Month: February 2022

The past few weeks have been busy with PhD work, work-work, home life, injections in my neck (fun times) and everything in-between. I’m not complaining though. Being still isn’t really for me. However, I have realised that I do need to plan in moments of calm amongst the (organised) chaos. I’ll see how that pans out!

What have I been up to in PhD land? Online courses, literature review work and wishing that 18 year old me had paid more attention in ‘A’ Level Sociology. Thirty years creates quite a lot of hindsight. But, 18 year old me had a great time at college and got to university, despite the frequency of time spent down the pub…I digress.

Luckily for me, being an ARU student gives me access to a wealth of online courses via Epigeum, as well as the excellent content provided by the university itself. In the past fortnight I have completed courses on research methods in literature review and social sciences; research planning; research skills; and becoming an ethical researcher. Plus, live sessions introducing me to life as a PhD research student, how to access library resources and refining my proposal. The resubmission of my proposal is slightly daunting. Cutting something in half, yet somehow adding to it is no mean feat. I do appreciate the value of the task though, as it is helping me to focus.

I have set one day aside, away from work, to study. This has been slightly scuppered already, with author events via my bookshop, but I have clawed back time over the weekend and evenings.

Next steps? I have supervision tomorrow, to discuss the proposal and try to get my brain around the construction of a usable Gantt. Other items on my ‘to do’ list are to choose an ERN to start documenting my research in a more systematic way; take some time to familiarise myself with the electronic archives at ARU and read this:

Until next time.

Apologies for the radio silence; it’s been a very busy few weeks, with work, family life and studying all thrown into the mix.

As a research student at ARU, I need to resubmit my proposal under very strict guidelines. The main challenge for me is to cut the original document in half, whilst adding in detail. I am naturally quite wordy when I write, so this is going to be tricky. However, after a great training session today, I feel more focused, so let’s see where the editing process takes me!

Over the next week, I will be tackling the Gantt. I’ll be honest, I’d never even heard of a Gantt until last month, during supervision with Professor Eugene Giddens. I now understand the premise and even the purpose, but going from a blank page to something that tracks the next 6 year trajectory, to look like this,

scares me (slightly).

Today has been the most full on day so far. I began with two back-to-back online sessions. The first was about the resub and the second a ‘how to’ for PGR Pro. My tech skills are average at best, but the training definitely boosted my confidence.

This afternoon was taken up with another online training session, this time via Epigeum. Part way through the course on ethics, I silently berated the 18 year old me for not concentrating as well as she could have in A Level Sociology. However, there’s no telling a teen that her future self would really appreciate a better attitude. I made myself proud though and passed with flying colours. No one warned me that there was a test!

What’s next? I have a list: edit the proposal (again, following the very helpful notes from Professor Giddens; continue reading the literature; tackle that Gantt.

Until next time.