Lessons from my couch

By Kate Haddow

I have just recently submitted my PhD for examination and I am nervously awaiting a viva date. So as I struggle to adjust to life after the PhD and also try avoiding my viva prep books whilst sitting in my PJ’s, wrapped in my fluffy dressing gown, I have decided to use this time instead to write some reflections from my own experiences, things I wish I had known before my PhD journey.

1.       There is always that one twat - So whether it is someone you keep seeing at conferences, on Twitter or even your office. There is always that one twat or sometimes an entire bunch of people who make you feel like you’re totally inept and you’re not doing the PhD right.  The type of person who could take a shite in front of you and it would be a glitter covered, shimmering log coming out their hoop as your blinded by the sun shining out of their arseholes.  You know what I mean, already published like 10 articles, research is going as smooth as an Otter in a car wash, always has their shit together, you never see them in tears and you just know they will land a fab permanent job as doors miraculously open for them.  My advice, ignore those people, don’t compare yourself to others.  A PhD is a very personal journey on which we encounter various and disparate problems both personal and in relation to your institution too, just do the best you can. 

2.       Twitter is amazing but be careful - Personally I love Twitter and it has definitely aided my PhD. It has put me in touch with some wonderful people who have given me sound advice, not to mention the opportunities such as conferences, free papers to download and job opportunities.  But of course there is a down side to all this and for me I have had to learn to better manage my time on Twitter and there are times were I have to just come off it completely.  Twitter can be very distracting and you can easily spend a full morning scrolling through it, before realising you have not done a thing. But for me I also found Twitter sometimes made me anxious, because I would see people tweeting about working really long hours or spending the weekend writing a paper. For me now I limit my time on Twitter and I rarely go on at weekends, because I don’t work them, but I understand some people prefer to work outside of the standard 9-5 paradigm, but I also see a lot of people sort of bragging about working long hours and at weekends as if it’s a badge of honour too.  In essence do what works best for you, but try to get a good balance.

3.       Have a crew in and out of academia - during my PhD I developed a little group of friends doing PhD’s or who had completed their PhD’s, these friends were central in me getting to this point.  But also I want to give a shout out to friends who have been with you before the PhD and how important it is to have to have people outside of academia around you too, it never hurts to be kept grounded in reality.

4.       Learn to say NO – I’m not sure if this is a gender thing or a class thing or a mixture of the two thing’s thing, although I suspect both.  I have always felt like that person who does a lot, generally unpaid and is often underappreciated whilst there is always someone willing to take the credit for my efforts. Sure enough when I started the PhD I took on these ‘opportunities’ left, right and centre.  But there came a point when I realised I was sick and tired of being exploited and that my time was becoming increasingly precious as my PhD progressed, although I found it very hard, so I started to say no a lot more.  Guess what?  The world did not come to end and it made life so much easier.

5.       Go to conferences - Ok so when I found out conferences were a big part of academic life I think I nearly shit myself. If I am honest I didn’t really know what a conference was? In my head it was just people in suits with brief cases, standing in a big room being very middle class and eating smoked salmon sandwiches.  I was too embarrassed to ask what happened. What did I need to do?

I still struggle with conferences, I wouldn’t say I was natural networker.  I think anyone who knows me reading this will be like girl? Whattttt? I think I am known for being quite loud and apparently I command a presence (not sure if that’s a good thing or not?). But many times at conferences I have panicked and felt very anxious about talking to a room full of strangers, I have literally at times sat in the toilets for most of the lunch hour or ran outside and pretended that I smoke and just sat on bench somewhere in efforts to keep calm. OK so there is no doubt conferences can be very nerve wrecking and most of us feel that.  But sitting reflecting on my conference experiences on the whole they have been really positive.  They are where I have met some wonderful people, who have not just supported me personally but shaped my PhD.  They are also a good opportunity for putting your research out there and letting people know what you’re doing.

