debsdoesntknow

[debsdoesntknow]

Your SA is here and they advise you to...

take a little time today and revise, then enhance the introduction of your paper!

[debsdoesntknow]

DISSERTATION WRITING

First 10 pages of dissertation are DONE

Which is around 4K words, don’t know how many words I’ll be writing but I know I’m aiming for something like 150 pages (and I’ll have lots of figures cuz arts dissertation)

#gradblr #studyblr

[debsdoesntknow]

20 WEEKS TILL DELIVER OF DISSERTATION

Didn’t do nearly as much as I planned last week and technically I’m already a day late for chapter one due date.

So this week I’m going to rush the writing while attending meetings on different projects and judging a 4-day contest

Ask for help from research group about a list

Revise 1.2.2

Finish and revise 1.2.3

Write and revise 1.2.4

Intro for 1.2

Send in to advisor

Write bibliography according to norms

Make list of questions for advisor

Make list of questions for interviewe

#gradblr

[debsdoesntknow]

How does one even function on extreme weather?

Did some mindless tasks but I’m waiting till the sun goes down so I can actually study. I’m so late with everything I have to do because I keep getting headaches because of how hot it is

#gradblr

[debsdoesntknow]

Done with the first subchapter of my dissertation! It’s only 4 pages but I’m so glad that I have something finished now.

My advisor wanted the entirety of chapter one by next Sunday (which is an introduction + 8 subchapters). I don’t think that will happen since he gave me only 2 weeks but I will be satisfied if I can deliver half the intro + 4 subchapters.

One is done so 3 to go! This week I plan on:

Getting some info from my subject

Organize said info

Write 1.2.2

Make an interview list for this chapter

Write 1.2.3

Write 1.2.4

Organize references

Check some articles for quotes for my intro

Write part of intro

#gradblr #also this morning I feel like working from my bed

[debsdoesntknow]

Dissertation writing

Here’s me thinking that I should start by the subchapter I already collected all the info cause it has to be the easiest right? And because I can actually finish it maybe I’ll get a buzz to write the others which I’ll have to comeback in the future bc new infos

Well, apparently I’m wrong and it isn’t easier at all or even worse MAYBE IT IS THE EASIER AND IT WILL OBLY GET WORSE

#gradblr #5 min writing a paragraph #and then 50 thinking about giving up #it’s only day 3 with this subchapter #and only had to be like 3 pages long

[debsdoesntknow]

I’d try to read less to make sure I understand what I’m reading. Highlight, take notes and read until you understand it. I think a summary with the main idea and arguments can prove to yourself that you understood it well.

And as far as in class discussion, I think “I like this idea” “I don’t agree with this argument because I think....” “This part reminds me of the idea of this other author” can be a good start. Remember that text comprehension is also about making connections with other things (life experiences, other academic texts, things you read and even your own research!) and being able to explain why your agree/disagree with it

I think I need to change my approach to how I read everything for my classes because WOW I literally never have anything to say about them and it becomes very apparent during discussions!!!

instead of scrambling to read everything barely in time I should maybe focus on a couple of things and then read the rest if I have time so that I at the very least can contribute to the discussions. or? how would you go about this? any advice would be so so appreciated because I’m quite bad at partaking in discussions in general because I don’t really work that way, but maybe focusing on a few areas would be better in order to try? so far I read everything and take notes but it become very obvious that I don’t always understand it all and never have things to add

[debsdoesntknow]

My advisor believes everything can be accomplished in one week

Organize a summary of my dissertation? One week (it takes a day)

Write the entire first chapter? One week (I was planning on taking a month)

#gradblr #I got him to bump it to two weeks #still #at best I think I’ll have like half a chapter for him

[debsdoesntknow]

Digital Declutter Challenge! And it’s for you!

Hi! I really liked the decluttering idea. And I have a challenge for you! It’s about cleaning up your devices. Don’t force yourself to do it all at once it may take much time ;)

Text messages:

Look through your e-mails, delete the needless ones. 

Unsubscribe newsletters.

Also check your SMS and text messaging apps. 

SM: 

Unfollow the accounts that makes you feel bad somehow and people who you don’t like although keep following.

Gallery: 

Look through your gallery and delete wrong taken photos, screenshots etc. 

Organize the pictures.

Internet: 

Clean up your browser history.

Clean up your bookmarks. 

Delete the accounts you no longer use (for example old browser games you no longer play accounts).

Check your Google Drive and tidy it up.

Device:

Change your wallpaper. 

Delete the music you stopped listening to years ago. (Spotify counts!)

Organize your desktop.

Organize your secondary storage. 

I’m starting now, what about you? 😁

[debsdoesntknow]

25.3.2020 (quarantine day 10)

number of lgbt romances read: 2

number of sources for my dissertation read: 0

#gradblr

[debsdoesntknow]

“Particularly prone to serious procrastination problems are children who grew up with unusually high expectations placed on them…or else they exhibited exceptional talents early on, and thereafter “average” performances were met with concern and suspicion from parents and teachers.”

