Nice new corner! Come and chat!

[NeverEverAnythingEver]

We have our new board! Calling all cademics/aspiring academics/fed-up academics - come and chat!

Hey, just found this! And just a bit late as earlier this week I had a dilemma I wanted a bunch of MN academics to weigh in on, but in the end went to a real person instead and took their advice. Not convinced it was the best move, but hey, ho, it's done.

I am in denial about the REF Buffy. It's not a good place to be! I too worry about doing the wrong things if that makes sense. You are not alone there. I also don't know what table I am on. I have not seen the ECR thread but it would scare me I think!

Hey *murmur". Hope you made the right decision for you.

First lecture tomorrow and I'm already bored.

And I hate having to tell them that if anyone addresses me as Miss Never I may have to kill them dead on the spot.

Hope tomorrow is better than you think Never. Starting back in my old job tomorrow. Induction week is probably not the best time to start!

Any recommended reading to help me prepare for my Viva ordeal ?

Hey Daisy, congrats on submitting. Have you seen this?

I did read a book chapter on the viva before mine which helped. I can't find it now and someone else has the book. It's never coming back now! This book looks good though. This book.

Good luck. A mock viva is a good idea as is writing down questions you think that you might be asked. They do become less scary that way as you can think about how you might answer them in advance.

What is your broad subject area, DaisyChain?
What are your examiners like? Fair minded or hard-asses?

Ideally the examiners want to test you but they also are there to make improvements. Try to see their comments as constructive criticism. They would usually far prefer to pass rather than fail you.

As much as anything else you'll be defending your methodology (science) or underlying theory (science or other subjects). So beef up on your justification for those. Then you defend your novel contribution & need to be sharp on explaining the value of your novel insights or results.

Think of your viva as a 90 minute (usually one and a half to two hours) discussion about your work with the other 2 people in the world apart from you & your supervisor who have read your dissertation with attention to detail.

And your Department - or at the very least your supervisor - should be offering you a mock viva or some sort of preparation. We use the upgrade from MPhil to PhD as the start of this training. Although I say to my supervisees that surviving supervisions with me is good training for a viva

Reading here, I realise just how good my department is at offering extremely good practice for PhDs and ECRs

Love your name MultiShirker. I aspire to that.

I shouldn't be here. You haven't seen me.

Ooh thanks for the suggestions of viva questions and reading material. Very useful to me too when is yours Daisy? I've got a mock in a couple of weeks then a week or so before the real thing

Argh! I am so burned out already. For various reasons I was unable to use my arranged flex time for the first few weeks of the semester (if anyone remembers, I'm doing full time across 4.5 days due to my CFS/ME)mostly because of actually working extraand now I'm basically a zombie. I have multiple PhD studentship applications (to get students) due on Friday, which need drafts gotten to co-supervisors with enough time for comments, and I just could not produce any text at all.

Just gave a lecture. I have no idea if I made any sense at all. I'm going home and I hope I can think better tomorrow.

Sorry to hear that murmur and buffy. I hope that tomorrow is a better day. I am having a panic that FT academic work is just not going to fit with having a young family. First day and feeling stressed about the family/work balance. I guess I am going to have to get used to not feeling competent at either!

Would love if it I could do something relaxing :) but the problem is I'm so exhausted I can't even do anything. Just need some lying down time. Currenlty so drained that I can't do my crafting, which I usually do reclining in the evening, and it helps settle my mind and leads to better sleep. Now in a negative feedback loop that I'm too tired to do that, so I'm getting less rest at night, so I'm even more tired, argh!

And now annoying home things are making me massively stressed (thread in chat), right when I was planning to take a little space to get rest to get going for the rest of the week. Let's see how tomorrow is. Maybe I can get the stuff written in the AM and take the afternoon off. Or if I'm too stressed, just try to do some busy work so I don't waste the time. Have some teaching later in the semester that needs to be restructured.

Sympathies, purple. Checking back on thread - you've just started back today? How's the environment? Definitely hard with a family, but I'm going forward with the assumption that it is in fact possible.

Can I join? Am a very, very junior academic (ie no PhD ), just starting out really. Am on a mainly-teaching contract but pressure is ramping up to publish regularly too...there are not enough hours in the day. Tomorrow I have five seminars back to back on the first taught day of a brand new module. am slightly dreading it.

Have just submitted two book chapters and the very overdue draft of an article, so that'll be me dreading emails for the next couple of weeks...

Have given the first lecture of the term. I think it went very well.

But have also now got a stinking cold. I blame DS2.

Harrumph.

Thanks to everyone for some great advice and reading materials preparing for my Viva. I really appreciate it.

Just to clarify I have some way to go as i have not published any papers yet ( i am a p/t PhD so time is not my friend! ) Based on what you've all said there is a lot I need to sharpen up.

My research domain is a new theory of 21st century learning using technology + digital literacy skills. I'm analysing the theory at the moment which is a hard slog. My output will be a framework of themes to test against some empirical data.

I'm more into qualitative interpretivist than positivist buffy

I am enjoying reading everyone's life experiences in academia. I have spent time in both academic settings and in industry. Neither is a bed of roses!

I feel a bit of a fraud on this thread, I'm in a research institute rather than faculty so have no teaching whatsoever, only pottering round the lab and supervising masters students.

Anyway today I am working at home. I have six hours now till school pick up to get cracking on a Dorothy Hodgkin application. Has anyone here done one? I'm trying to write something with preliminary supporting data but which adequately differentiates me from my current boss, which is tricky

Dorothy Hodgkin awards are Royal Society fellowships especially for people who want to work part time because they have caring responsibilities. You can drop part - full - back again and claim childcare money for conferences etc. Very nice but fearsomely competitive.

I have procrastinated and cleaned the bathroom and done all the washing and put dinner in the slow cooker now I'm going to start!

how is your paper coming along?

that sounds good. No point in forcing yourself to sit at the computer if the words aren't coming.

No point in forcing yourself to sit at the computer if the words aren't coming the trouble with me is that I say this to myself waaaay too often . Aka Procrastination is my middle name.

Hi buffy I haven't got into Freire but will look them up now you have prompted that thought. My domain is awash with lots of theories all bundled into the main theory. It's quite overwhelming (whimper)