Post 42: Whipping through marking... what a festival! And a week's mish-mash! And a StandStand Review!

So many assignments to get through, so many words to read, writing lots of comments/feedback, and trying to be fair while assessing student work.

Now don't get me wrong: I love my students to bits, and it's very very fun getting to meet them all (and trying to remember all their names!). They are a delight. And while it wipes out the majority of the energy that I start the day with, especially teaching 3 hours in a row, it has been great so far. I really do enjoy marking, but as this is my first time TAing an introductory-level course, and there are quite a few factors that are different in TAing one such course, as opposed to an upper level course.

For one, this is some of the first times that students are taking on the assignments that they're taking on. So for example, some of them don't yet know that hand-written work is not acceptable for university assignments (and some seem to have ignored that it was stated in the syllabus).

Ah yes, speaking of: a good many students don't read the syllabus. So you have to keep reminding them to go back to that thing, which is really the contract for the class.

My Dotmocracy in action: Students in my fourth tutorial voting for small scale food production
as their theme to research for the semester. 

On that note: repeat everything at least twice, especially important information, or you'll find out exactly who wasn't paying attention when you said it that one and only first time.

My students are learning how to engage with the research process right now, and we've gotten the first assignment out of the way: making a bibliography of 8 quality sources (on the topic we've specified), and explaining why each source is authoritative.

A lot of students don't yet know what makes a source authoritative (which makes sense; if they did, they wouldn't be here), and while some of them get half way there, it's clear they don't yet understand what peer-review is, and how to dig into how good journals really are, or what reputation a newspaper's specific journalists have... well, that is the fun sleuthing that they are starting to learn. From what I've noticed, many seem to have trouble differentiating assessing a source's credibility, and for now are simply writing a summary of the article. (Hence the reminder to go read the assignment outline). So I think we'll be revisiting some material next week.

For this second major assignment, we're asking our students to put together summaries of about 150 words on each of the 6 articles they've chosen from their original 8 (or swapped out with better sources from peers or researched new ones). For these, they will answer the question: "What is the author arguing/talking about?"

Awesome participation as my students wrote themes from their initial stab at researching their theme;
this one on the 100-Mile Diet. 

I'm really hopeful that they'll do well with this one, because quite a few of them have already been doing summaries for the first assignment, which means they won't do well there, but hopefully they will on this next one.

Through all of this, I've had the most excellent company for marking! I've teamed up with Edward White, the TAC from Sociology, (whose workshop on surviving marking I completely enjoyed last semester at the TA Conference, and blogged about here) whose delightful company has made getting an early start on my marking a real delight. This week on Wednesday he spoiled my colleague C— and I with the most delicious rice pudding: super rich, creamy, and with real vanilla... MMMMMMM! We snacked on this through the afternoon, and I wasn't hungry until 8PM! Plus, it's really great getting his seasoned reasoning and opinion on how to mark certain work. It's been great.

*****

Aside from the marking, I've really been enjoying the Christmas gift that I bought myself way back in the fall. It arrived just before Christmas when I was home in the Kootenays, so I got to open it when I got back: it's called a StandStand. And I love it!! (Or I really did, once I had added a bit more glue to one of the little knobs that holds the three pieces together when its dissembled; it kept falling out. BUT -- it was a very simple fix, and after a night's drying, was ready to go again.)

My work desk with my StandStand deployed! :) 

I simply don't have the money for a standing desk like the TableAir  ($2200) or NextDesk (which rings in at about $1500 for the base model). For those interested, on top of a great summary of the health problems that come from sitting too much (sedentary lifestyles), Mark Lukach at the Wirecutter has had a ball testing out standing desks alongside his coworkers, which you can read about here. I am aware that Colin Nederkoorn has come up with a 22$ IKEA DIY, but I am neither near an IKEA, nor have the time to wander out and get these materials, so in the fall last year, spending about $65 on this Kickstarter project seemed like a good idea.

The StandStand has been really really great! I love how portable it is, first and foremost, and because it's so lightweight, I can easily switch between standing and sitting, which research supports is a good thing to do (too much standing = bad; too much sitting = worse). It's suuuuuper easy to assemble and dissemble, which I also really love. My little StandStand has been really great, and definitely an investment suitable for my lifestyle and income right now. :) (Though I am glad to see the price of standing desks falling; one of the most affordable, the Stand Desk now comes in at about $500. )

And the best part of it is that I'm starting to get a lot more comfortable using it. I've started to pull it out when I'm with my colleagues at work, and I even used it this past Wednesday when I was marking with Edward. :)

The semester is already whizzing by; I can't believe it's already January, but I have 80 lovely students to keep me from dwelling on the time. Back to marking I go!

