Mental health, doctoral study and supervision: Can ‘troubles with writing’ mask other problems?

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Mental health and doctoral writing, mental health and supervision

By Claire Aitchison

Corridor conversations often reflect problems more widely felt. Recently a friend, just back from dealing with a particularly difficult student-supervisor issue, revealed how concerned she was about the mental health of both parties. She had been called in to help because the student reportedly was having ‘trouble with her writing’.

For those of us who regularly work in the space between supervisor and student, being called in to help is likely to expose us to a disproportionate number of ‘troubles’. Whether identified by supervisors, research committees or students, I have come to expect a relatively predictable range of ‘troubles with writing’. These ‘troubles’ can often be sheeted back to the following:

• unhelpful feedback (typically inconsistent, contradictory, incorrect, uninformative, inappropriately delivered);
• neglect (typically little or no feedback, no formative feedback, feedback too late to be developmental);
• student resistance to taking advice;
• writers’ block.

As a literacy adviser and/or academic developer across different institutions over many years, I have also learned that such ‘writing troubles’ often coexist with intensified emotional states. Writing is a deeply personal and emotional activity – and doctoral writing is particularly fraught because the stakes are so high. For supervisors and students alike, much is riding on the ability to explain one’s work eloquently and to argue convincingly for significance. The research has to be sound, but so does the medium for conveying this good work: the writing.

But I am interested here in the co-existence of ‘writing problems’ and mental health.

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Doctoral writing and supervisor feedback: What’s the game plan?

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Emotion & writing, supervisor feedback, talking about writing, Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other

By Susan Carter

Last week’s post and its comments provide an entry point to this one. Last week I drew on Peter Arthur’s thoughts on how to teach metacognition, which takes the teacher further than just teaching material, to teaching students how to manage their own learning. Reflection on this topic took me to the fact that, in practice, supervisors are learners too when it comes to the cycles of feedback and revision in doctoral writing.

Doctoral writing: developing metacognitive awareness

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Emotion & writing, Writing motivation

By Susan Carter, with thanks to Peter Arthur, UBC

One of the most important things learned when writing a doctoral thesis is the kind of self-knowledge that enables self-management. That skill alone makes the doctoral experience worthwhile, even when the journey is arduous and frustrating. A recent seminar by Peter Arthur on undergraduate metacognitive skills development prompted me to write this post on how metacognitive awareness can be applied to doctoral writing.

Peter had a series of questions for undergraduate students to prompt them to see the metacognitive expectations of a set assignment or in examination preparation. It seemed to me that his line of enquiry, which included drawing on Carol Dweck’s (2008) growth versus fixed mindsets, could be adapted for the purposes of doctoral writing.

Doctoral writing: Why bother?

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Desire to write, Emotion & writing, Staying realistic with writing

By Susan Carter

Recently a colleague posed this question to academics: ‘your research and publication–why bother?’ Now that sounds sullen and disenchanted, but it is a great question for drawing out what really matters about research. This post considers why we bother doing doctoral writing as students and carefully supporting it as academics.

It’s based on a workshop for doctoral candidates with a twofold purpose. The first was about emotion, to vent about the tribulations of doctoral writing for catharsis (and bonding, according to Mewburn, 2011) and then turn to listing positive reasons for doing this work as a motivational exercise. The other is to emphasise that throughout the thesis the reasons why the research matters should be overtly stated in writing, specifically in the introduction and the conclusion.

In a two hour workshop with doctoral students from several disciplines we first worked through the disenchantment inherent in ‘oh, why bother?’, making space for shared griping about what is bothersome about doctoral research and writing. People talked about what seemed hard to them at the time.

Then candidates moved to individually answer that question. The answers to ‘why bother?’ had to be accurate, not exaggerated or understated. There was a tendency for understatement, which is common, given that often it seems socially inept to tell people how important your own work is, and that allowed us to talk about the way that defending the doctorate required stating its significance. Group peer review ensured perfect iteration so that the right wording for inclusion in the thesis was sharp and persuasive.

My own belief is that we are hugely privileged to spend time on a research project and acquiring the advanced literacy skills that enable communicating what it means to others who are likely to be interested. I think of the very bright people I know trapped in boring jobs, perhaps with family responsibilities that mean they haven’t got the possibility to do a doctorate. I know many doctoral students have similar pressures in their lives, but somehow within their own resources they find a way to keep their career moving forward and their minds keen as they learn. Not everyone can.

