======= Date Modified 24 Aug 2008 01:48:16 =======

swantje:

agreed on your wisdom of references... sadly references are required in most places in order to do pg study (not that i agree with the need for references cause in principle they prove absolutely nothing.. i've written enough of them for other ppl for their pg studies and work stuff to know that.. they are pure twaddle.. but hey no one told the emperor that he was naked either).. in theory your work should have enough 'legs' to get you to where you want to go without the need for cronyism .. k... that was my bit of idealism for the day.. now back to the real world..lmao

of course the 'peripheral players' are more known than the phd candidates.. goes without saying... which takes us back to useful/not useful categories which you argue against in your next paragraph

anyhoo i'm with missspacey on this one....no academic ever comes into the pg rooms so unless you spend your time hanging around the coffee machine you dont get much out of coming in everyday .. at least at my uni (which is also uk based)

collaboration is useful ..no deying that...

ehh true swantje ..... all good in theory ... the rest always comes out in the wash anyway.

guess i'm just having one of them pissed off days [eh lets be honest a pissed off year.. hehe] where i fail to see any benefit to anything... no matter what the lifeforms at uni say.

======= Date Modified 24 Aug 2008 21:27:22 =======
my univ is 40 miles away from the place i live. but i go to my office every day (our univ provides office space for PhD students, which is generally shared by two to three students). As I am in a U.S univ, and it is a business school, so networking and visibility become very important. Also, despite my long commute (with rising gas prices), i go to univ because i like to have another place to belong to besides my home. If i did not want regular contact with univ, I should have opted for online PhD. Also, going to univ helps you discipline yourself, like getting up in the morning, dressing up, etc etc, and helps you draw a psychological line between what is home (place to relax) and what is univ (place to focus on work). Moreover, in context of networking, i can drop anytime in the office of my colleague or faculty and ask for help if I am stuck somewhere, likewise I can be available to help others. I cannot imagine isolating myself by staying at home, I need human contact which is beyond family faces (though they are the best) :-)

Another reason to be at the university while working on your research, and further, to try to participate in collective exercises such as seminars and conferences; is that knowledge can not possibly be produced without discussion and debate.

The ultimate goal of a research project is to generate some kind of new knowledge, and if you are aiming to do research as an occupation, you need to learn to interact with other people and look for such opportunities to exchange ideas and learn from each other. I know that academic departments are not great at that, and that most of them just dismiss the importance of students participating in the knowledge generating process; but if you want to make the most of the PhD programme, by not interacting with people you are just missing out on an important part of that process.

well i guess that is what conferences are for ..... and the workshops etc... loitering around the corridors and pg rooms is a diff kettle of fish though;-)

Well I'm going to dare to be different. I very rarely work from home - although I can understand the attractions (i.e. no noise, distractions from others etc), and on the rare occasions that I do work at home, I can concentrate better than in uni - I would get very isolated if I worked at home every day. My department has very good provisions for pgs (large desk in a shared office, laptops), and it means I can go and see my supervisor for a brief chat whenever I feel like it, rather than having to schedule a meeting. I think I would feel I was missing out if I wasn't in the department - even just on office gossip. I enjoy having a routine of going into the office every day and knowing that when I get home, I can switch off from work. Another reason for not staying at home is that I wouldn't have the house to myself (annoying retired parent!), so I'm sure I would be distracted very easily!