One more awesome photo: a mixture of lichen and stonecrop from a romp in
East Sooke Park this past weekend. I love the colours!

Post 41: Everything's ramping up again! Writing Group, TCG and TAing!

Phew, what a busy last few weeks it's been!

My writing group is starting up again this semester, though in a markedly different capacity than last semester. This time it'll be a once-a-week, Tuesday afternoon, dig a hole for myself in the Grad Student House date right now, with a few of my colleagues. Format-wise, it'll be very similar to last semester, with everyone bringing work independent of the others, but working together in a very supportive space. And - Matt at the GSS has enabled me to book a regular afternoon time for the WHOLE semester in one shot, so that's really helpful, too!

I'm also trying to sort out a meeting time with another colleague who can't make the Tuesdays, so it looks like J— and I will be trying to make Monday afternoons our writing time.

This is really great, and I'm very excited for having the structural support of writing time.

Awesome rainy evening walk! I love the light spiderwebbing in the tree! :)

I'm staring down the calendar for my first tutorials (3 in a row!) tomorrow morning, which is going to be tiring, but I'm really excited for them. I love meeting my students for the first time, and it's great that it gets to happen every so often. Today my fellow TAs and the instructor for the course met to discuss tutorial themes (the course is looking at environmental issues through food) and a layout of the assignments the groups are doing for the next few months (we met last week to discuss this already), and now I'm even more excited. The themes we're taking to the tutorials include:

Industrial agriculture (meat production, grain production, animal ethics)
Organic foods
100-Mile Diet
Traditional food systems
Industrial Water Use
Small scale food production systems (family farms, permaculture, community gardens)
Food Waste Management
Aquaculture (fish farms, oyster farms, fishing)

There's so much to talk about in each one! Each tutorial will take one theme and students will specialize within the theme, and will do a series of assignments building skills around critical thinking and assessment over the semester. And the big challenge: the tutorials are only 50 minutes in each tutorial.

So I've planned out my icebreaker, and we'll be doing nametags as well, and to choose a theme (I'll bring about 5 to each tutorial), we'll have a Dotmocracy to pick a tutorial theme after a short pitch for each one. In this case, I think the Dotmocracy will work really well for choosing, because it doesn't take too much time, it's very participatory (everyone partakes), and we already have the themes to choose from. There also aren't too many of them, which I think is helpful. Normally, the full Dotmocracy procedure would include ideas being contributed through the session and then being voted on, but we won't quite be doing that here. We'll also be reflecting on the 24-hr Food Journals that they were assigned from last week, which is a great assignment to start students thinking about their food choices, where their food comes from, it's production, and all sorts of things related to what they specifically are eating. I think it should be great fun. With a little bit more prep tonight, I'll be ready to go!

Beautiful evening sunset, looking out from the McPherson Library. 

Work with the municipal Environmental Advisory Committee I've been a part of since September, has been busy busy busy over the past few weeks. In October we started talking about putting together a presentation for Council, expressing just how important we think it is for them to adopt a climate change lens (both on mitigation and adaptation), and then we were trying to balance that with other environmental initiatives and projects that we think are important. So over the past few days we've been finishing the two report documents that we had to get them today by 3PM. It's great to see everything come together, and now we'll sit and wait a bit to see Council's reaction.

And my lovely Thesis Completion Group has started up again. This semester's different again, too, as I joined the Friday group (on Tuesdays I now TA), and it's so great just to chat everything through, get off my heart what I'm anxious about, and how to work through those worries, so I can get closer to finishing this degree and thesis.

Speaking of! Time to get going and clearing the decks so I can get more writing done!

Post 40: The 3 Minute Thesis Competition!

I know this is my third post in three days! I've been having a really productive time finalizing my conference presentation for the International TA conference, and today when I was taking a break and checking my email, I saw a call (once again) for the 3 Minute Thesis Competition (3MT), and wanted to get a post up ASAP, because the deadline to apply is this Friday, January 9th!

