myResearchSpace

You know the famous Engel quote: An ounce of action is worth a tonne of theory. Well that's bollocks, at least for the average Ph.D. student... I propose instead that an ounce of theory is worth a tonne of action. You spend weeks of source/data analysis, thinking, reading etc (in other words 'action'), just to come up with one idea, one ...

FREAKING OUT and HERE'S WHY: List of things to do: Finish current chapter Start next chapter Amend lit review Finish abstract for 2010 Conference Continue primary source analysis of Melbourne and Indian materials Begin research for my T&L research project Plan my next lectures Plan my next tutorials Hand in all essay marks Read ...

This was something I sent around to our School's postgraduate students, after being sent the article by Prof. Martin Fey: Schwartz, M.A. (2008) The importance of stupidity in scientific research. Journal of Cell Science121:1771 . This should be essential reading for postgraduate students in any discipline. (It's irrelevant that it's in a ...

It may be that we see a bit more activity on this blog, following Talitha's suggestion to crank up the old-style journal club. That is, a club with more than one person in it, who actually read and discuss journal articles, and post their musings on this site (formerly created for that very purpose). I'd be very keen on this sort of development, ...

Well, I'm 3 months into my PhD, and already I feel stressed and WAY behind the 8-ball, and yet I'm working very hard at it and getting through a ton of reading, so I don't why I feel so inadequate! ARGH! Anyway - mostly the stress has been created by logistic and administrative nightmares, and most of these have been caused by my need to spend ...

A friend of mine brought the news to my attention of Nick Cave being awarded an honorary PhD by Monash University – Nick managed 2 years of his arts degree (actually at the Caulfield Institute of Arts and Technology before it was subsumed by Monash) before giving up and embarking on a career as a musician and sometime author. His contribution? ...

The Wordpress blog ''Stuff White People Like'' has a recent entry ''Graduate School'' related to PhD study - an entertaining read. Not PC, but fun. 

Yesterday I achieved what I had been waiting for so long to do - thesis submission! Here's how it happened: Firstly, I went through and did a final check for minor errors e.g. spelling. It was a good thing I did, because there were still two that I had missed. I didn't work off the pdf for this. Instead, I went through all of the words in the ...

I never cease to be amazed at how most other students in our building appear to live at uni. They return here (after being here all day) after dinner at around 8:30pm, a bit before I leave for the day to have my own. Presumably, they would then work for a considerable amount of time as there's not much point coming to uni for half ...

This song began its life as a lab song describing the windowless, hopeless, depressing life in my dank laboratory. It was only recently that I realized that most, if not all PhD students would be able to relate to my experiences, except perhaps the Vitamin D deficiency caused by living in a windowless lab. There's even an audio version of this ...