We are still having discourse about who should be productive, who doesn’t need to be productive, how to be productive in the plague times, and it’s all very confusing. While there are some Objectively Bad Takes, there are also just a lot of conflicting views that are mostly confusing because they all assume we know what productivity is and what it looks like… and I’m really not sure we do.
Tag: academic culture
How not to be your own micromanager
A couple of weeks ago, I actually did that thing on a Monday where you look at all your emails, … More
When talking in seminars makes you feel like you don’t belong
Some workplaces and research cultures explicitly or implicitly run so that every conversation is actually a battle for airtime, and it’s common to try to sabotage other people’s chances. We should be working towards the exact opposite: energising, authentic, worthwhile, academic conversations. That’s what we love about getting together with our nerd pals.
When reading makes you feel like an imposter
What these students show is they see reading as an intelligence test. (To be fair, they probably learned this from school.) As a graduate student, they have been a ‘smart’ person all their life, but maybe now they are not smart, or not smart enough.
We build resilience through healing AND challenge
You don’t get knocked down and bounce back stronger. At least not immediately.
A thesis has shape as a tree has shape: Imperial Gardens, legitimacy and editing
This is a reflection on the form of a writing genre and what that means. I started thinking about it … More
An early draft is a fragile flower
By the time your academic writing is ready to be published, it’s a tough nut, a rose hip, a thick-skinned … More
Talking across disciplines
Is your work ‘interdisciplinary’? (Or maybe it is ‘cross-disciplinary’ or ‘multi-disciplinary’.) Or is the purpose of your work to take … More
The PhD Quest: Arise, become a peer.
This is a post I started eighteen months ago. It was only after my last post, on warfare and Foucault, … More
This is not a test: discipline, the shitty first draft, and the real world.
A doctorate propels you towards the real world of scholarship. You will be a teacher, a researcher, an author. This is not a test. No-one else knows the answer to this stuff, that’s why you are making ‘an original contribution to knowledge’.