======= Date Modified 28 Jan 2011 13:35:55 =======

-I see myself as being very much in the real world hence my constant struggle with relevance, theory and where is this all going. I'm coming to the end of my PhD journey (sic) and if I have learned anything it's that there is no so 'typical' PhD student. I admire Garry's honest attitude before he starts, if indeed he decides to start. I think it takes guts to decline something rather than 'fall into' it. PierreR I think your post here jibes a bit with your post on the 'why' thread. There lots of laid out our motivations for why we are where we are. Some people want to change the world, some have a more incremental 'change the world approach' and some of us are still not sure.

Sorry Garry, think you've started something here ...!!!

You've told us your goals Joanna, now you'll have to make them!! Only joking, best of luck with them(up)

Dunni, will do re: CV/cover letter info. I had included an offer to do just that with my last post but then amended in it lest people think I was pushy! Pathetic really, I'm doing a PhD you know?!?!?

Will gather my notes together and input them here later - now have supv meeting, my 2nd in a week. Previously we had not spoken on thesis related issues since October! There is also the little matter of collecting a few bundles of exam scripts from him:-s

======= Date Modified 28 Jan 2011 08:53:17 =======
======= Date Modified 28 Jan 2011 08:50:15 =======
Hi Garry

Disclaimer, disclaimer as ultimately the decision is yours but I'm with Delta! A PhD, even for those who LOVE it is hard, not just academically but in every way. Motivation to keep going can be tough but if you hit such a wall you are also likely to feel resentful as you no doubt will beat yourself up by reminding yourself that "I didn't really want to do this anyway..."

Plenty of people leave the world of study to work and return later in their life, in their late 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond. 23 is young (I vaguely remember it!!) so you have oodles of time. In fact life experience can help with the PhD process. If you have more life experience under your belt, you will more than likely be better equipped to handle the project management side of it, the motivation, the at times, tough feedback on your work.

If you do turn it down you can lay out your very valid reasons for doing so, but try to leave the door open for yourself, so you could return at a later stage. Therefore, couch your refusal (if that's what you decide to do) in terms of 'not as this time in my life', 'feel I need to keep working - lucky to have a job at the moment' etc.

However if you do stay with the programme I'm sure you'll do great!! Seriously though, think it through - a PhD is a big life committment.

Good luck

A


Delta - you're still with your PhD?? Don't want to pry but are you happier with your work??? Hope things moving in an positive direction for you:-)

======= Date Modified 27 Jan 2011 19:23:11 =======
'Afternoon all - everybody sounds a bit stressed. Star-shaped it'll be brill when you finally have those postdoc applics under your belt and can get back to your thesis. Dunni, your babies are giving you a tough time lately, hope they're better soon. An allergic reaction -sounds frightening??

Curisel - an exam where you feel it is make or break sounds really daunting. Hope it goes well for you.

I spent the morning in a graduate education class where we had the chance to have our CVs and cover letters overhauled as if we were applying for a postdoc etc. It was conducted by two professors who each are the director of a research institute, have interviewed many candidates for actual positions and who have also been external interviewers in other universities. Very useful

Congratuations (up) and thank you for such a generous post.

Only yesterday I was told that often conclusions are questioned and that a relatively common correction is to 'rejig' the conclusion so that it speaks much more confidently. The same person (who has been both an external many times and also a viva chair) also said how important it is to state your positionality in your introduction; again that sounds what your examiners were saying. It's great they said to you that have made a good contribution to knowledge - well done.

Put the feet up - you deserve it:-)

I'm afraid I only accessed four more - Evgeniadis, Veenhof and Rybarczyk and Brus.

The Veenhof article from the Annals of Behaviorial Medicine I 'think' I found in a different journal. It seems to be also avail on open-access in Arthritis Care and Research: 55, 2006, nr. 6, p. 925-34 but maybe just check that it IS the same article. I confess I didn't read it, but to me it looks the same one! The Brus one I also located via Arthritis Care and Research - it also seemed to be on open access. Finally Rybarczyk would only allow me save it as an audio file so I copied 'n pasted the text into a word doc. Hopefully it will open and read okay for you.

It often can be worth a go throwing the article title into Google - sometimes you get lucky:-)


Best of luck sourcing the others - I'll email you the ones I found.

Morning Clarabelle/Dunni - good luck with today's goals. I actually like tedious work sometimes - maybe I am just strange??

My goal is crack on with my ongoing analysis

I found one (Weaver, Jnl of Am Geriatrics Soc) - I can send you the pdf if you want to pm me your email id.

It is a verrrry long list and a lot of them don't have the year inlcuded. I have to call up each journal title individually to see if my uni subscribes so would need the year as well to make a skim-search easier. I don't mind tipping away at it over the next few days if you want to modify/amend your post to include the year. I checked the ones you did include the year with and I don't think I have access to them. I imagine I would have access at least some of the others.

Hi there like-minded soul!!

I'm in the social sciences; my approach is wholly qualitative though I did mixed methods for my masters.

My overall PhD conceptual framework is the philosophy of classical pragmatism, a philosophy pioneered by lumanaries such as John Dewey, Charles Sanders Peirce and William James. Dewey wrote not just about change, but for change. Hildebrand (2008) wrote about Dewey's touchstone as being "the need for philosophy to move beyond a priori postulation and engage with “the problems of men”. I could go on but better not!! Not to be confused with the pragmatism of everyday parlance, classical pragmatism speaks directly to those concerned with the issue of 'relevance in social research'. Oh Dear, I'm going on :-(

Olivia's recommendation of The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Reserach is a really good one, particularly the introduction. There is literature on mixed methods and pragmatism - could be worth a look??

