Developing doctoral writing in four dimensions: Helen Sword’s baseline

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Desire to write, Doctoral writing, Emotion & writing, Researcher identity, Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other

By Susan Carter

This post is premised squarely on the base line of Helen Sword’s latest book on academic writing. She begins by asking the reader to self-audit their own strengths and weaknesses as writers. This task orients them into the book, one rich with data from interviews with successful academic writers as to how they work. Sword has recommendations for each of the dimensions in this exercise. Yet she begins not with good advice, but with an affective approach, reaching into the core of each reader by asking us to reflect on who we are as writers. To self-analyse, we are given an exercise evaluating the different aspects of academic writing that influence development.

‘But, but…’ Writing for examination and the right of reply

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Choosing doctoral examiners, doctoral examination, Examination of the thesis, Researcher identity

By Cally Guerin

One of the biggest challenges in submitting a thesis for examination is that it feels so important to get it right the first time. While students may sometimes feel that it is a one-off, make-or-break moment, in reality thesis examination is not actually as drastic as that. There are opportunities to revise and make corrections; there is a kind of ‘right of reply’ to examiners’ comments if candidates feel something might have been misunderstood. Even when further work is required, the vast majority of candidates who do in fact complete the revisions will get their degree.

How to enjoy doing the doctorate

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doctoral experience, enjoying PhD, managing candidature, part-time study, Researcher identity

Professor Sioux McKenna is Coordinator of the PhD in Higher Education Program in the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning (CHERTL) at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. Here she writes about her recent research into the experiences of doctoral candidates.

By Sioux McKenna

I was chatting recently to a group of PhD scholars who are about midway through their journey. They are all studying part-time alongside full-time employment, family commitments and other responsibilities. All of these scholars saw the PhD as a difficult process that requires an enormous amount of time and energy. But I noticed that the scholars could be roughly categorized into two groups.

There was one group for whom the PhD seemed to be constant burden offering little by way of gratification along the way. These scholars saw the PhD as a boulder they were bound to endlessly push up a steep hill without ever being able to stop and contemplate the view. They could not speak of their PhDs in anything other than negative terms.

While both groups shared the sense that the PhD is complex and challenging, the other group expressed pride in their work and had a strong sense of being part of something important and contributing to something meaningful. They spoke enthusiastically about what the PhD had already offered them in terms of self-development and improved skills.

Now of course it may be that some of these scholars moved between these two groups depending on how they were progressing at the time. But I wondered if there wasn’t a way to spend more time in the ‘enjoyment group’. Four or more years of satisfying and challenging engagement sounds great but the idea of spending all that time feeling grim and despondent is perfectly horrible.

So, as an academic developer and supervisor who wants to make doctoral study a positive experience, I decided to do a bit of sleuthing to figure out what seems to lead to the sense of the doctorate as something enjoyable.

I collected reflections on the PhD journey from 28 doctoral scholars in which they discussed their ways of working, their views of their own doctorates, and their experiences of getting stuck and getting unstuck. While none of the findings are earth shattering, I think there is some pretty good advice within the data on how to do a doctorate and actually enjoy it. This is advice that supervisors and learning advisors would do well to pass onto students.

1. Be sure that you’re doing it for yourself

There are lots of reasons to do a doctorate: the status, the improved employment opportunities, as a requirement for a position or promotion, to advance a field of study, to answer an important question, to make new knowledge. But it seems that all of those scholars who expressed real enjoyment in their PhD had a strong sense of the doctorate as being part of their own identity development. They were deeply invested in their growing capacity to contribute meaningfully in their disciplinary community. There was also a sense from some of the scholars that the doctorate was their own space. It was the place in their lives where they could make the decisions, where they could be creative and for which they could legitimately fence off time from other responsibilities for their own growth. They framed the PhD as something they did for themselves.

2. The magic of momentum

Nobody can sustain an enormous PhD workload relentlessly over the duration of the degree. This was especially true for these scholars who squeezed the doctorate into the gaps between work meetings and after getting families fed. But those who enjoyed the PhD all referred to working on the doctorate almost every day. Sometimes the only input that was possible on a given day was an hour spent reading through an article or twenty minutes writing a brief reflection note in a research journal. The key thing seems to be the regularity of the input, even more than the quantity and quality. On the other hand, those that bemoaned the doctorate as a constant liability admitted that weeks often went by without them working on the PhD. But rather than enjoying the respite from the doctorate, all this time was spent under a blanket of guilt. What’s more, when they finally did get to it, they had to spend hours if not days getting back into what it was they had been thinking and writing about.

3. Celebrate small successes

It seems essential that there are successes along the way in this long project to spur us on. Some scholars spoke of sharing the completion of a chapter with other PhD scholars through a Whatsapp message. Or of writing up a list of milestones and sticking this on the fridge, with their family making them celebratory dinners whenever a milestone is met. Linked to the idea of regular successes was the notion of deadlines. The PhD is a massive project and there are no clear deadlines along the way, making it very possible to put off working on it for days or even weeks. It was evident that some scholars set very clear deadlines for themselves and shared these with supervisors, family members or other scholars. Some also mentioned using external deadlines, such as seminar and conference presentations, as a way of forcing them to engage with a particular aspect of their study by a certain date.

