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

Tags

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.

Advertisements

Writing groups, writing retreats, boot camps and other social writing events for doctoral writers – a call for posts

By Claire Aitchison

The editors of this blog have long been keen advocates for doctoral writers to come together to do, and share, their writing – whether that be in regular small writing groups, or in writing retreats, boot camps or the like. Over the years we’ve had numerous conversations about running and attending such groups and written here and elsewhere on the subject.

Not only have we frequently facilitated such groups, as academics and personally, we continue to be convinced of their benefits for getting writing done, for learning about writing and for developing valuable networks. In fact, Susan Carter and I first met back in 2011 when I was lucky enough to join her on her annual writing retreat. You can read about this wonderful week-long event that continues to be held in New Zealand biennially. In addition, Cally and I have written and presented about writing in groups.

Given our enthusiasm for these kinds of writing practices, it is curious that, to date, we have given them so little space in this blog. We’d like to make amends – and hence this post, which is also a call for blog proposals.

Decongesting writing through revision: The unwriting workshop

Tags

writing skills development

By Susan Carter

Sometimes students have writing habits that make for bulky prose where the content to word ratio is low: too many words and not enough content. Often decongesting writing can be achieved through revision in peer review–in our posts, we often mention this. This post proposes the idea of a new group workshop for doctoral and academic writers: an ‘unwriting’ workshop where peer review focus is on trimming verbal excess. As someone who puts on writing workshops commonly, I like the idea of an unwriting workshop.

My own writing is always more stylish when I am forced to shed words. Usually I begin culling words due to journal limitations on length, and then later see how much stronger the writing is, and easier to read. (Sometimes my academic friends suggest some chops. This paragraph’s first sentence is better for the unwriting I have done, prompted by Claire. It was originally  I’m prompted to have an entire workshop focused on unwriting by the way that my own writing is always more stylish when I am forced to shed words. I like the trimed version much better.)

New Year’s resolutions and doctoral writing: best wishes!

Tags

writing habits, Writing motivation

By Claire Aitchison, Cally Guerin and Susan Carter

Turning from one year to the next brings out self-auditing tendencies, the New Year resolutions. We have written on this before: drawing on psychology to build self-control so that those resolutions are actualized (2016) ; suggesting a series of practical approaches that might help doctoral writers get more pleasure and productivity (2015) ; and considering ‘habits of mind, body, time, place and pace’ with a range of options used by famous authors (2014) . That was useful advice, and the posts are still there for any wanting new year re-energisation. This year, though, we thought we would each describe our own aspirations for 2017.

Claire

This year Susan has set us on a provocation to declare our New Year’s writing resolutions. It’s a delightful (although slightly scary) suggestion to make something public that is generally private.  As usual, during the Christmas break I took down my annual writing schedule from above my desk, and before throwing it out, reviewed what I had achieved. It’s a satisfying task to reflect on what has come in as anticipated and to ponder further on what was not achieved. The most exciting thing for me is the little buzz that I get from the writing that happened serendipitously, not even imagined at the beginning of the year.

Over the years I have become better at planning my writing for the year ahead. I’ve also learned that the most crucial variable is how much control I have in my life.  There have been some years when new demands have seriously limited my ability to progress my writing goals. As a consultant over the last few years I have had more control over my workload and thus have had greater success.

I often co-author with colleagues with whom I have established productive working relationships.  Some years January commences with a number of commitments already in train and other times the horizon is pretty clear. Conferences and colleagues are always built into my planning – for me, both are powerful motivators.

But, what of my plans for 2017?  This year my job has changed and I am beginning to see how I can bring the learning from that into my work around doctoral writing. I enjoy new challenges and particularly enjoy working with colleagues who push my thinking. I always learn so much from working with others, whether it’s a simple trick with Word, or a new perspective; I find it invigorating. In addition I find stimulation from my work – many workshops have ended up being posts and then extended further into papers.

I also like to extend myself with a new theory  or a topic.  For example, I may be intrigued with a thought that returns and shapes up over months (or years!). Sometimes the theory comes first and sometimes it is the problem or issue that surfaces and troubles my thinking. The beginning of a year is a good time to do a stock-take to see if I can nail this down into something publishable.

So, what does this add up to? I’m devising my own year as a foray into new areas of interest.I will also continue to write with old friends and colleagues. Reflecting on my process for this post lets me see what might be of use to doctoral students; namely:

• Make a schedule: to keep you anchored when things are madly busy and for a self-auditing.
• Use the aspects of writing you know inspire you as motivation—acknowledge them and factor them in.
• Accept that some writing obstacles are outside of your control.
• Identify and acknowledge the learning you do as a writer.

 

 

Cally

Last year I tried to finish off a few writing projects that had been hanging around for some time. I wanted to get them off my desk to clear space for new thinking in 2017. So now I’m allowing myself to start work on some new projects.

As a first step, I’m preparing a couple of ethics applications. I hear from others about their frustrations at being forced to fill in the forms, and what they experience as delays when they have to amend applications to meet the requirements of their ethics committee. But in my field I don’t have the complications of human drug trials and medical interventions, working with children, with indigenous communities, nor negotiating the sensitivities of vulnerable groups. My work is regarded as ‘low risk’ in that I just want to talk to people about topics that are not particularly contentious or disturbing. This means that it’s usually fairly straight forward and at my university these applications can be approved by the core committee – I don’t need to meet particular deadlines posed by the less frequent meetings of the full committee. On the whole, I find ethics applications provide a very useful process that makes me think carefully about method and project design, why I want to do what I do, and how it can be useful to others. Obviously, I want my research to be ethical, and paying proper attention to this at the very beginning is appropriate and leads to better outcomes – in my experience, at least.

