Is the PhD half empty or half full?

January 2012 disappeared in the blink of an eye and February is quickly heading the same way. As one over zealous office mate drops into conversation every now and then, we are nearly exactly half way through our PhD.

Over half way. That's closer to the finish line than the starting point. Eek.

Looking back to the beginning I can assure myself that I've achieved quite a lot in the past year and a half. Three studies, a couple of conferences, a painful amount of time on SPSS and the odd moment of actual writing is not to be scoffed at. I can almost see how it's all going to come together. One more study to conduct and then write it all up. Simple as.  (If only...)

The optimistic side of me looks at my progress and happily announces that the PhD is definitely half full, maybe even  more so. "There's a whole year and a half to go.", it proclaims in a Disney-esque positive tone. "Look at what you've done so far and you've got oodles of time to spare. Relax! Put the kettle on. Have a holiday - you deserve it!". For a split second I honestly believe that happy Disney voice in my head until the internal pessimist steps in to dash all my self-assuring dreams.. "Half full?", it shouts. "You're kidding yourself! Look at all those interviews that still need transcribing and coding before you can analyse your data. You haven't even started planning your next study and on top of all that you've not really written anything up properly. Publications? Forget about it - you definitely don't have time for that nonsense. Your PhD is definitely half empty."

And so deflates my happy, rose-tinted perspective on the current state of my PhD.

Being a second year PhD student is very bitter sweet. The constant enthusiasm and motivation you had right the beginning has been well and truly drained. You can't wait for it all to be over, but you're stressed about how little time is left. It's a no win situation.

I've decided to try and alternate between the two perspectives. Some days I can pat myself on the back and toast (cup of tea style) to the progress I've made to half filling my PhD. The rest of the time I think the half-empty camp has to dominate my thinking, giving me enough of The Fear* to keep me working when all other motivation has failed.

We'll see how this plan goes. I prefer the Disney voice's argument.


Ciao for now.

*The Fear is a well known visitor to many an Undergraduate who may be lacking in motivation for the coursework essay or exam revision. The Fear arrives just at the moment of realisation as to how little time is left and are thus forced, by The Fear, into working at break neck speed to get the job done. The Fear cannot be sustained over great periods of time because it is exhausting. If only The Fear's older brother could be located for PhD students around the world and maybe we'd all be a little more productive.

Stealing My Academic Thunder

Academics are constantly working against the clock to conduct quality research, draw inciteful conclusions and then spread their findings to the world. This process is an incredibly lengthy one and requires a lot of resources: funding, patience, manpower, data, and the trickiest of all, time. If you're lucky to get all of these things then that's great, if not the question must remain unanswered until somebody can gather all the resources together and get the work done.

Few questions and ideas are novel and if you've thought about it, the chances are that someone, somewhere in the world, has thought of it too. This means that you are up against the clock to reach the publishing finish line before these hypothetical competitors do. The race is on but you have no idea who your fellow competitors are and what checkpoint they have reached when you set off on your research journey and if they beat you too it, your cutting edge research quickly becomes blunt.

I think there is a perfect way to describe the feeling of discovering that someone has published in your  area that you are still working hard to complete. Even more so when you have found the same things, they've just got their first. They are 'stealing your thunder'; a phrase typically reserved for situations where you're supposed to be the centre of attention but someone upstages you, like your best friend announcing she's pregnant on your wedding day or someone announcing their engagement at your birthday party, but I feel it fits.

I'm sad to say this happened to me today. My academic thunder was well and truly stolen - not just by a fellow academic - but by the Government.

I've been conducting research on the practice of police officers in England and Wales, focusing on how they prepare victims and witnesses for giving evidence in court. Nothing like this had been done before, or should I say, nothing like this had been published before.

This morning I arrived at my desk to find an e-mail from my supervisor containing a press release and a copy of a report, jointly published on the 7th February 2012, by Her Majesty's Criminal Justice System Inspectorate and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary looking at the experiences of victims and witnesse in the criminal justice system...one aspect of this report was the area I'd focussed on in my study.

Thunder. Gone. My conclusions already there in print with someone elses name on them.

Being two large Government organisations they have obviously had a lot of co-operation from all aspects of the criminal justice system, they've had money to fund the research and they've probably had a large team of people collecting and analysing the data. I have, me, my computer and myself (and my supervisor of course). What chance did I have? If only I'd known what they were up to and I could have saved myself the time and effort and worked on something else...

My supervisor assures me that it's not a massive problem, I now have a great resource to reference, but I still feel short changed.