The 3MT is fundamentally about science communication and being able to compellingly communicate your research story to a general audience. I forewent this last year to participate in the SSHRC Storyteller's Competition, and which I'll probably try again, this year.

UVic provides a few training sessions in mid/late January:

Tactics and Strategies for 3MTJanuary 19, 2015  - 2:00-3:30 pm, University Centre Bldg. Rm A180andJanuary 23, 2015 - 10:30 am - noon, University Centre Bldg. Rm A180

Very usefully, UVic also provides sample of what the 3MT looks like, by showing the winners from last year's competition.

I texted with my colleague G— as I was filling in my registration earlier today. Here's a link for the form.

I hit "Print" and saved a .pdf version of the filled out form, which needs to be emailed to Ms. Carolyn Swayze at fgscirc@uvic.ca. Again, the deadline is this Friday, January 9th! 

Post 39: Reflecting on My Writing Group

In early December I participated in a panel discussion at UVic's first Thesis Writing Bootcamp, which was meant to give graduate students an opportunity to write and have a great space and supported atmosphere in which to make headway on their thesis writing projects. I thought this was a great initiative, and several members of my thesis completion group attended.

For the panel, I'd been asked to reflect on a couple of questions:

1. How did you decide who to invite to participate with you?

2. How often do you meet?  for how long each time?

3. What 3 things have contributed most to your group's success?

4. What advice would you offer people thinking about starting their own group?

I thought that for this blog post I'd re-state some of my answers, since it's a new semester and it's time to try to build a new group, as two of the members finished their thesis projects, as well as emphasize some of the themes of the panel discussion, which were very complimentary to my own thoughts on having a writing group. 

Rainy UVic campus leaves—beautiful if one pauses to enjoy them! :)

As for my own responses, briefly: 

I was essentially adopted into the writing group that I now have. The writing group core existed, and by good luck I was invited to one of the writing sessions, and invited to stay. I very quickly became one of the organizing members, actively seeking meeting times and locations, and helping to make the writing group work well. The writers were graduate students, a mix of PhD and master's, all of whom wanted to make progress on their thesis i a supportive environment. We had the agreement to do Pomodoros together (perhaps not every session), but the goals each time were to either make progress on a piece of writing for our theses, or clear the plate on some of the necessary things that we needed to address in order to set ourselves up for writing on our theses. While there was a small core group of the membership, we invited others to join us with great flexibility, including colleagues, and other members from other thesis groups. At our largest, we had about 8 people come to a session.
Our meeting times were variable; we tried for 3-4 times a week: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, about 12PM to 5 or 6 PM, and sometimes on Sundays. Wednesdays there's free coffee and goodies at the Graduate Student Centre in the morning at 9:00AM, so we'd try to make it there for that for an earlier start. 

Some of the main things that contributed to the success of our group include the environment that we created: it was supportive, welcoming, positive, and flexible (flexibility is something that was consistent among the comments of the panel members). We wanted to get Pomodoros of thesis writing done, but if someone had to write emails or read some journal articles, or do some edits on a chunk of writing, that was all really great. 
Having our scheduling fairly consistent (the three days a week), even if the venue changed. And having that planned up to a week in advance, or at least having a good way of communicating to the group when and where we were meeting (we used Google Calendar).

Two of the members of the core group from last semester have finished up their thesis projects, and I am so happy and proud of them! We had a very small celebratory meet at the end of last semester, and I got a holiday email from one of the two of them. I wish them all the best with their future endeavours (one has moved back home already), and hope that I'm able to make these friendships last (and even if they don't, I am content that there are two more wonderful people with great ideas out in the world, and I'm grateful for the time we were able to spend together). 

And advice that I'd pass on to other people thinking of starting their own group: go ahead and do it! But be clear about the goals and intentions of the group. It was great to have a group of people that were committed to hard work and getting things done, and we were able to stick with that, have breaks throughout, and build friendships from the group. 

A few of the members of the panel had writing groups that were structured differently: in one, it was very small (3 people) who shared writing, met every 2-3 weeks, and there was an expectation that writing that was shared would have been read, and that when the group met, they would discuss the writing, and set up who would submit next. What really made that group work was the commitment to it (also it's flexibility if they were unable to meet in 2-3 weeks), but recognizing that it had a very set structure and required the members to follow through with their commitments to the group.  

