Hey Butterfly,

I've been lecturing for about 4 years now in guest lecturing and unit coordination/lecturing/chief examiner roles.

The first thing I've learned is that it doesn't matter how many classes you take on lecturing, it's something you develop over time, and you'll always be rusty and uncertain in the beginning. You'll find a style that works for you through trial and error.

Some things that helped me:

1) Embedding questions into the lecture, as Mon1985 suggested. This allows for a more interactive lecture, and you sometimes do need to push students to engage. You could also embed a bit of group work, such as "take 5 minutes and discuss X with the person sitting next to you).

2) Using short videos and/or images where appropriate. I teach in the social sciences, so there is plenty of material I can use for students to analyse and cement the concepts.

3) Talking slowly, it's tempting to talk very fast and you just rush through the material!

4) Not using scripted lecture notes. This is scary, but a new thing. In reading my qualitative feedback, a number of students highlighted that they didn't like my lecturing when I read straight from a script. Rather, they liked it when I spoke from the top of my head! It's a scary thing to do, but start to slowly work this style in.

5) Allowing students to ask questions. This can be tricky, because sometimes they ask questions about things you'll be covering in subsequent weeks, or sometimes its to try and catch you off guard, etc. But it can help facilitate some lively discussion as well.

6) At the end of the semester, reading your qualitative feedback if you get any. This is absolutely soul destroying, my first set I cried the whole weekend I felt so horrible. But, reading it over really helped me develop a better style and a better unit for the following semester.

The other thing to think about is what some people term 'good academic citizenship' and 'academic service'

One of the things involved is the willingness to help others with their research, without expecting any particular tangible returns that boost your own career. This is good academic citizenship, such as reviewing someone's paper before they submit to publication (not as an official reviewer) but as someone to point out any flaws, errors etc. A friend and I do this all the time for each other. We don't become coauthors, we just list each other in the acknowledgements as a thank you. That's good academic citizenship.

Academic service, is more formal. So for example, book reviews, sitting on committees, and reviewing for journals, while don't add anything to your publication output, do add to your academic service and does support your career, though not as much as research and teaching do.

I don't know what the circumstances are specifically, but from what you've described, I would suspect that what you did falls under perhaps good academic citizenship, potentially, or academic service even, but I'm not sure that your situation warrants you a right to authorship. The postdoc then, if completing good academic citizenship, would list you in the acknowledgements, or, if authorship IS warranted, invite you to be a coauthor, though the latter isn't so much 'good academic citizenship' as it is following the Vancouver protocol for authorship guidelines.

In either case, maybe have a chat with someone like your supervisor who would have a better idea.

Hi Akka,

I'm in the social sciences, qualitative research. It can be difficult in social sciences to get publications out before your PhD when doing qual, I only had two publications (and only one was quality).

What I did on my CV for jobs was listed articles currently under review under a subsection in 'Publications' called 'Under Review.' Then, the following section was 'Works in Progress', I only listed things here that I could provide drafts off should they be requested, but were not yet ready to go for publication.

Much later in your career Works-In-Progress will not be on your CV, but early on they can be helpful to highlight that you are working on things.

To be honest I can't be of much help as I'm not in your field, and coding in the social sciences is often a qualitative or quantitative measure.

My understanding is that developing the code may/may not grant you authorship if it's understood as a methodology, but nothing more. If you had published your code in a paper, then she would need to cite your paper accordingly. But I don't know if you can claim authorship for developing a code that is then subsequently used. You might want to ask this on academia stack exchange, there will be academics there that can answer your question more fully. http://academia.stackexchange.com/

When asking, also think about the below as they are criteria for authorship:

Did you:

1) Assist with the design of the study (i.e. the aims, the objectives, the purpose, the hypotheses etc?)
2) Did you assist in analysis and interpretation of the data, not just 'helped' but actually sat down and did data analysis work-shopping with her? Or did you just wander by once in a while and assisted her periodically?
3) Did you assist and provide substantial revision in the drafting of her paper(s)?

Authorship is taken quite seriously, meaning that you need to have had a substantial part with the work to be considered an author.

Hi Leebio,

I answered a similar question concerning authorship here: http://www.postgraduateforum.com/thread-40224/

In regards to author order, my understanding is that if you haven't contributed much in the way of the new analysis and revisions, you would be lower in the authorship list, regardless as to whether you wrote the original draft. I think the reasoning is because new drafts, especially those with substantial revision, would have or present new analysis, which is considered the most important part.

I agree with DocInsanity, the preparation of revisions is often more work that the manuscript itself, and thus those who have worked on these preparations would be reflected in the author order. I've had something (the opposite) happen here at my new role, where I've taken over the writing of a paper and a report, building on the work that an RA has already done. The RA will be a coauthor, but further down the list, while originally they were listed as first. The first draft is okay, but I'm having to do some substantial revision, re-conceptualisation etc to get it up to scratch for submission, which is a heap of work.

