The Thesis Whisperer is on sick leave after I was hit by a car late last week… While I have no lasting damage (thank goodness!) typing for long periods is uncomfortable due to a severely bruise...
Like all of you I’m sure, I receive an almost constant stream of invitations to academic events and conferences by email. I rely on mailing lists to keep me informed about what is happening, bu...
As the Thesis Whisperer matures, students who look to it for support are starting to graduate. I always love to hear about their experiences and created the “Dear Thesis Whisperer” sectio...
My twin sister, Anitra Nottingham, is doing a masters by research in the Faculty of education at the University of Melbourne. Her thesis is about graphic design education. She’s been struggling...
This post is co-written with Pat Thomson, who is simultaneously publishing on her blog ‘Patter’. If you haven’t already, head on over there and check it out! A little while back, we...
I have a friend, let’s call him Dave, who is doing his PhD at the moment. I admire Dave for several reasons. Although he is a full time academic with a young family, Dave talks about his PhD as...
Well I’m off to Edinburgh to visit Herriot Watt University to do a keynote for their SPIRES conference. I’ll then be doing some guest lectures and workshops at Bangor University in Wales ...
As you may or may not know, I will shortly be heading off to the UK for a few weeks by invitation of Herriot Watt University, the Vitae North West hub and Bangor University. I’m very excited about th...
One of my favourite new blogs is ‘Patter’, authored by Prof Pat Thomson who co- wrote the quite wonderful “Helping Doctoral Students to Write” with Prof Babara Kamler. I was f...
Here in Australia we eat chocolate eggs and take a rather long break for Easter. The Thesis Whisperer will resume transmission on Thursday, by which time blood sugar levels will hopefully have return...
Do you ever suffer topic envy? I did – I still do. From designers, writers, animators and dancers to computer geeks, nano particle engineers and bio-scientists: there’s an incredible spr...
We know you research students have a lot of reading to do. Here at the Whisperer we aim to take some of that burden off your shoulders. While we can’t help you with that stuff on fuzzy logic or...
Why do some students complete a PhD and others drop out? It’s the kind of question that worries researchers like me. Evelyn Tsitas, who is completing her PhD in Creative Writing at RMIT Univers...
One thing I have learned over the years I have been Whispering is, although the problems they face are similar, no two research students are alike. What works for one person may not work for another....
This guest post is by Mary-Helen Ward, a PhD student who also works as a manager in eLearning at the University of Sydney. Her PhD is investigating the process of doing a PhD at an Australian researc...
We don’t often talk about undergraduate teaching on the Whisperer, but I am beginning to think we should since so many of us do it. Unlike primary and secondary school teachers, those of us tea...
Your hard working editor has just moved house! With a new suburb, new commute and new school for Thesis Whisperer Jnr, the Thesis Whisperer household is in understandable disarray. Unfortunately this...
This guest post is by Dr Eva Alisic, Research Fellow at Monash University who researches and blogs on the topic of trauma recovery in children and adolescents. Eva spent some time at Harvard Universi...
Jess Drake (aka @soilduck) suggested she write a post on how to get into a PhD program a little while ago. I thought it would be a good follow up to Ehsan’s popular “Should you do a PhD?&...
Last week Lucinda posted this question on my Facebook wall “I’m planning on starting my PhD on 5th March. Do you have any tips on what I should be doing before starting and what do I expe...
I have spent years exhorting students to publish as much as possible before they finish and straight after. But lately I am beginning to wonder about my place in the academic publishing system, both ...
This guest post is written by Magdeline Lum – Chemist, Metallurgist & Photographer and blogger. Last year, in honour of Valentine’s Day, Magdeline told us about her experience of dating a Thesis....
Your hardworking editor will be working with PhD students at the RMIT campus in Vietnam next week – and hopefully getting to eat large bowls of pho! I’m not sure that I will have ready in...
This piece was written by Ben from the Literature Review HQ. Ben describes his blog as a “Literature review how to – from beginning to end”. Ben has a straight to the point style that res...
Right from the beginning, I offered people a chance to contribute their own stories and essays to the Thesis Whisperer. I think it’s one of the strengths of this blog that there is a variety of...
This guest post was written by Prof Denise Cuthbert, the Dean of the School of Graduate Research at RMIT University (and my manager). In our office we make time to have extended chats about the diffi...
Money has been on my mind lately. For one thing Family Thesis Whisperer have just been overseas and spent a great deal of it. When we got home we visited the accountant (always an eye opening experie...
This is a guest post by Maia Sauren, a Ph.D. student at RMIT who submitted her thesis a few months ago. Maia has written quite a few guest posts for us now about the process of doing a PhD, how to m...
On Twitter this week two people asked me for advice for starting the discussion chapter of their thesis / dissertation (I’m going to use the word thesis from now on because I am Australian). I ...
Continuing our New Year’s celebration theme, this post is by our regular contributor and Librarian extraordinaire, Dr Karen McAulay. What can we learn from old Scottish traditions which can hel...
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