I’ve also been thinking about more creative, alternative research methods, and want to take the opportunity with new projects to try and push this a little further. One book that has inspired me is Helen Kara’s (2015) Creative Research Methods in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide (Bristol: Policy Press). She talks about shadowing, mapping, and transformative data gathering, all of which I find interesting. Others are doing fascinating work using big data and social media in their education research. I certainly don’t feel very confident about how to do anything like this, so it’s bound to be a steep learning curve! It feels promising to start the New Year with some new writing challenges – I’m keen to get on with it.

Susan

I’ve been in the habit with my academic writing of simply listing what I want to complete in the new year. There is something confirming about reviewing the year that has gone and looking forward to the one ahead. Primary questions are

• When I reach the end of this new year, what writing will I be most satisfied to have completed?
• What must I do?
• What really interests me?
• How theoretical am I willing to be? Am I willing to go further into theory this year?

Doctoral students usually find ‘what must I do’ the most important of these, and rightly so, but it is worth taking the annual cusp opportunity to face up to other relevant questions about direction.

It’s quite a personal consideration because it includes the persona in style and voice as well as the topic focus. I sit with an overview in mind and list goals for the year, usually on paper. I think about the pattern of the year, that is, when I might want to take a break; when teaching might be heavy; when there are deadlines that I already know I will need to meet. As the year feeds through, I follow this up with monthly goal-listing and weekly goal-listing. Somehow sitting and writing this down usually anchors my writing flow throughout the year. The trick is to take your own deadlines seriously.

This year, though, I am thinking differently. I want to focus on increasing the pleasure that I find in academic writing. So I intend to consciously treat both my writing and my academic work as a game. I am convinced by Jane McGonigal (2010): when we’re in game worlds I believe that many of us become the best version of ourselves, the most likely to help at a moment’s notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long as it takes, to get up after failure and try again. And in real life, when we face failure, when we confront obstacles, we often don’t feel that way. We feel overcome, we feel overwhelmed, we feel anxious, maybe depressed, frustrated or cynical. We never have those feelings when we’re playing games; they just don’t exist in games.

I want to put behind me the irritation that I feel when writing doesn’t go well, or the dread I feel towards the drudgery of revision for consistency. I want to find pleasure in what I do, and courage to change my own patterns if I feel that they trap me in the same rut. For me this year, my ambitions are less with productivity and more with attitude.

McGonigal, J. (2010). Gaming can make a better world. TED, Feb, 2010. Available at http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world/transcript?language=en#t-161000

International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation (Seville, November 14-16, 2016)

Tags

networking, talking about writing

By Susan Carter

I had the privilege of attending the ICERI conference this year, a large international conference attended by mostly Europeans, but with most parts of the world represented. Perhaps influenced by the recent theatre of the American elections, approaches to education at this conference seemed to emphasise education’s political and social benefits, its potential to be an antidote to powerbrokers by merit of the changes that it makes to individual lives. This potential seems relevant to, and maybe even an inspiring reminder for, doctoral writing, a process that transforms many of our lives.

A rally call against outsourcing graduate writing support

Tags

Outsourcing Writing Support, Writing Centres and Writing Consultants

Here we have reblogged the first of a three part series on outsourcing graduate student writing support. Although situated in a North-American context, the discussion raises important issues for institutional writing specialists, doctoral students, supervisors and consultants everywhere as cash-strapped institutions increasingly combine with entrepreneurial markets to provide writing support to doctoral scholars. The posts are written by Shannon Madden and Jerry Stinnett in response to an article in College Composition and Communication.  We don’t necessarily endorse all the arguments they advance (how could we, since at least two of the editors at DoctoralWritingSIG occasionally work as consultants?!) but we do think these issues deserve attention.  We hope you find the series stimulating. 

Empowering graduate student writers and rejecting outsourced mentorship

By Shannon Madden and Jerry Stinnett

In this 3-part series of installments on the WCJ Blog, we reject the outsourcing of graduate writing support to inexpert consultants in the private sector and call instead for university stakeholders to attend more systematically to the needs of graduate student writers.

As faculty members and former graduate students ourselves, we like many others have experienced the need for more writing support at the graduate level (see also Caplan & Cox, 2016). Very often, graduate students across the disciplines receive little feedback on their writing projects or instruction in advanced genres even though coursework, conference presentations, job applications, and theses and dissertations are all grounded in specialized disciplinary communication practices (Carter, 2007). As a response to this problem, Daveena Tauber’s (2016) recent article in College Composition and Communication offers a model for private writing consultation as a way to support graduate students as they navigate advanced writing tasks. Tauber advocates expanding the definition of successful academic employment to include writing consulting as a means of helping graduate student writers succeed in the university and of relieving the “job crisis” facing Ph.D. students in the humanities.

While Tauber’s approach attends to some of the problems facing graduate student writers, her model also exacerbates many of the same issues it purports to mitigate.