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The PhD and The Last Of Us

In summer 2013, parenthood was rapidly approaching. My wife was only a few months away from giving birth to our daughter, we had moved house and were trying to get what decorating and DIY we could done. I was delivering as many workshops as possible in order to take several months off when we had the baby, and wondering what was going to happen…

…and I bought a PS3.

When it came out the latest game was The Last Of Us. I’ve played some great games since I got a PS3 – and back when I had a PS2 – but The Last Of Us is just something else. I don’t know if I will ever play a game so rewarding, so challenging, so emotionally satisfying as The Last Of Us. The emotional themes, the scary creatures, the inter-character dynamics and the wonderfully overgrown landscapes just put it way ahead of the pack for me.

Hang on a minute, thinks the reader, isn’t this a blog that is normally to do with PhDs and vivas and things like that? It is, and here’s where I’m going with this train of thought: there is no video game that sums up the PhD experience better than The Last Of Us.

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creative thinking

Creative Thinking Tuesday, 2nd December 2014

There are lots of tools and tips and techniques for creativity. There are many helpful things that you can have in your environment and behaviours that could aid you. In these posts so far I’ve shared a few things that I find really helpful, and if you look online there are many posts like these. In today’s post, I want to share four sayings or quotes that have shaped how I think about creative thinking.

Sturgeon’s Law

“90% of everything is crud.” First coined by sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon, this was used in specific response to criticisms of science fiction. You might think that this is a really unhelpful quote to keep in mind, but actually I find that it keeps me motivated: if 90% of everything is rubbish then one has to work hard to find innovative ideas. It sets a personal expectation for creative work. I don’t think it means that one has to reduce the number of ideas one has, and aim just try to have good ideas. Far from it actually…

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series

The To Do List

Last month I wrote a few posts about time, the PhD and habits; while my own habits now are aimed at me being productive in my current work, I can’t help but think back to my PhD – and I wonder if some of the little experiments that I’ve done in the last few months might be of interest to postgrads? Over the next few days I guess we’ll find out!

Making a List…

During most of my PhD I was a to do list devotee. I had one every day. I would load up a sheet of paper at the start of each week with the things that I wanted to do, and each day would choose – like choosing from an a la carte menu. I would write down the people who I needed to correspond with, the outcomes I was aiming for, make a note of specific appointments that I had on each day. It was great to feel so busy, I was doing lots of work.

Except I wasn’t very productive.

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creative thinking

Creative Thinking Tuesday, 11th November 2014

Got a problem, situation or challenge that you need ideas for? Here’s a simple process for getting 20+ ideas that requires nothing more than two sheets of A4 paper (you can choose for yourself whether they’re lined or not).

Step 1

If you don’t already have a question for your situation, write down on one of the sheets a clear question about what you need ideas for. Read it aloud to make sure you’re happy with it. Put this to one side.

Step 2

Find the nearest book. Open it to a random page and point to a word on the left hand page. So long as this word is a verb, noun or adjective write it down on your second sheet of paper. (flip to a different page if you land on “the” “a” “her” or any other kind of preposition). Underline this word.

Step 3

Consider this randomly selected word and list beneath it as many associations as you can to this word. Take at least three minutes. If you start to slow down keep going. Push yourself!

Step 4

Bring back your first sheet with your question on. Use your list of associations, one-by-one, as inspiration for answers – ideas – to that question. As with Step 3, push yourself if you need to: thoughts may come quite quickly for some words and not for others. Your mind is a pattern-making system, and will try to fill in gaps. Don’t dismiss any idea.

From start to finish, this might take up to twenty minutes, and a reasonable expectation is to have twenty or more ideas by that point. Then the hard part begins: reviewing and selecting ideas that you want to take forwards!

Want to see an example?

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news

Catch Up, 10th November 2014

Is it time for another catch up post? What happened to the last two weeks? Oh that’s right! I was out of the house delivering several workshops and facilitating one of Liverpool’s First Year Development Workshops – busy times! Fun times though. I’ve got a couple of other little projects that I’ve been pushing forward – I had cause to tweet the following a few days ago:

Watch this space I guess!

On This Blog

Around a fortnight back I was mulling over my creative playlist, before I introduced the Patreon campaign for the Viva Survivors Podcast. Regular readers will know that I’m really passionate about helping PhD candidates prepare for the viva, and the podcast is just one of the things that I do to support that goal. I’m looking to increase what I do with that resource, and through Patreon I hope to do more. Will you become a Patron to the Podcast?