I'm in social science so I don't know how it works with coding software etc. Did you write a paper that outlines your new code (is that something that's done? I have no idea). Is coding intellectual property or is it more like a methodology (so up for grabs?)


In terms of authorship:

http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html

Generally, to be an author you would need:

1) Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2) Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
3) Final approval of the version to be published; AND
4) Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Hi Joanna,

I would actually recommend a thank you note, although not a week past the interview. Usually the next day is the best time to send one through.

I know it might 'appear' pushy but it's becoming common practice. I don't have any research or data to support a contention that it does/does not help with the decision making process, but on the whole, it's a polite thing to do.

I had an interview back in July on a Thursday, and the following day (Friday) I sent an email to the HR person at the interview and requested that it be forwarded to other members of the panel. I didn't reiterate my interest in the role. I instead thanked them for their time, that I enjoyed meeting with them and discussing the project and the research centre more broadly.

By Tuesday morning, I had a phone-call from the chair offering me the role, which I've now been at for over a month.

I don't have any evidence as to whether the thank you note helped, hindered or did nothing in that instance.

Gut feelings can be tricky. My gut feeling told me I wasn't going to get the job, that the panel didn't like me, but I did get the job! So who knows.

Good luck, I hope you hear back soon!

Hey Red,

I had what we could call the 'Pre-Post submission' blues. I felt just like you, depressed, upset, anxious. For a few weeks I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I couldn't even do basic tasks such as putting groceries away. All before, and not after, submitting.

I like to think of it like pre-natal depression (is that a thing?), but with a PhD.

I was in a good position. My supervisors were supportive, I had a publication behind me, and my experience was on the whole, pretty positive. Yet I felt horrible just before submission. Part of it was the job anxiety, but I can't really explain all of it. Perhaps it was finally letting go of a three-year long project, perhaps it was losing the status as a student and really beginning to enter the workforce, perhaps it was an existential crisis.

In any case, you are not alone in feeling this way, and it does pass.

The below talks about the post-submission blues, but the same ideas apply.

http://mythicthinking.org/2013/08/07/new-blog-post-post-dissertation-blues-pacifica-style/

Unless your dream job is the traditional tenured track professor, you shouldn't be doing a PhD to 'get a better job' because this is not a guarantee (and really, what is a better job anyways?) A PhD will, or won't, provide a different set of opportunities and can be a great experience, but if your ultimate goal is this dream job, you might find you get to it without the PhD, or find that your dream job is actually a very different reality to what you thought!

I think you should take a year off which you should be able to do, take the job and use that time to think about why you've gone into the PhD in the first place, and whether it's the right path for you.

Can I ask (which I'm surprised no one has yet) how did this job come about? Did you apply for it? Was it offered to you? I'd be surprised to hear that you applied for it while in the middle of your PhD, that would indicate something about perhaps the lack of enthusiasm (even though you've said you are excited) if you've started to already pull away, especially as a student whose fees are covered. I only started applying for jobs the month before I submitted.

Some interesting narratives!

When I think about my own experiences, while not in a romantic sense, I've generally actively avoided engaging with academics from hard sciences like biology, physics and maths. The reason behind this is at the few mixers of which I've attended, a number of the academics I met in these areas were very condescending towards me and my work. The minute I state that I work in the social sciences, my scholarship (despite not asking me anything about what my focus is or what I even do in the social sciences!) is rendered invalid and uninteresting. Comments like 'oh you're from the arts' or 'oh, that's cute' can be quite frustrating and very dismissive, and the conversation either shuts down, or they continue to talk about their work.

This is of course is not a reflection on anyone on this forum or broader, it's just the few experiences I've had that could also be limited to the university that I work at. I'm genuinely interested in the work of hard sciences and make a point to ask about their work and engage thoughtfully (though I'll be honest and admit I may not have a clear understanding of what they do in the pure scientific sense).

So if I were to reflect on my own biases and was single, I'd probably avoid dating academics in those areas based on those social interactions that have negatively coloured my perceptions. In saying that though, I've always had delightful conversations with academics in disciplines like geology, astronomy and meteorology and surprisingly to myself, engineering.

So I think that even academically, dating 'like-minded' people may not always work out, because even across different disciplines there are varying degrees of social hierarchies.

I think I’ll offer my experience. I have a PhD in social sciences and currently teach and conduct research at two different research institutes. I also hail from a middle-class background, and have a solid classical music education as well, and do a lot of volunteering working with marginalised communities. I’ve been with my partner for 6 years, living together for five, and married for one. My partner’s education amounts to secondary schooling, and some additional certifications through technical colleges. He does not have any experience at a university. My partner also comes from a rural, working-class background, having grown up in a lower socio-economic income bracket. He is also from a completely different culture than I am as we are from two different countries. He currently works in IT.

You’d think that we’d have nothing in common with such stark disparities between class, culture and education. But this has given us a unique relationship, and we have so much in common. My partner is also very intelligent, and while doesn’t have a piece of paper or years of study behind him, has a really good job in a senior IT position that includes managing servers, storage, networking and forensic IT work.

