be too scathing about the process. There's that, and the fact that the Faculty Dean of Research was present. 

I do imagine it to be like Evie's interrogation process in V for Vendetta. This is the image that replays in my mind over and over. 

Can't wait!

Time (Mis) Management...

I used to think I had pretty strong time management skills. I worked two jobs whilst doing my Masters last year. And, despite 20 hours a week being signed straight over to part-time graft, I still finished the course on time, and left with the grade I wanted. 

I don't know what the hell happens when you start a PhD. It's like everything you once took for granted and just did isn't enough any more. Life literally runs away from you. 

Seriously, prior to this year the words 'time management' as I understood them, broadly referred to sticking your head down and getting things done. I didn't really think through the hows and whys of it. I just did it. 

That was all well and good when we were dealing with monthly assignments of no longer than 3000 words a piece. Now that we're grappling with what feels like to me- the brutally naive, permanently terrified and (probably) over-dramatic first year that I am- an infinite, sprawling and continuously amalgamating jelly like mass of work that is my research project. 

You don't know it's happening until it's too late. You tell yourself it's all going to be ok. Then it hits you. Like a sledgehammer to the jaw. There's so much to do and you thought you would just do it and that it would all be fine but now your drowning under a sea of deadlines, 'to do' lists and general expectation...

Jeez. Doing a PhD forces you to be a responsible, organised and rational human being. 

It makes you buy a diary. 

It makes you write lists.

It makes you willingly Google the words 'Personal Development Plan'.

I've changed.

Kath

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Feeling the Fear and Doing it Anyway

Ever left a job interview feeling like:

We've all been there. You were a little inexperienced. You didn't know what to expect. You thought you could wing it. When asked to identify your greatest weakness you replied: "I don't have any".

Oh god. Yes this is a personal anecdote and yes I still feel the shame to this day. Since this mortifying display of accidental arrogance however, things have steadily improved for me on the interview front. 

I never have been, and doubtfully ever will be, that person who can just stroll into an interview and blow the interviewers away with displays natural confidence and charm. No. I get that rash, you know that one that you get from anxiety, and it creeps up your neck and makes you look like you are literally on the edge of your life. It's not great and certainly not a reassuring visual for professionals. Anyway.

Last week I went for a job interview for a temporary paid part-time role as a Postgraduate Assessor within my university. I went for the role for two key reasons. First, the position would require me to serve as a second interviewer for a careers module in which third year undergraduates are assessed via a mock job interview. As I'm using interviews in my research, I figured that gaining more practical interviewing experience could be no bad thing. Second, the interview required me to prepare and deliver a 5 minute presentation, followed by a 30 minute round of usual interview questions. I'd never had to do this before, so I thought I'd just see if I could. If I didn't get the job, it would feel crap but I'd just have to dedicate the next few days to coaxing my ego back up off the deck/drinking wine and ranting into mirrors to rebuild confidence* and it would be fine.

*she jokes

I should point out here that prior to my interview the optimistic side of me had thought about what a funny blog post I could write when recounting the fresh hell I'd let spill from my lips behind the walls of the interview room.

It really shouldn't be but it's almost anti-climatic. I got the job. 

For once in my life, I'd managed to appear (somewhat) cool, (borderline) calm and (convincingly) collected. 

I felt the fear and I did it anyway.

Kath 

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