6.       Use your holidays - It always amazes me how many PhD students don’t know there entitlements when it comes to holidays or don’t even know they are entitled to holiday’s on top of things like bank holidays, Easter or Christmas etc. Every institution or funding body has policies around annual leave for research students, make sure you know what your entitlements are and use them or lose them. When I say holiday I don’t necessarily mean a trip away where you pay £10 for a pint in the departure lounge or eating ‘Lays’ crisps on a sun lounger. Even a staycation of Netflix box set streaming or just spending time with your family away from the research, e-mails and supervisors can be a form of holiday. As PhD students we are if you like the next generation of academics, I think it’s important we set a good example and not add to this culture of working 90 hour weeks and revising articles on our sun loungers.  You need a break at times, it’s that simple and it never hurts to come back refreshed with new ideas.

7.       Find how you work best - When I started my PhD I always felt if I wasn’t in our office that I essentially wasn’t working in the ‘correct’ way and that I was bunking off. In all honesty I hated working in that office.  Despite our office being quite modern, it was always either freezing cold or boiling hot, there was no happy medium.  It also resembled a call centre layout, as we each had our own little booth, with no window to people watch out of.  If anything I found it too quiet and I was freighted to sneeze too loud. I would find any excuse to go and talk to someone and I soon realised I was that annoying person who can’t whisper! I decided to boycott the office for local cafes or my couch in the living room and the majority of my PhD has been written in these locations. People often say to me “oh I don’t know how you can work from home” but I feel the same way about the office. It took me a while, but find ‘your own space’ where you are comfortable working, certainly don’t feel bad if it’s not in your assigned office space.

8.       Having a good supervisory team - So I don’t have room to tell you the full story about my convoluted supervisory experiences, your attention to this blog is probably wavering already. I am not saying your supervisor has to be your bestie, but I can’t emphasise how important it is to have the right person for your project.  Speaking as someone who got the right person eventually, it made a world of difference to me and my PhD. I had to put up a bit of a fight to get the tailored supervisory arrangements I eventually got however, indeed someone told me you need to pick your fights carefully when doing a PhD.  But for me getting the correct team behind you is a fight very much worth having.

9.       You are more than your PhD - It really saddens me to see people getting genuinely upset and stressed about their PhD’s. Of course I too have cried over mine and threatened to quit, but some of the awful prolonged stressful states I have seen friends in really does hurt. You are more than your PhD, and indeed yes you have a life beyond the PhD and yes there are things more important than the PhD, like your physical and mental wellbeing or your family and friends.  Don’t concentrate on one and lose sight of the other and finally don’t let it consume your bloody life!

Things I wish I’d known when I started my PhD

Calum Carson is a doctoral researcher in the Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change (CERIC), University of Leeds. 

Embarking on a PhD is a daunting task for anybody, and it is a very rare researcher who gets to the end of their project and thinks “I wouldn’t have done anything differently”. A doctoral degree is a steep learning curve, and the sheer length of time involved in conducting research and writing a thesis almost necessitates a degree of error over those years: there is no such thing as a “perfect PhD”, sadly, but there is such a thing as good practice. The following advice is given in this context, and looks to provide new doctoral researchers with some building blocks in how to establish effective habits from day one.

Find a routine that works for you: One of the most valuable aspects of a PhD is the freedom to almost entirely decide on your own working schedule and routine, and this is something that you should take full advantage of to figure out what works best for you. Some people work best by working a strict 9-5 in the office surrounded by other doctoral researchers, while others work best alone in coffee shops with their headphones on; for others they may prefer to work from home, or to run errands and relax in the morning before working later into the evening. For some, it may be a steady mix of all the above. It is useful to experiment with working in different ways and in different environments to see what you prefer, and what gets the most results: it’s unlikely that you’ll ever have a job with this much freedom to dictate your schedule again, so make the most of it!

Finding a decent work-life balance is crucial: While it is important to establish what working routine works best for you, it is just as important to maintain a healthy work-life balance between your research and the rest of your life. A PhD by its very nature can feel all-consuming very easily, with you being solely responsible for your own project and nobody else understanding it as well as you do, but it is essential to remember that it is not your entire life: everyone needs rest and relaxation, and you will find that you are much better equipped to deal with the more difficult aspects of your research when you are well rested and have had some time away from it (even when it feels like you just don’t have the time). See here for a useful (and non-preachy) guide as to why this is so important, and how to embed boundaries between your research and your personal life into your routine.