4. Be kind to yourself

Rather than beating themselves up about poor progress or less than positive feedback from a supervisor, some scholars seem able to keep looking forwards. They constantly expect better of themselves and then they put in the hours necessary to attain these goals. Rather than berating themselves for what they haven’t managed to do, they happily share what they have achieved and what they are working on.

5. Find a community

One thing was very clear: even though it’s an individual piece of work, the doctorate doesn’t have to be a lonely endeavour. Those who seemed to be most enthusiastic about their doctorates had found fellow travellers and developed ways to regularly engage with them. Sometimes these were virtual friendships online with others researching in the same area and sometimes these were very real coffee and cake groups where scholars shared readings and provided support for each other. It seems that sharing the process increases the chances of enjoyment.

The doctorate is in many ways the biggest academic project people ever take on and one that extends over a number of years. So I think that it’s really important that everyone learns how to enjoy it! If you have any further advice for supervisors, academic developers or doctoral students, please share it with us.

Starting again: picking up the pieces after an extended break from writing

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interrupted doctorate, leave of absence, Researcher identity, starting again, writing disruption

by Cally Guerin

It is not unusual for doctoral candidature to be disrupted for extended periods over the three or more years that these projects usually take. Candidates take a leave of absence for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes this is because of very positive, planned life changes such as maternity or parenting leave, or good short-term job opportunities arise. Other times the interruption can be for more difficult reasons of illness or injury, carer responsibilities for elderly relatives, or pressing financial need pushes candidates into paid work for awhile.

But when those events have run their course, the task of starting again on the writing needs to be addressed. For some, the chance to get back to their writing is an eagerly awaited moment, and they are filled with new energy to kickstart the project. For others, though, it is a very daunting prospect that is approached with great anxiety.

I think part of what must be remembered here is that not only has the momentum of the project been disrupted, but also the emerging researcher identity has been disrupted. We know that the writing of the thesis is closely linked to developing doctoral identities (Lee & Boud 2003; Aitchison & Lee 2006; Kamler & Thomson 2006). For those who have taken a break from that identity and are now trying to return, there are pressing questions to face: How does my identity as a new parent fit with my identity as a scholar? As a cancer survivor, will I have the energy required to complete this intense writing phase? After a major accident that involved head injuries, am I still the kind of person whose concentration span is sufficient to do rigorous, scholarly research? Now that I am a bereaved widow instead of a carer for my terminally ill husband, will the writing fill up that aching gap of grief or will it be too isolating when what I really need is human warmth? It’s important not to underestimate how confronting these questions might be, nor how far beneath the surface they might lurk, stalling progress but not consciously acknowledged.

Disruption to candidature doesn’t have to be an entirely negative experience, however. Starting again after a break can be regarded as a chance to re-assess the project and its direction with fresh eyes, and maybe even make significant changes to improve the final product.

When I was a PhD student many years ago (in the days when people relied on hardcopy from typewriters rather than electronic copies stored in cloud technology), a student at my university lost the single copy of his almost finished thesis when his home was burnt down in a terrible bushfire. Traumatic as this was, the student courageously started again, rewrote the thesis, and ended up with an excellent, medal-winning thesis that was published to great acclaim. The story went that, in the process of starting again, he was able to reassess his approach to the work and rewrite the thesis based on the digested, synthesised knowledge that had developed over the entire candidature. Of course, I would never wish such trauma on anyone, but the salutary lesson here is that a bit of distance from the project can bring unexpected improvements to the writing.

So when talking to students who are coming back to doctoral writing after an extended interruption, what advice can we offer? The obvious starting point would be to read the last version of any existing chapters, go through the notes collected while reading the literature, and establish where the project is actually up to (as opposed to hazy memories that may be more or less optimistic about how much had been achieved previously). With that done, it is possible to make an overall, big-picture plan of what remains to be done, in what order, and in what timeframe. Then I’d recommend breaking the work up into manageable, bite-sized tasks rather than thinking of it as the monumental undertaking of ‘writing up’ the entire thesis. It’s also a useful strategy to start by doing the easy bits first, as it is always encouraging to see something ticked off the list of jobs and some progress registered.

Have you started again after an extended break as a doctoral student? Or as the supervisor advising a student? As a writing advisor? How did you go about it? What advice can you offer to those faced with similar circumstances?

Aitchison, C., & Lee, A. (2006) Research writing: Problems and pedagogies. Teaching in Higher Education, 11(3): 265-278.

Kamler, B., & Thomson, P. (2006). Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision. New York and London: Routledge.

Lee, A., & Boud, D. (2003). Writing groups, change and academic identity: Research development as local practice. Studies in Higher Education, 28(2), 187-200.