{"id":47823,"date":"2019-05-07T13:43:03","date_gmt":"2019-05-07T20:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=47823"},"modified":"2019-05-07T13:43:03","modified_gmt":"2019-05-07T20:43:03","slug":"more-advice-on-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/more-advice-on-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"More advice on advice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been blogging since June 2010 \u2013 nearly nine years as I write this post. I started the blog, in part, because I wanted an online resource I could send to students. I\u2019d been working as a research educator for about four years at that time and noticed PhD students asked me the same questions over and over: how do I start my discussion section?<\/a>,\u00a0What is theory?<\/a>\u00a0What\u2019s the best way to take notes?<\/a>\u00a0How do you write so fast?<\/a>\u00a0How do I put publications in my PhD?<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I thought it would take six months to write everything down. Happily I was wrong and I still find the blog a stimulating, creative space to share my research and teaching.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m fortunate that many people have taken up the invitation to write for me<\/a>: this is important for a number of reasons. Through listening to stories we all get smarter. Other people have valuable perspectives and experiences to share and I am grateful they see the Whisperer as a vehicle. If you\u2019re a long time reader you might notice I have a rhythm to the blog. You get a post a week: one week it will be a community member the next week it will be me. By only posting on alternate weeks, I weave my voice into the voices of others. There\u2019s no doubt this makes the blog more interesting \u2013 and more sustainable for me (if I had to write 1000 words every week I think I would have given up long ago!).<\/p>\n

I get about two or three story pitches a week and, over time, I have developed a rubric for whether I accept a community member post or not. I rarely reject a post, but I do sometimes ask people to change their post before publication and sometimes I edit heavily.\u00a0The most common reason I ask for a revise and resubmit is when people send me a fairly similar version of \u2018lessonsI learned from doing a PhD\u2019. Without realising it, when they reflect on the PhD process, students say the same kinds of thing. This similarity is easy to explain: we all work within a system and this puts similar pressures on each one of us. It\u2019s not surprising advice for dealing with the system tends to converge around the same kind of topics: choosing good supervisors; being organised; qualities of persistence and resilience; keeping to a writing schedule; learning to fail; staying healthy and so on.<\/p>\n

I never reject the \u2018lessons learned\u2019 story pitches out of hand \u2013 usually there is something new and interesting to say because every person has a unique journey through the PhD. If can find this angle in the first draft I suggest the person rewrites it with their unique angle front and centre. It might be that they did a\u00a0PhD by publication<\/a>, or that they\u00a0studied\u00a0at a distance,<\/a>\u00a0were\u00a0coping with a chronic illness or condition<\/a>,\u00a0had lots of kids<\/a>or\u00a0were a minority in their department<\/a>\u00a0(I wish I had more of this last type \u2013 hint hint!). Most people are happy to do this rewrite, realising how useful it will be to others facing similar circumstances to share their very specific tips. These posts don\u2019t speak to everyone and often don\u2019t get many hits initially. However, over time they become the \u2018go to\u2019 post for people who google this specific circumstance. I like the idea that they stay on the blog as<\/p>\n

Sometimes I am sent \u2018lessons learned\u2019 posts that people have already published the post on their own blog. They kindly ask if I will republish, but I usually refuse. I try to work by the spirit of generosity: it\u2019s better to promote their blog through social media than be greedy and use their content on mine. Recently I agreed to do this for yet another post and started to think about how to make this sharing practice have more impact. With that in mind, I asked on Twitter for people to share with me advice posts they have written on their own blog. I got quite a number of them and expect that more will appear in the comments to this post.<\/p>\n

Below is the beginning of a guide to other PhD student advice posts I have been sent so far. I consider all these posts to offer \u2018generic advice\u2019 \u2013 not because they are bad or boring, but because they share good, common sense advice that is applicable to most people doing a PhD. I had a fun afternoon reading all of them: there are some excellent tips and observations in here, which I imagine will be useful to anyone starting \u2013 or trying to finish.<\/p>\n

I will add more posts to the list over time \u2013 possibly as a section on my\u00a0Community page<\/a>. I\u2019m still interested in publishing more unique accounts and perspectives , so if you have one, please send it in!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been blogging since June 2010 \u2013 nearly nine years as I write this post. I started the blog, in part, because I wanted an online resource I could send to students. I\u2019d been working as a research educator for about four years at that time and noticed PhD students asked me the same questions […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":47824,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15645],"tags":[13538],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-47823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-advice"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMore advice on advice - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/more-advice-on-advice\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"More advice on advice - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I\u2019ve been blogging since June 2010 \u2013 nearly nine years as I write this post. 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