I would also add that it only takes a little bit of leadership to get a group going. I have a few people that I'm going to reach out to in order to make my writing group this new semester get going, and I know that it's an email's send away to start setting up writing dates. 

Having a writing group makes the entire experience much more real, much more doable, and really shifted my perspective to feeling very positive about the writing I was doing. At some point, it would be great to share my writing with a colleague, my partner, or someone else from my department before I send the next chapter off to my supervisor, but I know that even if I don't manage to make that step happen (which is more personal preference than anything else), then my supervisor will provide great feedback, much as he has done in the past.

So here's to starting off a new writing group, and new semester! 

Post 38: New Year, New Semester, Setting Perspective

Happy 2015! Wishing everyone health, happiness, a small dash of good luck, and many good times with friends and family for the new year.

I got into Victoria with a bit of a bang last night; my flight was delayed by about an hour and a half due to mechanical issues with the plane, and to top it off, the baggage folks ran out of room at the back of the plane, so we had to take on some of the bags at the front of the plane! So in total, the travel time from home was once again, over 9 hours. It is, at the best of times, a challenge to get out of the Kootenays. This post is more personal than any of my previous ones, on account of it just having been New Years and Christmas.

My hometown, Kaslo, as it sits on the banks of Kootenay Lake, slightly hidden from view by the trees.

It's rainy in Victoria—quite a different scene from the white snowy world of the Kootenays that I've been immersed in over the past 2 weeks, visiting my family. The break was great: I did a little bit of work while I was home, but between walking Laika, my parents' dog, shovelling a bit of snow, bringing in firewood, and helping with my family's business, it felt really good to take a bit of time off. I should also admit I was forced to take a bit of a break: my sister's fiancee came back from a visit to his folks out east with a horrible cold, which he gave to my sister, which I seem to have picked up from her. So, bogged down with a stuffy nose, head cold and headaches, I wasn't doing much for a few days, but that was fine, too.

Laika, bounding through the snow, always in action. 

Back in Victoria, I'm staring at my calendar. I have a few days before I lead a 1.5 hour conference session at the TA Conference here at UVic. I also want to wrap up my edits to my third chapter, my methods chapter, in the next week or so. TAing will start in the next two weeks, so it's good timing to be thinking about how to start first tutorials again, and what my relationship with a new class and new batch of students might be like. There are a couple of other small things on the side of that: I have a few hours to make up from my second research project, and for that project, an abstract is due in about two weeks for a conference at the end of May. For the same project, I've also to go download and figure out how to use HyperResearch, a qualitative data analysis program similar to NVivo (look for a post on that coming soon!) It feels like a very different world from one at home where I was walking the dog every day, and finding someone to play cards (mostly Skat), or having tea with my whole family, where I'm listening to my grandparents reminisce about their drives around various parts of Germany or surrounding countries.

I'll admit I'm a bit stuck on my memories of home, so this post will have quite a few photos of my time there. Laika, my parents' dog, is fantastic company. I got out almost every day because she needs a walk, and she paid me back by staying up with me later than most people in my family (my parents are bakers, and rise very early). She was an almost constant companion. I really enjoyed my time with my sister and her fiancee, and my brother and his girlfriend and her son, my grandparents, and my parents. Everyone. I miss them a lot when I'm not home, and while sometimes it's easier to forget that I miss them, it's that much harder when I go back home. And of course, there are always the mountains and the landscape of the Kootenays. What a phenomenal corner of this province I was lucky enough to grow up in (and here chime the sentimental bells...).

On a mini-hike up a ridge about 5 km outside my hometown; looking across Kootenay Lake.

I'll say it's a bit difficult coming back while still getting over a cold. I spent the day in today, tidying around the small apartment I share with my partner, putting clothes and presents away, catching us up on some dishes, accepting vegetable soup from his mother, and doing a little bit of reading. It's been a quiet day, but I haven't yet felt up for more. Perhaps tomorrow will be a day for getting more work done, and for facing the rain. Here's a photo from earlier in December here, with Oak Bay Avenue light up by Christmas lights (below). I hope they stay up for a good bit longer, as Victoria usually faces a good stretch of grey this time of year, which is arguably the toughest to face.

Oak Bay Avenue, at night, with Christmas lights!

But, I am very fortunate to have had great company to pick me up starting at the airport, where my lovely partner, Mike, came out to greet me.

So here's to starting off 2015 right, and readying for a great conference presentation taking place in under a week!