After the Patreon post, I posted a total of six posts in my “Common Qs About The Viva” series, and there are more on this blog as well – and more to come! Do you have a question about the PhD viva? Let me know and maybe it will be the subject of a post in the future.

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viva

Common Qs About The Viva: What Should I Know About My Examiners?

I’ve been talking to PhD candidates about viva prep for over four years, and there are some questions that regularly come up at workshops. I’ve started answering some of these on this blog, but thought it might be useful to answer some of the most frequently asked questions all of this week. Let me know what you think in the comments, and please give me some questions for future posts!

What should I know about my examiners?

I think that this question is often asked in my workshops because candidates think there might be some special knowledge that they need. Like a cheat code on an early video game console, if they know the right bits of info, they will get an easy ride – or infinite turns at answering questions maybe! Of course, things don’t work like that, but there are some really useful things to know about your examiners in advance.

Many candidates know a little about their internal and external ahead of time (assuming that this is the examination team that you have; check your institution’s guidelines). Maybe you have met your external at conferences – perhaps even cited some of their papers in your thesis. And it’s likely that you’ve had the opportunity to meet your internal before, and know a little about them. There are three things though that will be really useful to know about your examiners.

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viva

Common Qs About The Viva: What Are Minor Corrections?

I’ve been talking to PhD candidates about viva prep for over four years, and there are some questions that regularly come up at workshops. I’ve started answering some of these on this blog, but thought it might be useful to answer some of the most frequently asked questions all of this week. Let me know what you think in the comments, and please give me some questions for future posts!

What are minor corrections?

I think that this question comes up a lot in my viva preparation workshops because people want to know what might be in their future. Hopefully they know that most PhD candidates have to make some amendments to their thesis, and so it’s useful to know what sorts of things come up. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, typical items on a list of minor corrections could include:

  • spelling mistakes and typos: I was terrible for missing “the the” in my thesis!
  • corrections to grammar: some grammar rules are easy to miss; if your examiners spot things they are not just being pedantic – they want your thesis to be the best it can be.
  • amendments to tables, references, diagrams: usually to make things more clear.
  • small amounts of copyediting: rewording sentences and paragraphs to make the meaning more clear.

There is a hope that a thesis will be read at some future date by someone wanting to build on your research. Corrections are asked for, in part, so that the book you have produced will as helpful as possible.

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viva

Common Qs About The Viva: What If I Find Mistakes?

I’ve been talking to PhD candidates about viva prep for over four years, and there are some questions that regularly come up at workshops. I’ve started answering some of these on this blog, but thought it might be useful to answer some of the most frequently asked questions all of this week. Let me know what you think in the comments, and please give me some questions for future posts!

What if I find mistakes in my thesis after submission?

I think that this question comes up a lot for lots of possible reasons. Most common, I think, is a fear that mistakes will somehow lessen the impact of academic work – examiners might find a typo and instantly think “This candidate was doing so well… Such a shame!”

In preparing for your viva you are going to read your thesis; you are bound to find things that you would want to be different. Sometimes this will just be phrasing, but sometimes you might find things that need to be different: spelling mistakes, awkward phrasing or even errors in your work. What can you do?

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viva

Common Qs About The Viva: Does Publishing Before The Viva Help?

I’ve been talking to PhD candidates about viva prep for over four years, and there are some questions that regularly come up at workshops. I’ve started answering some of these on this blog, but thought it might be useful to answer some of the most frequently asked questions all of this week. Let me know what you think in the comments, and please give me some questions for future posts!

Does publishing before the viva help?

I think that this question comes up a lot because some postgraduate researchers have been told that that is what academia is all about. It’s true that peer review of journal articles is a backbone of academic research, but PhDs are assessed on material presented in the thesis. The award of PhD is based on the merits of the research in the thesis, and by extension the talents and competence of the person who did it (the PhD candidate).

Given all of that, does publishing before the viva help?

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viva

Common Qs About The Viva: How Do They Start?

I’ve been talking to PhD candidates about viva prep for over four years, and there are some questions that regularly come up at workshops. I’ve started answering some of these on this blog, but thought it might be useful to answer some of the most frequently asked questions all of this week. Let me know what you think in the comments, and please give me some questions for future posts!

How do vivas start?

I think this question comes up a lot because sometimes starting things is hard. I think there’s often a fear of the unknown associated with the viva: the start of the viva is the start of the fear! I think that’s a shame, because from my experience of talking to PhD graduates, vivas tend to start with examiners asking the candidate to talk in general terms about their thesis and research.

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