Holy SHIT

[debsdoesntknow]

hyia

the worst thing about grad school in my country is that it doesn’t matter that the world is living a pandemic that is killing people, if you’re alive then you still have to hand in your thesis by the same deadline (24 months after you’ve entered the program, which is 9 months away for me)

So here I am, and even though my country haven’t declared that people shouldn’t be going out, I’m still leaving home as little as I can (specially because my grandma lives with me and I don’t wanna risk passing anything to her, that stays indoors almost all the time). I don’t have a lab that I need to go to and my advisor was meeting me through Skype anyway, so I was already working from home.

#gradblr #studyblr brasileiro #studyblr #studyblr brasil #study brazil #brazilian studyblr #grad school #gradblogging #graduate student #graduate school #grad life #grad student

[debsdoesntknow]

I just hit that moment in grad school where we start to question if this was the right decision

there’s just so much happening that I don’t even know where to start

Can we start with my advisor? I changed schools because he was the best ok? I had to perfect advisors in different programs lined up in my old uni, both knew me, had worked with me in researches and love me. And I still wanted to get away from them to try and “grow my academic point of view”. And there it was, big name in the field, books, journals, research groups, events and all that and I just got so obsessed in being under his wing and I was certain it was the best choice I could make for myself and I was just dying to study with him.

And here I am, in a program he seems to not give a fuck? At least I assume that since he seems to be apart from the entire art department. Lost in the middle of his other 15 advisees, and even though he is so into scheduling meetings I never seem to be on his calendar. Currently what I am more pissed about him is the fact that he gave me a wrong date, and thus, I have 3 fewer WEEKS to write two papers than what he told me, and I found that he gave a further date 10 days before they are due. On top of that, he didn’t want to meet to discuss the papers a month ago because “we have so much time” and now I found out that we haven’t, and that I won’t have time to meet him because I barely have time to write. 

You know, I probably wouldn’t be mad at him if I wasn’t so lost on my own research theme. I choose one (not my best proposal) and he made me change because it didn’t make sense. Ok. He got me a new one, which I don’t completely understand and you know, I would understand it better if he talked to me more about it. I went to another professor to ask for his opinion on it and he didn’t agree at all and suggested some new stuff. I adore this other professor but I just can’t go against my advisor and honestly, this just got me more confused because no one seems to understand my advisor’s idea.

And now I have to write about it and I’m scared. How can I write about something I don’t exactly know what it is? And in less than 10 days, I have to produce not one but two papers.

And can I just say how mad I am about these papers things? I haven’t got into one conference or journal this year (or in the past two years for what it matters) and during my therapy sessions it became pretty clear it was because I didn’t try it enough. 

I have been focusing on everything but my academic life lately because it makes me wanna cry. I don’t wanna give up because I know this is what I want, but why does it have to be so awful? My therapist keeps telling me how life is supposed to be shitshow and the earlier we learn the easier it gets but honestly, it just makes me want to give up grad school and living in society and running to the middle of mountains to live with a pack of wolves and if they end up feeding off me at least I know my lack of publishing has nothing to do with it. 

#grad school #graduate school #grad student #graduate student #gradblr

[debsdoesntknow]

Studying from scientific papers

In many fields of study you’re going to encounter scientific papers at one point in your academic career. The following tips are taken from my six years of reading psychology papers.

Empirical articles

Empirical articles are reports of studies that involved some type of data to draw conclusions. Examples of this are (quasi-)experiments, epidemiological studies, intervention studies, observation studies. These papers typically consists of four sections.

Introduction: background, literature overview, leading up to research questions and hypotheses. Sometimes, the authors give a 2-3 sentence summary of how they addressed these questions in the current study as well.

Methods: detailed report of what the authors did to address their research questions

Results: detailed report of the findings, with no interpretation. Typically filled with numbers and statistical analyses

Conclusions: after a brief summary (usually), the authors draw conclusions based on results, answer the research questions, link it to existing literature, comment on the studies’ strengths and limitations, give pointers for future research, and mention implications

In a well-written paper, the introduction and discussion can be read without reading the middle part and give you a good grasp of what the study is about. This is not to say the middle part is not important, but in some cases you just don’t have the time to go through the analyses before an exam.

Some empirical studies consists of several sub-studies (usually in purely experimental research. In my field of psychology this is usually by social or cognitive psychologists). Apart from a general introduction and a general discussion, the set-up of each individual experiment is the same as mentioned above.

Before you start, ask yourself “what do I want to get out of this article?”

Are you studying for an exam?