Post 37: Advising students - to go to grad school, or not to go to grad school?

Over the past few weeks, I've been contacted by a couple students interested in chatting about grad school, and I was really excited to meet and chat with them. Considering grad school and options post-undergrad is a really exciting time for people, and I definitely approached this with enthusiasm and support, and from the perspective of encouraging them to consider their options fully.

Before going, however, I really had to think about what were really important things to emphasize about my journey through grad school, lessons learned, and things that I wish I had done differently or that otherwise would have been useful to know beforehand. So with this post, I'll cover a few of those things, but will start with a general discussion about mentoring undergrads and other students.

It's a lot of fun to share about my experience of grad school, but I decided that enthusiasm over my personal story shouldn't spill over to convince someone to go to grad school. It's a better discussion to approach from, Here's what I've learned since starting my program, and what might be useful for your to know when considering whether grad school may or may not be the right fit for you. There are a number of factors that people need to consider when deciding when it's a really good choice for someone. Part of that has to do with personal disposition, what they want out of grad school, if the program/supervisor is a good fit, and what their financial situation is.

Disposition: I'm someone who loves learning. Learning all the time. I read widely (sci-fi, fiction, literature, non-fiction, essays, poetry, etc.), I love film, I like music, and treat each of these things and something new I'm learning about the world. Since entering grad school, I've become much choosier about each of these things: learning to differentiate why I prefer one style over another, or what counts as a good source for research or not. Grad school has very much been a space for personal and professional development, and I'm glad that it has been.

I've also learned a lot by sitting on different committees (for selecting teaching awards and planning a graduate student conference), and I've taken part in all sorts of professional development workshops and conferences both on campus and elsewhere. I've learned how to use write and cite, how to make a conference poster, and how to take part in and give back to a writing group. I've learned that I quite like teaching. I've also figured out that I'm an introvert, and what that means for my teaching style. I've also learned a good bit about the impostor syndrome, and what that means for me as a student and how I view my accomplishments, and why I dwell so much on process. Almost all of these things are things that I wouldn't have anticipated before grad school, and I've loved learning all of them (even though some were really, really hard), but this also gives some indication to the kind of person I am, and how and why grad school's been a fruitful journey for me so far, considering I wanted a broad experience that didn't just churn me out as a good researcher by the end of the program.

Gorgeous look up valley out in the Goldstream Park right by Victoria. A nice dash of August green to challenge
the rainy grey of today!

Finances, funding, and resources

I was once told by a friend of mine in undergrad that people should not pay to go to grad school. And with almost no hesitation, I agree. In Canada, with a struggling job market (especially for younger educated people), we are having some trouble with education inflation, where having a bachelor's degree doesn't cut it anymore, and employers are preferentially choosing folks with at least a master's degree. Part of this is a crappy job market for young people, where employers can afford to be so choosey. This isn't great news considering that master's programs oftentimes are not an in-and-out kind of degree: even UVic's performance measures indicate that the average completion rate for master's degrees across the university is 4 years, and the average PhD program is 6 (see the graph buried on page 32 of the report). That's a long time, and that's a lot of money and stress and investment, considering most programs are advertised as 2 (master's) and 4 (PhD) years, respectively.

There are two things to emphasize here: it's not impossible to complete a master's in two years; one of the 13 students that started with me managed to do it. But that person was the exception. One of the students from my program has left, and the rest of us are still plugging along. We're not finished not because we haven't been working hard, but there's a whole lot more to a master's than I think a lot of us imagined when we began.

So, looking at the average numbers, and recognizing that funding typically covers the first two years of a program (this may vary in departments), I advise students to have an honest discussion with their potential supervisor or with the program graduate advisor to get a sense of which professors are taking on students, what completion rates are like, and/or other resources (such as the Thesis Completion Group, or the Centre for Academic Communication) that are going to get them finishing faster if they are on a tighter timeline. Finances are important, and when the funding runs out, as students take on part-time or full-time jobs to cover their money needs, it's no wonder that it can take longer for them to finish their programs. Talking about funding and funding possibilities (grants, scholarships, bursaries, etc.) that will help keep them covered while they study is key, too (oftentimes students still have debt from their undergraduate degrees). Discussing teaching assistant possibilities and other research work can be very important. As well, because grants like the big federal ones (SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR) are frequently peer-reviewed, almost no school will turn you down if you've already been offered one of these grants; essentially, that grant offer is validating that you have demonstrated you have the potential to undertake excellent research. The MITACS program has also emerged in recent years as an important funding source for graduate students. Getting your financial ducks in a row is really, really important! :)

