Brew
I work from home a lot. When I go to the kitchen and boil the kettle I like to dry any dishes in the rack; it feels like a good way to use the minute or so while the water...
Daily viva help for PhDs
I work from home a lot. When I go to the kitchen and boil the kettle I like to dry any dishes in the rack; it feels like a good way to use the minute or so while the water...
Be as grand as you like. The question could finish with many things: what is your contribution… …to your field? …to research? …to knowledge? …to the world? Turn it around a few times in your mind. Examine your work from...
It’s a good idea to make summaries on the run up to your viva. It’s great, purposeful work while you make them and you have valuable resources you can refer to afterwards. It doesn’t take much, a sheet of paper...
I’m a big fan of creative thinking tools. The Disney Method is one I like a lot. It forces you to break creative thinking into stages by adopting three personas: Dreamer: think of as many ideas as possible; encourage brainstorming;...
What if you wanted to tell a friend about your research and you only had one sheet of paper? What would you put on this cheatsheet? Would it have lots of pictures? Bullet-points? Would your abstract feature? And would it...
Here’s a quick reflective exercise for the end of the PhD. Take a sheet of paper, divide it into three: In the top write WHY: why did you do a PhD? Answer the question. In the middle write HOW: how...
My favourite thing in my thesis is on pages 33 and 34. I struggled for a couple of weeks on a single detail that I needed in order to prove the most important result in my research. I couldn’t get...