Know what kind of questions to expect. Ask for practice exam question if possible. This will be help you focus on what is important

Generally, understand why the study is important/what it added to our knowlegde, how the questions were addressed, type of measurements used, conclusions, limitations

Think about the paper, too, rather than just trying to memorise it. What did you think about it? What would you do differently? What did the authors improve? These kinds of questions might show up on the exam

Don’t study papers in isolution. See if you can explain certain findings in one paper with a model posited in another paper, for example. Or try to think of what one author would say about someone else’s methods

If you’re running out of time or energy, read only the introduction and the discussion. Although the methods and results are also important to get an idea of how reliable and good the study was, the main ideas and findings will be in the intro and discussion

Are you writing an argumentative essay?

Keep the topic of your essay in mind and focus on that

You’ll be tempted to only look for papers that provide evidence for your thesis, but try not to discard counter-evidence. How can you explain contradictory findings? There should be nuance

Are you writing a (bigger) research paper (e.g., your thesis)

When you’re working on a bigger project it’s useful to summarise all relevant papers in a table (I like to use Microsoft Excel). List the articles in rows and their properties in the columns (e.g. author names, year, journal, hypotheses, basic theories, N, sample characteristics, measurements used, findings)

If you prefer, you can also do it on paper and combine it in a folder. However, I prefer the flexibility of a digital file, because I often go back and change or add things once I get a better understanding of a certain paper.

I created two examples (one, two). These are taken/based on paper overviews I made for an essay and my master’s thesis. (I only left a couple of papers, but you’ll typically end up with way more articles of course!)

In the beginning phase, you want to focus on the introduction (to get an idea of what has been done in this field) and the discussions (where are the gaps), but later on you’ll move on to methods (what did they do and how it can be repeated/done better). Mark the papers that you like the best! They will guide your process to coming up with your own research questions, but also help you in a later phase when you don’t know how to structure a certain section

Literature reviews

Reviews are papers that combine the knowledge we gained from previous studies that have been published. The great thing about these papers is that they kind of read like a text book! They are structured into sections and you are spared the trouble of reading and summarising all these papers yourself! However, there is no way to know how the authors worked on the paper, as it’s not systematic. Sometimes authors do wish to make a certain point and only discuss certain points. I would say review articles are an especially great starting point if you’re interested in a topic that you’re fairly new to and want to quickly learn about. Systematic reviews

If you’re looking for a more thorough type of review, there’s the systematic review. It’s relatively rare, but I love these babies. Someone (a team, probably) has gone through the effort of systematically going through all the papers published on a certain topic that meet certain criteria, read them, and organised all these findings into a paper that reads a bit like a mix between a text book and an empirical paper.

Meta-analyses

If you want to take the rigour even further, you’ve got yourself a meta-analysis. These authors are the real MVPs. In psychology, there is a huge replication crisis (with many “groundbreaking” studies failing to deliver the same results in replication studies) as well as a publication bias (it’s far easier to get published when you have interesting or unusual results). Meta-analyses help these issues a bit (does the field need a reform? Yes. Will I discuss that here? No). In meta-analyses, the authors systematically go through databases looking for papers that meet certain criteria (like in systematic reviews, but instead of just listing and organising previous results, and basing their conclusions of the authors’ conclusions (basically), they re-analyse the research question using the statistics from many papers studying roughly the same thing. The advantage is that you have a much larger sample, different measures may be used (reducing the risk of instrument-specific findings), and there is an estimate of what the effect size would be if there were no publication bias. Not always easy to read, definitely not easy to write, but they are helpful for the field.

Case studies

Case studies describe a very low number of observations, common mostly in medicine. These are usually exploratory bases for more experimental research and should be treated as such. Studying these papers can be useful to get a good idea of a certain condition, especially if it is a very uncommon condition. Case studies are often used in introductory courses, because they tell a gripping tale of a real person; they are intriguing. However, it’s risky to draw conclusions from them.

[debsdoesntknow]

why am I having anxiety over an academic honors prize that won’t come out for till the end of the year and which I have no control over because everyone already submitted it and probably won’t affect my cv at all

#its like i want that shit just to get it #to be like shit i won im a honors student #and theres a huge chance i wont get it

[debsdoesntknow]

may you get a sign this week that shows you that you’re on the right path and that things are flowing and moving in your favor. may the sign be evident, clear, and direct

[debsdoesntknow]

10 Things I Tell Myself When I Don’t Want To Study

1. You are very lucky and privileged to have access to almost unlimited knowledge and you should appreciate that.

2. Be one of those rare people who step over their insecurities and succeed.

3. You will know what to do as soon as you start. Ideas never appear from inactivity.

4. Make yourself proud.

5. It’s not supposed to be easy. Nothing good ever is.

6. One hour every day doesn’t feel much but its 365 hours a year. You can’t not succeed after so much work.

7. If you give up now, you’ll have to return to this later anyway but from the very beginning.

8. Maybe you think you can never find something to use your skills and mindset for. But if you continue investing in what matters to you, it will find its way out there.

9. Every moment you thought your fears would suppress you has become the time you made it. 

10. Make yourself proud.