The challenges, experiences and everyday stuff of PhD life
When you start a PhD, you’ll often hear that your research should be treated like a 9 to 5 job. If you’re like me, this will probably cause you to panic and question what on earth you’re doing – don’t a lot of us start PhDs because we secretly didn’t want a 9-5 job?! I … Continue reading How many hours should you spend on the clock, and when should you spend them?
Our latest guest blog comes from Charlie, a first-year PhD student in the Architecture by Design program at the University of Edinburgh. He is studying the architecture of prisons and the potential for such architecture to directly exert moral influence upon inmates. And he is tired of hearing references to Foucault. I went to the National Library … Continue reading Library antagonisms
I’m in the slightly unique position of having lived in catered university halls throughout my entire academic career, from the very beginning of my BA to the (almost) end of my PhD. Since I’ve now got 7 (seriously, 7?! I just did a double-take) years of experience of halls, from both an undergrad and postgrad … Continue reading Should you live in halls during your PhD?
I don’t know if it’s just my intense perfectionism, but I have a real fear of finishing things, signing off, and saying I’m done. I’ve always been terrible at doing so, handing in essays right on the deadline during my undergrad. Once or twice, I even edited an essay within an inch of its life … Continue reading Perfectionism and the PhD: the dread of completion
This is the second half of my ‘what to do’ two-part blog, sharing my tips for how to cope with two of the major trials of PhD life: feeling overwhelmed, and feeling stuck. Last week I looked at feeling overwhelmed, and shared some of my tips for getting through those tough times (check it out … Continue reading What to do when you’re completely and utterly stuck
There are many struggles you’ll encounter during your PhD experience, two of the major ones being feeling overwhelmed, and feeling completely stuck. Both are things I’ve come up against quite a lot over my 2 and a half years of being a PhD researcher, especially the former due to my depression and anxiety. So, in … Continue reading What to do when you feel like you just can’t do it anymore
I said in a previous post that I would talk about why I study wolves – so today I thought I’d fulfil that promise! It’s been a bit of a winding journey to this point. When I started thinking about doing a PhD, I didn’t have wolves in mind at all. Truthfully, I hadn’t thought … Continue reading Why wolves? The wolf in my story and finding a PhD topic that you love
Like many people around the world, when the new year rolled around I found myself binge-watching the new Netflix series ‘Tidying up with Marie Kondo’. I’d heard of her book The Magical Art of Tidying Up some years ago, but had never been interested enough to read it. In fact, I secretly resented the principal. … Continue reading ‘Sparking joy’ in my life and research
Our latest guest blog comes from Charlie, a first-year PhD researcher in the Architecture By Design program at the University of Edinburgh. His research is on the architecture of prisons, and perhaps someday he will design you a new home. I’m a doctoral researcher studying the architecture of prisons with the goal of developing improved … Continue reading Meta-prisons, or, Imprisonizing introspections upon investigations of incarceration
From my previous posts, you may well have thought that I’m all about wolves, and not so much about the Anglo-Saxons. However, Anglo-Saxon literature was a passion of mine long before wolves (sorry Luna!). I became fascinated with Anglo-Saxon poetry when I first read about its influence on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien during my … Continue reading A Passion Second Only to Wolves: The Un-ravellable Mystery of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts
SGSAH Blog 