If I had limited myself to ‘intellectuals’ in academia, I could have missed out on having a wonderful relationship with someone from a completely different world. I get my academic intellectual stimulation at work, but when I come home, it’s nice to have a different kind of intellectual stimulation. My partner, having grown up in farming, is creating a productive garden for us, and I’m learning heaps. He also taught me how to work with dogs (never having owned one before) and we’ve successfully rehabilited two massive malamute/husky mixes that we adore, and I used to be terrified of large dogs! Even though he doesn’t work in academia, he understands more broadly the pressures, experiencing his own pressures at work. He is still able to be supportive and empathetic.

Re Durham's comment

Actually, contrary to what you might think, students not finishing has huge impact on thesis supervisors. It doesn't get 'washed away' like it does for undergraduates and can have implications for the supervisor.
In Australia at least, supervisors with unfinished PhD students lose the university money, because the university gains X amount for every on-time PhD completion from the government. PhD completions are actually really important, and if a supervisor has a consistent trail of PhDs not completing, they lose access to grant money, promotions, contracts, their jobs etc.PhD completions also effect workloads, and supervisors with students who cannot complete are not allowed to take on new students, and have problems with their workload allocations (i.e. they might have research points reduced or taken away completely and filled with service and admin).

In my school, a discipline section lost its ability to even be a proper discipline because it had too many unsuccessful PhD completions coupled with grades that were consistently too high in the undergraduate degrees. The academics got spread out into other departments, it was not a pretty picture.

Re Outside Uni

By outside accommodations, I was referring to your new-found employment & potential unemployment and not the mental health etc issues. It's actually not a supervisors' job to ensure you finish on time so you can be employed, and the 'unemployment' limbo is an all-too-common and familiar experience for many PhDs, myself included. I filled it with casual work before I was offered something full-time, but it is inevitable because until you graduate, you are still a student, and the university believes that being a student comes before employment (which isn't right, but the current environment). But at the same time, you are in limbo, because you are under examination and may not pass/have to re-enroll for another 6-12 months etc. That is what you sign up for when you do a PhD.

This doesn't mean that your supervisor should be blocking your submission, they shouldn't. You gave them a month and they really should have gotten back to you as others have said, and they should have turned around and said a late submission might be preferable if you absolutely had to have their feedback.

Is there any options for you regarding working with the admin and your co-supervisor?

The other thing to keep in mind is there might be some major departmental politics at play that you're not aware of that's impacting your submission and could be impacting your co-supervisor's ability to push it through. That is by no means fair, but something that could be happening behind the scenes.

As an additional side note, I'm always surprised when I hear about students printing the day of the deadline, I sat on my thesis for about a month before I submitted to see out the scholarship that I had (this is not a critique, everyone's path is different!) I'm always just genuinely surprised and perhaps terrified at the thought of still working on something so close to/on the deadline!

Sorry, but a PhD or MA student is an adult, not a child. The student should be responsible for their education. While a sup should be organised, so should the student, it's a two-way street. My supervisors never chased me for my work. Sometimes I had to prompt them to return my work, but supervising PhDs is not the only thing supervisors do. In fact, it forms a very little part of their overall workload.

Life happens. Life throws curveballs that sometimes you can't avoid. Things do not go to plan on occasion, or frequently. This is something that everyone has to learn to cope and handle effectively.

This is not to suggest that ElleBelle is not organised or not handling the situation appropriately. It appears that they are very organised, but unfortunately, things have happened and it's not working out properly as planned.

I find the responses interesting and a little hypocritical when considering the broader culture on this site as a whole, and agree with HazyJane's approaches.

Many individuals on this forum have lamented the exact opposite, that when they themselves have had difficulties in getting their thesis written, done, etc, and have complained about unsympathetic supervisors, or being pushed to get work done despite their emotional difficulties and mental health issues. Time and again I see posts of students talking about depression, anxiety, frustration, desperate for some comfort and an understanding supervisor.

Yet, here is a supervisor who is potentially going through the same thing, who has had a death, who could be seriously grieving, who might be struggling mentally, who might have mental health issues themselves which has been triggered by the death. And yet most of you have made claims that this is unfair, that they need to buck up and get the work done. Why is it that a student can have sympathy, but not the supervisor?

Supervisors, are humans. They have mental health issues, family issues, financial troubles just like the rest of us. That work they commented on. Was it a full thesis? Or just a chapter, it's easy to do a chapter in comparison to providing feedback on an entire piece of work.

You cannot expect everything to fall magically into place, you might not pass the viva, you might get an R&R, you might get major corrections, you might fail. What will you do about your job if that happens?

It's great that you are starting a new job, but it's important to keep in mind that the submission does not mean that the PhD ride is over. You cannot expect a supervisor to accommodate your needs outside of the university (i.e. the job).

It is frustrating when you need the feedback, but sometimes life gets in the way and accommodations have to be made. I think HazyJane makes some excellent points, I would heed their advice.