On Friday 30th September Michael Azariadis and I met with a group of students to discuss their success in overcoming behaviours they’d identified as sabotaging their progress in their PhD or Masters. These students had previously attended Hugh Kearns’ workshop on “Self Sabotage: why we do it and what you can do about it”. The follow up workshop was divided into 3 parts: recall, reflection and planning.
In the first part, we asked students to recall the plans they’d made at the end of the initial workshop, to work more effectively on their research. We asked “What was the specific practical thing you planned to do after the workshop on September 11th, to move you closer to completing you PhD or Masters? When were you going to do this? What behavioural pattern/s did you believe was/were likely to interfere with achieving your goals?”
For most students, meeting with the supervisor within the coming week, setting up a schedule for further meetings and being proactive in obtaining feedback or help from others, were the practical things they felt would be most helpful to progress.
Avoiding the supervisor was a common behavioural pattern likely to interfere with progress. The underlying motivation for this avoidance was fear of appearing inadequate. One student described strategies he had used over the past 2 weeks to “desensitise” himself against the fear he felt in showing work to his supervisor. These included telling himself he was only a student and not an experienced researcher, using opportunities for informal contact with his supervisor as opportunities for friendly conversation, using a “draft” stamp on the work he submitted to his supervisor, and reminding himself that feedback is not personal criticism and is necessary for progress.
All students in the group found the fear that had driven them to avoid contact with the supervisor, to be largely unfounded, once they’d actually met with their supervisor. However in one case the meeting with the supervisor did not provide the help required with a particular aspect of the research. After discussion, we came to the conclusion that the student had probably asked for feedback on too large a unit of work and agreed that at the next meeting he should limit the discussion to the specific part of the research problem that was causing the greatest impediment to further progress. We also agreed that the student should email the supervisor with an agenda outlining the precise issue for discussion, before their next meeting. This student had also sought help from other academic staff in the School, and felt this would be a useful strategy to continue with.
Two students had planned to give thesis writing a higher priority than they had previously. Both decided to spend 2 hours a day on thesis writing before attending to other tasks. For one student it was important that members of the family were informed of this change in priorities. Another student highlighted the fact that she needed to give thesis writing a higher priority than research related tasks that were used as excuses to procrastinate on thesis writing and that research related tasks needed to be prioritised against interesting tasks relevant to broader career development, but not directly related to the PhD.
In the second part of the workshop students were asked to reflect on their behaviours in the week immediately following the initial workshop and to compare them with their behaviours in the preceeding week (ie 2 weeks later). In the discussion that followed we aimed to identify thought and behaviour patterns likely to help with or to hinder continued progress over time.
Helpful behaviours included setting well defined and achievable goals, taking responsibility for progress with the research and being proactive in seeking feedback and support.
Detrimental behaviours included setting goals that were too broad or poorly defined, overcommitting to various tasks and spending too much emotional energy on self blame when expectations were not reached. We also identified stress, tiredness and unexpected circumstances as factors likely to lead to a return to self sabotaging patterns of behaviour
The final part of the workshop involved planning for the coming week. Students were asked to write responses to the following questions:
What is the specific, practical thing in the next week that you could be doing to get closer to finishing your PhD or Masters?
When will you do this? Specify the times you have available for working on your research/thesis.
What behavioural patterns are likely to get in the way of doing this?
What strategies could you use to enhance your progress?
Most students needed help to define the specific task more clearly. For example one student planned to read 3 articles for a literature review in the coming week. This task was refined as follows:
Read articles 1 and 2 to provide a historical perspective to the development of… ( the research issue). This is required to fill out section…of the current draft of the literature review. Article 3 provides further discussion of… (a particular issue) that is inadequately dealt with in the current draft of the literature review. These articles will be read on …(a particular day of the week) when there are no other commitments and likely to be few distractions.
We also discussed strategies for amending plans when circumstances change and the unexpected happens. The point was made that external circumstances can’t necessarily be controlled but that your reaction to these circumstances can be, and will determine your effectiveness. The point was also made that drawing on the support of friends, family and the variety of services available to students at UWA is a wise strategy.
The next follow up workshop is scheduled to take place from 2-4pm on Wednesday 11th October 2006, in Guild Seminar Room 1.