Plan ahead carefully for things that are out of your control: Make sure that you’re well organised far in advance of deadlines and procedures for things that are out of your control, and may require a lengthy process and/or degree of work and organisation from those at the receiving end. An example of this would be planning, writing, and submitting a paper to a journal earlier rather than later owing to the sometimes-extensive peer review process that no hard work on your part will speed up, or asking for interview dates with research participants far in advance so that they have enough time to plan their own schedules accordingly.

Be prepared for some things to go wrong: For a project as long and comprehensive as a PhD, you don’t just need effective planning and organisational skills: you also need a high degree of luck. Almost all researchers experience setbacks in their research, from participants or case studies unexpectedly dropping out to surveys not being completed, and many of these setbacks will be factors that are beyond your control to have anticipated. The important thing is to prepare yourself for the possibility that such circumstances may occur and to react accordingly, rather than panicking that it has derailed everything: more often than not, there are always alternative solutions in reach. There may also be

Write, write, write: The most useful advice I was ever given for my PhD, and that I see replicated in almost every advice blog post/article/book I come across, was to write, write, write, and to do this from the start. It is a common pitfall for PhD students to almost fetishize and idealise the actual writing aspect of a thesis, and to leave it until later and later “until I’m ready and everything else is in place”, at which point the sheer scale of the writing ahead of you feels like an intimidating and insurmountable task. It is much more effective to eliminate this fear before it’s even begun to manifest by starting to write almost immediately from the beginning of your PhD: you won’t end up using everything you scribble down in the final version of your thesis, but through that writing you’ll develop a keener familiarity and expertise with both your project and being able to describe and explain your research, as well as eliminating a psychological fear further down the line. Writing can also be a great way of brainstorming and working through practical or conceptual difficulties with your project, too: see here and here for some tips on this.

Make the most of your supervisors: Your supervisors are a crucial resource in helping a PhD project run smoothly, and you should make the most of this incredible source of knowledge and support at your fingertips. They will be able to advise you not just on your specific topic and the field you are contributing to, but on the nuts and bolts of research design, the most effective ways to structure your thesis, how to distil the findings of your literature review, and much more. Also remember that not only are they experts in the fields that you are researching, but in most circumstances, they will have also been through the PhD process themselves: never be afraid to ask for their advice on something for fear of sounding silly, as odds are, they were once sat in your position thinking the exact same thing.

Engage with your department: One important way of ensuring that a PhD does not become an isolating experience is to engage and get involved with the wider department that you are based in, and becoming part of both the postgraduate and wider academic community. Most university department’s calendars come packed with an extensive list of seminars, lectures and training sessions occurring on a regular basis: attending some of these, and interacting and socialising with your academic colleagues, is an important and rewarding aspect of any PhD.

More than anything else, however, remember that a PhD is a long and hard journey at times, but it is also an immensely satisfying and worthwhile one: take the time to enjoy it while you’re doing it, rather than just retrospectively. The above advice won’t shield you entirely from experiencing any difficulties during your projects, but it will, I hope, give you some resources and resilience to know how to be able to bounce back and push through those times.

And good luck! 

What does it take to leave academia?

Dr Vikki Turbine

Twitter: @VikTurbine

Instagram: @vikturbine

Blog: https://firstgenerationfeminist.blogspot.com

This week, the hashtag #fullatforty, was doing the rounds on academic Twitter.  As the responses clearly highlighted, there are many reasons why this is only possible for a handful of academics enjoying a range of privileges and on a - now uncommon - linear career path. I commented on the hashtag myself - rather than aiming for the goal of tenure/promotion by forty, I was exiting academia.

Back in January, I announced that I had chosen to resign from my full time permanent post at a Russell Group University.  A post that I had held for 10 years. In that blog, rather than spelling out why I was leaving, I framed my blog around the reasons ‘Why I stayed’.

For this guest post, I was invited to reflect on my exit from academia. It is not going to be another ‘hints & tips’ for ‘post-aca’ life.  I won’t be reiterating here my motivations for leaving.  You can check out my Twitter feed for clues if you don’t already know…  We do need to continue to highlight the toxicity in academia at present- a culture of overwork, hyped up competition, gaslighting by default, audit cultures.