Finding the right supervisor is also important! A lot of grad school is learning about relationships: how to manage them when the stress and expectations are high, and when work needs to get done. How to do this collegially, with a mentor-supervisor? Learning how to ask the right questions, and figuring out when to ask for help. Learning how to understand feedback, and make revisions. These are all aspects of this professional degree that I've had to work on, and continue to. And a lot of it hinges on how well my relationship with my supervisor is going. I've heard of a few horror stories from other graduate students (admittedly mostly at the PhD level), about supervisors who don't let them finish, who don't agree that the student is ready, who give feedback completely opposite to what another committee member said, etc. Learning how to deal with these is a must, and with a supervisor that's rooting for you and on your team, you will succeed. :)

A shot downstream at the Sooke Potholes—a must-visit summer spot in the area! 

There were also a couple basic things that the students I spoke with asked about.

Are there different types of degree programs? Yes. There are course-based master's, project  based master's, and research based master's. The one I'm working on is a research based master's. We have coursework for the first 8 months of the program, then we launch our projects and head out to do the empirical work. (I know less about the other two, but by letting students know about other possibilities, they can go check them out).

After we complete the empirical work, we usually do some sort of analysis (this will differ based on methodologies), and then write up a thesis, which is disseminated to our supervisor and committee member, and when they approve that document, we head to a thesis defence, which includes a third member from outside the department, who also has an interesting look at your thesis, provides feedback and asks probing questions, and at that defence, that committee decides how much needs to be revised in the thesis document. There are 4 ways the result of the defence can go: 1. pass without revisions (very rare); 2. pass with minor revisions (common). 3. pass with major revisions (less common, but still somewhat frequent), and 4. fail (extremely rare). Basically, by the time your supervisor and committee member agree that you are ready to defend, you should be in pretty good shape. But thesis defences are still a really big deal—and the reason why the internet is full of all sorts of memes addressing defences (or offences!).

There's a lot that goes into considering grad school, and I definitely recommended for those students to talk to potential supervisors in advance. Also, talking to some of the grad students of supervisors (though this, I think, would be even more important if someone's considering a Phd), could be useful, too.

Post 36: There are multiple zooms on the thesis writing camera: on realizing that writing the thesis is an organizational puzzle!

For many months I stressed about getting started on writing my thesis, and over the past two months, I've realized that most of it was overblown worry on my part. Writing is a lot of fun (and I definitely send big THANK YOUS to my writing group), and has been for a long time for me. So why all the insecurity, hesitation, and balking about the thesis writing?

Part of it is the size of the project, undoubtedly. This is probably the biggest thing that I will produce in my life so far (!!!!). Part of it as well, is the scrambled, getting lost in the details on my part, too. I was getting lost in the little pieces, and gazing at the pattern on one puzzle piece, while diving to the pick up the next puzzle piece without figuring out where the first one went.

Here's where I'm going to employ the camera metaphor: writing a big project is knowing when to zoom in, and when to zoom out. I recently wrote a post about paragraph thinking: but realized afterwards that paragraph thinking is only useful when you already know where what you're writing goes! :)

When I met with my supervisor a few weeks ago, we had a really great discussion where we realized that part of why I was asking so many questions about which section goes where is because I was in macro mode, when I needed to be in landscape mode! When we realized that, he asked me to write out kind of a one-pager outlining my entire thesis, how I was splitting up and organizing chapters. It was almost a relief to finally sketch out chapter contents and realize: This has to go, this can't be there, this isn't closely related enough; Oh, this section will be shorter and smaller in scope.... after all, master's theses are only about 75-100 pages (even though I have seen quite a few in my department that have been upwards of 150 pages).

Local maidenhair ferns, Adiantum aleuticum, hanging out in a cool spot, keeping their feet wet at the Sooke Potholes! 

Now for a different metaphor: in the past two weeks I also realized that writing a thesis is really about figuring how to fit puzzle pieces together. I had been walking around with a section on my scientists drafted in mind for a bit (who they are, why them, the different collaborations they engaged in when I thought at the beginning of my project there were more discrete research organizations, challenges in contacting various groups of them, etc.), and thinking about my methodology/methods chapter and what would go in there (methodology, methods, challenges and limitations), and what would go into my introductory chapter (thesis questions, abstract, great opening quote, context of climate change and rapid ecological change, and why it's important we engage with scientists).

