1) a PhD isn't 'a journey' its just a big project.

2) everyone you know will at some point say "I'm going to do a PhD next year" no they won't, they have no idea what it involves and think it will just be like an undergrad degree.

3) Male academics do not do admin or do it badly so female academics have to take up the slack at the detriment of their research (currently happening in my uni)

4) the Dr title is worth it, especially when you can casually pull it out when talking to cold callers. "is Mrs Sneaks there??" "No, Dr. Sneaks is here though"

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double post

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I think it depends on your uni and department. At my uni I've been told officially I need to be a 2nd supervisor to learn the ropes, and then once I've had some experience I can become a 1st supervisor. But tbh, I bet if I asked to be a 1st supervisor they wouldn't really be bothered about it.

We have to do a PGCHE as part of our probation as lecturers at my uni. You can take a module on research supervision in that BUT you have to be already supervising (which made no sense to me but apparently the coursework required you to be an active supervisor), so its not compulsory.

What I do know is that you can take the module as a stand alone just for teaching development at any time, so maybe your uni has something similar? Alternatively, the ESRC etc often run 1-day courses on such things I believe.

But how hard can it be?? Just don't answer emails, make suggestions that are nowhere near relevant to the supervisee's research project, ask the student to do something in meeting 1 and then in meeting 2 accuse them of wasting time doing said task and say they shouldn't have come up with that idea in the first place, don't read anything but offer scathing criticism nonetheless. You know, just like our supervisors. (well mine anyway :p )

My refworks is leaving spaces after the parentheses of citations. Any way to stop this??

E.g.

Chocolate is amazing (Sneaks, 2010) . Therefore


:-s

and I claim my prize

I've had publishers phone me and email about whether I'd like to put my thesis work into short research books/special issue things, but my sup has advised against it. You need to be sure they are REF-able otherwise you're just throwing your research away - I'd rather put it into journal articles (which are seen as better in my field)

Also think strategically about when to be critical and when not to be. If your critique supports the reason for your research, then its useful, if its just critique for critiques sake then it can come across bitchy.

e.g. "XYZ study examined the effects of sherbet on hyperactivity, it was rubbish cos they did it on people who didn't even like sherbet"

is worse than

"XYZ study examined the effects of sherbet on hyperactivity, it was rubbish cos they did it on people who didn't even like sherbet AND THEREFORE MY STUDY IS AMAZEBALLS COS IT LOOKS AT CHOCOLATE AND HYPERACTIVITY IN CHOCOLATE LOVERS"

:p

The final year was tough for me because 1/ I was bored and at the end of my tether with my topic and 2/ my supervisor just got me to re-write re-write re-write time after time after time until it got back to the original version - so it was demoralising and was a tough battle, but basically it was just editing.

I'd be tempted to use interviews, so they aren't afraid of discussing things. THen use a focus group after your analysis, to kind of validate your analysis. i.e. "I found 3 themes, these were....." and let them talk about whether they agree/disagree. OR you could get them to do a second analysis for you - in my discipline we do this by putting sub-themes on cards and geting participants to do a card-sort. If their organisation of the cards matches your analysis then you have a really strong study :-)

I think it was me being confident about my ambition. I basically went in there with 1 publication, saying I WAS going to publish the others in top journals. One of the panel said "yeah, well how would you know that" in a really sarky way, I got angry, then calmly said "well its very good research!" and then went into a long explanation about the niche area I was looking at :p

Be ready for questions on interdisciplinary work i.e. which other departments could you work with? look up other staff members so you can name drop when they say who you could work with across the same department, think of a 5 year plan of what you want to achieve, if you're going for a job with teaching, revise their NSS ratings and what they're good/poor at.

oh excellent, you took it! You're going to love it, and you'll get to be an even better academic because all the blood will rush to your brain, what with being upside down (up)

I can say that my first year of lecturing has been a crash course in juggling workloads, if its anything like my experience, then just managing to do even a tiny bit of research during term time is an achievement (I'm hoping this gets better this year). You'll be busy, but fine :-)

Watch out for crocodiles and great whites though, I hear they can come through the bathroom tap :$

Also have you thought about more multimedia type ways of presenting the data e.g. youtube vid of slide changes or something? I'm sure these things are becoming more acceptable.

Do you have an external examiner lined up, or any inkling which field they would come from? - if so I'd use that to guide you which discipline to follow more closely.

Do you need all the plots - my subject isn't particularly mathematical (apart from social science type stats), but IMO less is more.

If anyone wants to pay me to clear up my office, then please do - I'm taking offers above £20 an hour. While you do it I'll tell you about how difficult it is to track down participants, so you get some research experience :p