Day in Huddersfield Yesterday at the PG Writing Workshop

Hi there,

So yesterday I made the trip to Huddersfield to go to the PG Writing Skills Workshop that was organised by MARS organisation. The AHRC had given funding to run the workshops, but unfortunately that was the last one as the scheme was funded for two years only. Looks like I've missed the boat!!

Anyway, it was really useful to meet fellow researchers and the sessions were quite inspiring. In the morning there were two sessions about how to write. I often feel that I am not present within my writing and that my tone is too serious and the language is strict, but I need to remember that as I am "in my writing" as it's coming from me (yes, obvious I know). Not sure exactly what I can do about the tone or language, I suppose this will improve when I read more articles.

The afternoon was spent looking at case studies to identify how academic writing can be improved. One important point that was made during the session was to not get caught up with making small typographical/formatting changes during your writing. Leave this to the end! Also, we all should be more confident when presenting our arguments and findings. Often researchers put caveats on their work which can make our work more difficult to be accepted or justified.

We also had a session on publishing PhDs, obviously I am a long way off this yet, but one thing that I didn't know about was EThOS (Electronic Thesis Online Service). Apart from students at Oxford and Cambridge, eventually everyone's thesis will be digitised and put onto this system so that anyone can read a thesis for free. Check out http://ethos.bl.uk/Home.do;jsessionid=695E73D9C61D0770348E4D26901ADF2D for more information about EThOS.

I could go on for ages about the workshop yesterday, but I won't.

Bye for now,

Steph

Eureka Moment?

Hi Everyone,

This is my first post and so I thought I would give you an explanation as to why I thought of writing a blog. On my recent holiday whilst lazing by the pool I had some sort of "eureka moment". I have just completed a MA course at the University of Sheffield and throughout the course I often needed advice or guidance about whether I was at the right stage or doing the correct thing but as I was studying part-time sometimes this was hard to obtain. Whilst reflecting on holiday I suddenly thought that I should have wrote a diary to capture my thoughts, progress and difficulties. With this in mind and as I have decided to continue studying, I decided to write this blog. The primary objective of this blog is to record my progress over the next 4 years and capture the process of completing a PhD from a researcher's point of view.

Whilst studying at MA level I was often asked and also asked others - "How's your MA/PhD going?". However often the response that I and others gave was "I'm busy but it's going well thanks." or "Slow going, writing at the moment". Far too often I think the answer to this question is short. Maybe this lack of a response reflects the fact that completing a PhD is often completed in isolation and topics are often personal and specific which could inhibit the researcher from giving a full and informative response. From this I hope that other researchers will read my blog and relate to the work that I will embark on, give myself and others an outlet in which we can share our ideas and experiences.

To give you an idea of my PhD topic...at MA level I completed a dissertation investigating the effects of background music on Internet gambling behaviour. My PhD will extend the findings of this dissertation to (hopefully) investigate music's presence, use and functions within real-life and laboratory environments.

Much more to come but for now it's time for me to sign off.

Steph