Will I ever beat the research clock? Who knows. Let the race continue.

Putting the D'oh in Dr...

Throughout my studies I've noticed that us PhD students have a habit of being incredibly inefficient. The usual culprit is doing something by hand that could be done 100x faster on some form of computer software. When we are shown the error of our ways, shown how much time and effort we are wasting, we all have that moment where you see the light and generally a 'D'oh' moment is born. There's nothing technically wrong with the way you may be doing something, in fact, a few decades ago it would have been your only choice and you would have been commended on your attention to detail and dedication to get those time-gobbling tasks done. Referencing is one of the main culprits, but for us psychologists, statistical analysis is an equally guilty party.

I had such a 'D'oh' moment today...

I do not claim to be an expert in statistics, or even proficient. I definitely don't have any expertise in the use of SPSS (a particularly unhelpful statistical software package that the psychology world keeps in business despite it's complete and utter lack of a logical user interface). It would be safe to say that my four years of Undergraduate stats training, a year of Masters level stats training and a year and a half of working at PhD level have left me with a 'workable' level of SPSS knowledge, but only if I have a large cup of tea in one hand and my trusty Andy Field SPSS book in the other. Ok...I admit it...I can do one specific statistical test on it and that's about it....

Today, I was trying to put a lot of categorical data into percentages (basically what percentage of people said one thing compared to another). I thought to myself, this seems like something SPSS would be able to do for me, but I didn't have the slightest idea of where to even look for that sort of command. Nobody was around to ask so I decided to calculated the percentages the old fashioned way - well, with my iPhone, not with pen and paper! Funnily enough this was taking a looooooong time so I decided to revisit old SPSS...

Unsurprisingly, SPSS is quite capable of calculating categorical percentages and in fact I had been but two button clicks away from having the information right in front of me.

D'OH!!!

These little moments could, by a positive thinking person, be considered to be a moment of learning to be celebrated but it's very difficult to be that positive person when you realise just how much time you've been wasted. These moments happen a little too frequently and are completely soul destroying. My only solace is the fact that they happen to everyone else in the office too!!

Ciao for now!

Race to the Finish Line

I consider my PhD to be a professional/academic challenge. A HUGE ONE! I don't think anyone could really disagree with that! It is mentally challenging more than anything else as a good 95% of my day involves being sat at a desk, staring at a computer screen. Not only is this not doing my eyesight any good, but it's doing nothing to improve my health.

Before Christmas I also added a personal challenge to my to-do list. I've never really been a big fan of exercise but I decided that this needed to change and I was going to try the Couch to 5K Challenge. The last exercise I  did was probably a bit of light paced swimming, several years ago, and maybe a few aerobic classes in my freshers year of undergraduate so it was safe to say that I didn't have appropriate clothing. Running for the bus was usually enough to put me out of action!

After a sympathetic friend took me in hand to the alien world of sports clothes shopping I downloaded the Get Running app for my phone and got going. Three runs a week with a mixture of running and walking, the runs getting longer week by week. I'm in week 6 of 9 now and I'm completely amazed at just how much I enjoy my morning runs! I'm lucky enough to live a 5 minute walk away from Windsor Great Park and so I have beautiful scenery to look at as I huff and puff my way through the morning training session. It's time to myself to just focus on something non-PhD related and to let my mind wander and it's surprisingly liberating. No emails to check, no typing to be done. Just enjoying the view.

I've always been sceptical of fitness fanatics who sing praises of exercise and just how much more energy it gives you but I would have to say I've been converted around to their way of thinking. It's truly an addictive feeling and by following a training schedule I get to have a small sense of achievement at least three times a week when I finish a session. Little goals elsewhere in life are crucial when the ultimate PhD finish line is such a distant goal at the moment.

Knowing myself, I need some incentive to keep going with the running once I reach the end of this training programme in a few weeks time. So...to make sure I keep going I've signed up for a Race for Life 5K Challenge in July and the ShockAbsorber's WomensOnly 10K Challenge in October. Instant fear as soon as my registration e-mails arrived but again, they are further chances to overcome some sort of challenge and get that sense of achievement at the end of it. If I can overcome these challenges and make it across the finish line, then surely the race to thesis completion is achievable too?! (she tells herself!).

I'm hoping to raise some money to support the work done at Cancer Research - this wasn't intended as a big sell but you've got to take fundraising opportunities where you can find them! If anyone would like to sponsor me I would greatly appreciate it and you can do so by clicking on the logo below.

Wish me luck!!!