What I want in this post is a more candid discussion of what it takes to be able to exit the academy - and not to regret that exit?

This is therefore a reflection on how those of us exiting the academy are as differently positioned via shifting precarities and privileges as those trying to get in; and those already inside.

As Dr Catherine Oakely has been highlighting on Twitter recently, the ‘post-aca’ success stories can be grating, triggering. What if your exit has not been by choice, or led to a seamless transition to another ‘fulfilling job’?

While, my exit was in part pushed by my chronic illness (Stage 4 endometriosis), I think even if I had not become so unwell, I would have been planning my exit anyway.

I stayed for at least 2 years too long.

I stayed because I felt I had no other option.  As I mentioned in my resignation post, for a first generation working class woman, you cannot easily walk away from a secure and well-paid job. One that allows you not only to get out of debt (after almost 2 decades), but to also glimpse a life you had before only read about, or seen represented on television.

However, this is still a trap. Working in a toxic environment corrodes everything about you, including your health, values, creativity, ability to care. Everything I thought I could attain via that job - that privileged professional income - was in fact being pushed to the side.

I fully acknowledge the obvious material privilege in being able to get out of debt thanks to a full time job with a well-paid salary that also gave me the ability to save a small buffer fund.  I know this makes me very lucky. However, I am not going to feel guilty that I have been to choose my exit. I have in the past allowed that narrative of gratitude and ‘luck’ at not being precarious sway me away from my own health and happiness. This is also what breaks down the hopes of collectivity and solidarity.  We need to be focussing our energy on the structures, not the individuals.  Many of us who are often well-aware of their privilege, are trying to challenge the structures. In the full knowledge that will make them more precarious.

I am also not feeling guilty, because as a first generation academic woman and a mother, I have been trained to feel that my entire life. I have rarely been met with positivity and encouragement when expressing what I want to do with my life. Rather, I’ve been met with responses about why I ‘can’t' or ‘shouldn’t’. How it would be disastrous for me to ‘throw away’ an opportunity.

But what kind of opportunity? And this is as close as ‘advice’ I’ll come to in this post; I wish I had been made to feel that there were options other than ‘an academic career’ post PhD. I wish that I had access to more information about what an academic career would look like as a job; a university as a space of employment; as a large organisation. While we buy into the narrative of academia as privileged space (and it can be) - it is also a job. This is important to remember. It keeps our perspective keen on what it is we are being asked to do.

So to exiting; it goes without saying that it takes an enormous set of material and cultural capitals to leave. I fully understand that I am celebrating my exit because it comes as a relief. It comes as a relief because I have not spent the last 10 years fighting my way through temporary contracts across countries.

Exit becomes a rediscovery of my creativity because I had been permanent. Which for women who are mothers and working class can become stuckness. It became very clear to me that I could not progress, or reposition myself, in the current climate in academia without playing the very game that had broken me - and was not designed for me to play anyway. I never knew the rules, or when they would change.  Progressing illness also made ‘exceeding’ the ever-increasing workload impossible.

And, I didn't want to. It’s not who I am. I can’t try to change myself anymore. I like me and my values and my interests. They may not be “REFable” (although they were…) but they are what I’m interested in.

Exit becomes empowering when it is an active choice for something better.  When you are in a position to make that choice.

I do hope in writing this, in being honest about the privileges we need to leave, or choose not to enter, we can also understand how different forms of precarities both force exit and staying put.  Why people continue to chase elusive academic posts, settle for part-time contracts. We can begin to build a much better understanding of why so many feel trapped into staying in toxic job search cycles, working environments-  as I had for many years. Much to the detriment of my physical, mental and emotional health.

Just as few of get #fullatforty, few of us get our happy exit after.

I don’t know if I will. I’m on a steep learning curve, setting up my own business, developing a website, a podcast. Putting myself back out there.  At nearly 40.

It might not work out. I don’t have much of a safety net. I have a temporary buffer. I do worry about my old age, my children’s future. I don’t know what will happen in the next year.

I only know how I feel now; and that is happy. Healthier than I’ve been in years. Excited. Engaged.