Here is a list of reminders about what doctoral writing can do for you:

• Finding an academic voice helps define who you are and what matters to you; it is an act of self creation;
• Gaining a sophisticated level of literacy that will be useful in the future;
• Finally figuring rules about grammar and even appreciating their logic;
• Writing passages that are really satisfying in their clarity and cleanness;
• Realising that writing is often flowing more easily;
• Joining a distinct discourse community;
• Gaining an ability to mentor others;
• Widening future career opportunities; and
• Becoming a stronger person who can manage their own emotions and the large writing project.

Many doctoral students are the first in their family to venture so far into education, and as they write, they write possible further success for future generations into their family’s history and repertoire. For some, passion about making the world a better place drives them as doctoral writers; they may be tackling big challenges or smaller ones, but know that they join the legions of humans who work in different ways to make things better.

This blog often acknowledges the challenges of doctoral writing, the way that feedback can be demoralising, that outside pressures can really squeeze, and that the pedantry and perfectionism of academic writing can baffle and irritate. We comment on these kinds of things because we know they can be bothersome. ‘Why bother?’ may often rise out of irritation, or self-doubt or self-pity from doctoral students or the academics who support their writing.

I’d like to gently suggest that most routes through life are harder than doing a doctorate, harder because they are more limited, smaller, and less full of potential. But it can be productive to take a moment to take this question to heart and to formulate a response that reminds one of the joys and benefits of the challenge. It is good to take ‘why bother’ literally, too, and articulate in the thesis so that there is no doubt that the project was worth doing, worth a doctorate, and that the original contribution is significant.

In the introduction and conclusion of the doctorate students could be encouraged to answer further questions with careful detail.

• Why did you take up this research?
• What was the problem that motivated you to seek a solution, or partial solution?
• Who were hurt by that problem?
• What was hard for you in this research project and what gave you the impetus to keep going?
• How does your research mitigate the problem or fill in a gap in knowledge or understanding?
• Who will benefit from your research findings?
• Might benefits be wider, in that your methods would work with other problems, or for practitioners in other disciplines?
• What gaps in knowledge or understanding still exist?

Supervisors probably need a different set of prompts, but might remember that whenever we work supportively with someone else’s writing, we learn more about what works and what doesn’t, and how we can mentor as part of making the world a better place through research and its writing. I’m always at risk of arriving at a happy ending, and am doing it again here, but would ask for contributions to share ways that we can help each other to know why we bother, and that it does matter. What is your response to ‘doctoral writing; why bother’?

Mewburn, I. (2011). Troubling talk: Assembling the PhD candidate. Studies in Continuing Education. Available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0158037X.2011.585151?src=recsys

 

 

 

Moving beyond ‘because I said so’ – motivation for thesis writing

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completion of doctorate, Disciplining the writer, Emotions and academic writing, Writing motivation

Dr Kay Guccione (@kayguccione) works at the University of Sheffield. Kay designs mentoring programmes for researchers and her work is centred on linking people together to talk about the things that matter to them.

By Kay Guccione

Writing a thesis of 80,000 to 100,000 words is something we expect of everyone in almost all forms of doctorate. In a PhD it’s impossible to avoid doing some writing — our writing is what we are assessed on and how we communicate our research in conventional forms. With ‘publish or perish’ resonating down every corridor, our attitude to writing is our gateway to the currency of research careers. We are emotionally preoccupied with the fear, excitement, dread, satisfaction, guilt and elation of writing (Wellington, 2010) — see #AcWri #AcWriMo #shouldbewriting #shutupandwrite…

But for some, writing in thesis form seems a futile endeavour at first glance.

Reading and writing the thesis acknowledgement – support, people and identity

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doctoral support, Thesis acknowledgements, writing the Acknowledgements

by Lilia Mantai

This fabulous guest post about thesis acknowledgements comes from Lilia Mantai who settled in Australia after completing her teaching degree in Germany. For the last six years she has been working at Macquarie University, Sydney, in various roles (as tutor, research assistant, project officer and academic developer). She is now close to submitting her PhD on researcher identity development of doctoral students. Good luck Lilia!

Writing is personal. It is also social as it does not happen in isolation. Discussing and clarifying ideas with your colleagues, receiving and incorporating feedback from critical friends and reviewers are social acts that make writing collaborative. Yet the doctoral thesis comes across as a disembodied, de-personified and de-personalised product of doctoral ‘training’ – void of the emotions, typical PhD ups and downs, and identity crisis battled in the process. Until you read the thesis acknowledgements.

My PhD research looks at how doctoral students become researchers in the PhD journey.

While reading through various theses in the early stages of my PhD, it struck me that the acknowledgement section of the thesis was just oozing with personal and ‘behind-the-scenes’ stories.