Yes, yes, keep it real is my motto though prepared to fight for that at conferences etc

(up)

======= Date Modified 26 Jan 2011 06:48:24 =======
======= Date Modified 26 Jan 2011 06:01:08 =======
Hi Anne

I teach information literacy to undergrads and Master students at my uni so I would be interested to hear what others do. There are a few things you can do to make you a more savvy searcher.

The most obvious thing is set up an email alert to be notified when a new issue of a particular journal you like comes out. Access an individual journal title via the electronic journals on your library's website and then click and follow instructions to set up ToC alert.

Another way to go about this is to go to the websites of the journal publishers themselves via the databases on your uni's library website and you can set up alerts for any of the titles you are interested in. I'm in the social sciences as well and I have alerts set up through Sage, Routledge (Taylor & Francis) and Science Direct. It's actually a good way of seeing the different titles that there are out there but that you were not aware of, in a way "the known unknowns"!! I have come across lots of good journal titles this way.

Just one word of warning: after you access the list of journal titles a publisher/database has, take it easy selecting alerts. I went a bit mad at first and had way too many ToC alerts coming through my inbox. Still I find it a great way of keeping up to date with what's in my field. I am in my third year and am writing up but I have some 2010 refs in my bibliograpy and will probably have a few 2011 refs before I submit (fingers and toes crossed!) during the summer.

I'd be interested to know if anybody else does something different.

A :-)

Also!! Just remembered, you can also set up an alert via Google Scholar - 'create email alert'. You can set up an alert for a topic area, date range etc. There are lots of options. Also many people don't click on the Advanced scholar search in Google scholar but there are lots of options there to refine your search. Every so often I do an author search via Google Scholar to see if my key authors have written anything new.

There are lots of meta search engines out there as well which can help. Some require you to register but generally even if they do it is free. These search multiple search engines at once. You can however get overloaded with info this way. A couple I am aware of, though confess rarely use as I prefer to go direct to the databases are:

Dogpile, at www.dogpile.com
www.metacrawler.com.

I've just googled 'meta search engines' and there is a very long list of them via Wiki.



Just thought of something else so I modified my original post!!

Forgive me if you are already aware but many people are not - each subject has its own subject librarian (this should be the case for any academic library). There are a number of things you can do via your library website. Different libraries call them different things but essentially there should be a 'subject resources' section on your library website where you can access key journals and websites for your overall subject. A good subject librarian should be adding to this all the time.

Gateway sites such as BUBL and Intute for the social sciences are good but there are plenty more. Again a lot of information can come back at you so try to refine your search as you go.

www.bubl.ac.uk
http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/


You are also quite entitled to set up a meeting with a real live subject librarian!! Again this is a service most, if not all academic libraries offer but few avail of. Meet him or her and go through with them the key websites etc in your field.

Happy searching (up)

That's great news, am very pleased for you, you must feel so relieved. March is still a while away so take it easy on the viva prep for the moment until you get a firm date and then you can really apply yourself.

Academia can move at such a slow pace compared to the rest of the world that it can be so frustrating when you are waiting for news.

BEST of luck(up)

Hi Canonly

First of all I am pre, not post viva!! No doubt there are many people here who have been through the process and can help you better. However, I was at hour talk today given by professor in my university, who has chaired many vivas and also been the supervisor of many students. Obviously there will be subject specific issues which only you will know but the notes I jotted down that I found particularly interesting were:

Questions relating to methodology and structure/theoretical frameworks tend to be posed more aggresively than other viva questions so don't get alarmed if this happens! Be prepared to defend/outline/explain/clarify your methodological approach and your theoretical framework.

How would you relate your work to 'x'?
She said that she tends to ask students to ensure they can locate their work in relation to recent literature published on the topic.

What is your contribution to the field?

You could get a question related to your introductory self-positioning of your thesis. To this end she says that she gets her students to prepare to talk about their self-positioning in their introduction and their conclusion. Be strong, not tentative in this regard she says.

From her experience many conclusions are weak as they are often written fairly fast when the student is burnt out. If you feel this to be the case, be prepared to fight for your conclusion and be able to assert in the viva what your position is - in effect what is your thesis saying.

You have already submitted but she said that the litmus she asks of her students wanting to submit is (a) can you situate yourself in relation to the wider field and (b) what is your contribution to the field?


The very best of luck, let us know if you can how you get on

A



(up)

on its way :-)

I have access to that - if you want to pm me your email id I can send you the pdf

A

Is your PhD part of a larger project and if so, maybe that's more what your supervisor was thinking when he made that less than helpful comment? Possibly he was thinking of the bigger picture as it applied to him and didn't factor how rotten it was likely to make you feel. Even if you're working on your own he may have been thinking that your PhD might not be the breakthrough he had hoped for but this by no means that the PhD as it relates to you will fail. It certainly sounds as if you are entitled to ask him to clarify what he meant.

Re: hitting that brickwall - yes, lots of us have stood at the bottom of that, but it can be scaled!! Although you sound very disciplined, and of course this is to your credit, maybe for the moment allow yourself some moments of non-discipline? Go for a walk to clear your head, swim, jog - whatever - but allow yourself to enjoy being your own boss for a while. Quality over quantity - maybe putting in those rigid hours is actually working against you at this juncture of your PhD?

That comment by your supervisor was most unfair. If he did mean it, he is honour bound to tell you. If he was only musing, as it applied to a bigger picture, he should have considered how such a comment would impact on a person in their second year.

Good luck climbing that wall:-)