You may be at the other side of this journey - trying to get into academia - I get that too. It can be an inspiring, transformative, amazing space.  As can life on the outside. 

Why are Academics so Obsessed with Posters?

Photograph: Connor Brook

Mike Ryder is a PhD student at Lancaster University. His research interests include biopolitics, sovereignty, science fiction and war. He is particularly interested in the intersection between literature and philosophy, and the works of Giorgio Agamben, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault. In today's marketing- orientated post, he talks about the topic of posters and why they potentially shouldn't be overestimated. Go and have a look at his (fab) personal website: www.mjryder.net and check out his Facebook page. 



I’ve been involved in higher education for some time now – both as a student and an employee – and still to this day it surprises me just how obsessed academics are with posters.

And by posters here I don’t mean posters to stick on the wall; no, rather I mean posters to then send out by email or for users to download from social media or a website. Got a conference coming up? Make a poster and send it to your mailing lists. Got an event? Make a poster and upload it to your blog.

But the thing is, pdf posters just aren’t made for digital media. Here are some of the reasons why:

·         Posters are not SEO-friendly. Their content is not searchable online.

·         Errors are difficult to correct. If you have a change of date or change of venue, you can’t just go out and edit all the posters you’ve already sent out into the ether.

·         Posters are not mobile-friendly. Large files are slow to download and impact on a user’s data allowance. They also don’t make for easy reading on a mobile device.

·         Posters can be time-consuming to create. They are not an efficient means of communication and can often be overlooked by a time-starved audience.

The user journey

To give you a more practical example, every week here at Lancaster, our PG administrator sends round all of the emails she’s received to send out to PG students, so calls for papers, adverts and so on. Now imagine that among these emails, there’s one from you, with a poster attached for your conference. The email itself is empty, save a brief message asking ‘please can you send this out to your PG students?’

Now follow the process that someone might take to discover your poster:

1.    Open the email (large file size due to multiple attachments).

2.    Double click each email attachment in turn.

3.    Double click on the poster attachment to open / download it.

4.    Read the poster.

5.    Realise the poster is for a conference not in your field.

6.    Repeat.

I don’t know about you, but as a PG student, I receive dozens of emails each day. When it comes to conference posters and calls for papers, I dare say I have missed a few, or even just forgotten to check this week’s admin roundup, as there are often upwards of 10 or more attachments, each with a title that doesn’t necessarily shout ‘open me’.

So what’s the alternative? What can you do to make your communications more effective?

Adopt a marketing mindset

First thing’s first, it’s important to recognise that that you are engaged in a marketing activity, and not just a time-consuming addition to your academic workload.

As with all things marketing-related, it’s useful to spend some time planning your approach before you start. This will save you hours of toil and frustration in the long run. Your plan doesn’t have to be complicated – just a side of A4 will usually be enough, with a few key points plus some time-based targets to work by.

Even this simple step will improve your communications and give you better focus. You may even attract more responses as a result.

Things to consider

In any good marketing plan, you should always consider your audience. Who are you targeting? Where do your target audience go looking for information? Too often people take the ‘scatter gun’ approach and just fire out as many emails as possible, equating quantity with quality. However it’s far more effective and efficient to consider the leads you’re looking for, and the types of people you want coming to your event.

Put yourself in the position of the reader. We’re all busy people, bombarded with posters, flyers, surveys and all sorts of other communications, so take a moment to think about what you can do to make your particular message stand out. What other ways can you promote your event? Who are you targeting? What’s the best way to recruit them? Do you even need a poster at all?

You should also consider your existing contacts, as they can be a great resource. People are also far more likely to respond if they’ve been contacted directly, be it by email, instant message, social media of face-to-face.

I really do encourage you here to think outside the box, and don’t just assume that because you’ve made a poster or shared a Tweet that people are a) going to look at it and b) going to respond to it. This is why planning is so important, as it means you can often achieve better results with less effort, and a lot less stress.

Next steps

I hope this blog has given you some things to think about. At the very least I hope it’s persuaded you to take another look at the way you communicate with fellow researchers and academics.

In my next blog I hope to write about social media – especially in relation to conferences – but in the meantime do feel free to comment below and share your own experiences. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Monday Motivation

#PhDchat