So between juggling the various puzzle pieces, and organizing them into borders, and breaking them into colours and compatible sections (best puzzle building strategy!), things have gotten a lot easier and feel much more manageable. And I definitely can't underscore how important the emotional part of this project has been so far! It's nice to feel the buzz of seeing progress being made.

Onwards and upwards to stitching my 4 main literature sections together! :)

Post 35: Falling in Love with Write and Cite

Beginning in September, there were a few new members in my thesis completion group (I'd joined earlier in the summer). One of the members, N— is just starting her second year of her MA after a hiatus, and the group got to talking about 'writing and citing' programs that make life so much easier!!

Having been in this MA for 2 and a bit years now, it's remarkable how easy it is to forget some of the smaller things that I've grown so dependent on, and grateful for! And my write and cite program is one of them.

So, what are these things, and what do they do?

Gone are the days of printing every single paper and journal article, and marking it up with a highlighter and sticky notes with a memo for the gist of the paper. These days, there's a slough of programs that will help you to organize your library of papers (and save trees by keeping them digital), highlight important sections of them, keep notes attached to them, and stores all the meta data that's important for compiling bibliographies when you're ready to hit 'finalize'.

Some are free programs, others have a one-time fee, others simply manage and store your bibliographic information, and others still do the whole paper and notes and highlights she-bang.
It is well worth doing a bit of research to find out what program would work best for you, and will meet your needs.

More wonderfully bright leaves from across campus on a lovely autumn day!

I have gone with Papers, produced by Mekentosj. Papers stores and curates the full journal articles, has a built-in search engine that connects through the internet to check several databases (and works with my uni-library to access papers available through all the licensing agreements and such here), allows me to neatly store and file groups of related papers, allows me to annotate and highlight them and make notes on particular sections. Because it has a built-in search function, I can also look for article separate to the built-in search (say, off my library's homepage), download those articles, drag and drop them into the program, and 9 times out of 10 it will find and match the article and automatically in-fill all of the bibliographic info.

With the student discount it had a one-time fee of about 50$ (on the website it's in Euros), but I regularly and hassle-free receive updates (eg. I'm now on Papers2), and it's fantastic!

The one drawback of this program is it's ability to handle grey literature (government reports and technical summaries, etc.) I find that I edit almost every entry for those. But, that's not a terrible thing: at least I will know if I've missed any key papers because I've handled them so much!

Other programs that I've heard really good things about include Mendeley, which is very similar in functionality to Papers, and has a social function built in to share work and collaborate with colleagues (though I haven't tried that) and Zotero, which is a free version and styles itself as a personal research assistant.

So many arbutus (Arbutus menziesii) berries this year! This tree's absolutely loaded with them!
And while they have a very curious flavour, they are edible, but best kept in the 'emergency food' category!

WRITING AND CITING:

This is the fun part: Papers has a call function, where I can summon my articles library from my word processor, as I'm writing. In my case, I hit the option button twice, and then a little search window opens inside my writing composition program (I use Scrivener). If I remember the name of one of the authors of the paper, or a key word from the title, I type that in, and Papers gives me a list of articles that match that paper. I click on the one I had in mind, and am presented with 2 options: to include a formatted citation right there, or an unformatted citation. I slot either of them in and keep writing!

If you choose unformatted citations, when you are done writing your paper, you can tell Papers to format all of the citations in whatever style you want: APA, MLA, Chicago, etc. It's amazing, and such a time saver!!! It populates a complete, organized bibliography at the end of the paper, and all of the in-text citations are correct as well. it's worth having a look through to make sure the program has all the information right, because I've caught a few mistakes (as in the case of the grey literature info for a few reports), but those are easily fixed.

In short, write and cite programs like Papers save time and hassle (once you've learned how to use them), are extremely flexible with form, and ensure that you haven't missed a paper! I am so grateful for this program, as well as my supervisor who strongly recommended I look into one at the beginning of this degree! :)

Post 34: Paragraph Thinking and Writing

I write this post with gratefulness in mind for my colleague Garrett Richards, whose brilliant conversation, friendship, and mentorship was immensely valuable to me when we were able spend time together for a month and a half this summer. We'd meet up to eat lunch together several days of the week, discuss a wide variety of fun topics, including the thesis work we were doing.

