This guest post is written by Katrina McChesney from the Virtual Shut Up and Write – Parents’ Edition Facebook group. Katrina has just finished her PhD through Curtin University’s School of Education (Western Australia), researching teachers’ experiences of professional development within education reform.
There’s no easy way to get a PhD, but many doctoral students have learned the power of community for easing the journey in important ways – motivation, accountability, encouragement, celebration of milestones, support with questions that arise along the way.
Previous posts in this group and elsewhere have described various ways this community can look – bootcamps, AcWriMo, retreats, writing accountability meetups and hands-on ‘Shut up and write’ gatherings, either in person or online via social media or web conferencing.
For a large number of doctoral students, though, the tight time frames involved in many of the above activities are problematic. I am a survivor of that highly-frazzled, multi-tasking, socially-absent, time-poor, no-longer-master-of-our-own-time experience: parenting while PhD-ing. PhD parenting was described this way in a recent blog post:
“Whether it is a ‘solid’ work day squeezed into school hours, an important paragraph stopped in its tracks by the needs of a small person, or carefully laid fieldwork or lab plans scuppered by an unexpected dash to the doctor with a sick child, interruptions to schedules are the norm, not the exception. The flexibility of PhD time can be both a blessing as well a curse. Most parents would do anything to avoid having to drag a small child along to a medical appointment or grocery shopping. For a PhD parent fitting these things into your day becomes a breeze. A breeze that is, until you realize that school pick-up is only 45 minutes away and you haven’t written a sentence since 10am.”
In this context, it can be almost impossible to carve out a whole weekend for a bootcamp, or turn up on Twitter at just the right time for #SUAWTues. Instead, we PhD parents need a ‘tribe’ with a whole lot more flexibility and understanding – a place where we can access support, encouragement and accountability whenever we happen to have a few minutes available (without necessarily knowing in advance when this will be!).
DoctoralWriting 