As a PhD student, his slightly more advanced (in academia) perspective was fantastic: he'd finished his master's not-that-long-ago, and so was able to provide some phenomenal advice. He was also really getting into writing his thesis at the time, so a number of the conversations we had were around me asking questions like "How are you organizing your chapters?" and  "How do you sort out what information belongs where? How do you plan your writing?"

So with my thanks to Garrett, this blog post is dedicated to the few (awesome) conversations about thesis writing and thinking in paragraphs.

Thinking in paragraphs is the way he structures what he has to write. The paragraph is a great unit to organize thoughts by, because it's a nice balance between the tiny details of a specific point that one research paper makes, and the overall aim of a thesis chapter.

A paragraph has a logical organization, beginning with the topic sentence that informs what the paragraph will cover (and consequently, Garrett said, he had the tendency to write long paragraphs), and finishing with a sort of wrap up of what that paragraph then said (the concluding sentence), with related sentences in between. Then, you can organize sections of the chapter based on laying out which paragraphs speak to the others around it, and which ones need to be in there, etc.

On my walk to the library, being charmed by the big maple leaves! 

Having this kind of tool was really helpful for providing advice to one of my colleagues recently! In one of my Thesis Completion Group meetings,  a colleague was dealing with writer's block, and the fellow sitting next to me said to him, "D—, are you trying to write a whole thesis at once?!" And this got me to thinking about what was helpful for me for breaking down the intimidation involved with setting out to 'write a thesis', and well: you don't write a thesis all at once; you write word that builds a sentence that builds part of a paragraph, one piece at a time. Or, one thought at a time, and I chatted about this with D— when I invited him to my thesis writing group the following week. In short order, we'd discussed what he'd be working on writing, in smaller, manageable paragraphs, and he set to it!

Therefore, paragraph thinking (and writing) is an extremely important tool for chapter organization (on top of writing!) that helps to break down the concerns about writing a whole thesis at once. :)

Hope this was helpful!

Post 33: On Juggling 5 Projects... Where Did the Time Go?

Well, okay, maybe it's only 3 projects, but I'm certainly keeping busy, and finding my daytime hours are disappearing faster than I can say "Unique New York" quickly 10 times in a row! (It's already the middle of October!!)

Last week the second research project that I've picked up to help cover my bills, now that I'm in the post-funding era of my degree, really started to ramp up! And it is hella fun! It's so cool to research the backgrounds of some of the people that I'll be interviewing in the next few months, and think about time zone differences and adjustments for suggesting potential 'best' interview times (unless I want to rise for a sleepy one at 4AM!), so that has been very good.

Lots of writing back and forth feedback and undertaking a pilot interview to test out our interview questions—and seeing the evolution of those has been phenomenal, too, and has inspired me to reflect in slightly different ways on the way I undertook my thesis research.

Our dash of green: pathside plants and ferns, exploring out at Goldstream Park!

On a different note: much love to my thesis writing group*!!!! I can't gush enough about how much I love their company and the productive atmosphere we have built. While there is still some scheduling irregularity with space and times that we're able to meet (we're trying to do Monday, Wednesday, Friday; everyone has different departmental meetings and odd things that break up the times), it's been phenomenal.

More Pomodoros. This time, smilies!

I've now graduated to being the Pomodoro timer on occasion. We use the online one available here. It's quite innocuous, and so isn't an unpleasant shock when we hear the timer.

And the MOST FUN thing is finding different ways to keep track of/tallying (photos coming soon) how many we've been able to get done in a day! We were in over the Thanksgiving long weekend on Sunday and Monday, and went from getting six done on Sunday, to a RECORD of 10 on Monday! That felt so good!

Phew! What a day! Got so much done!

The structure of hunkering down for 25 minutes at a time, and then having a set chat/break/question time is fantastic. Again, much love to them. Really, really enjoying spending more time with this group.

AND: we also appreciate the support of the Graduate Student Society, who keeps allowing us to schedule time in one of their two conference rooms in the Halpern Centre for Graduate Students. Having a big room suitable for convening and getting our work done is really, really great.

* I wanted briefly to identify here that I joined this thesis writing group by meeting some of the members through the Thesis Completion Group that I've written about before, here. :)