Get to know the working environment that is best for you!

Being able to enter that zone of uninterrupted productivity whilst writing your thesis, research paper, conference paper, upgrade reports, or any other thought provoking document, is something that every post graduate researcher and indeed every learner should strive to achieve. When ideas start flowing this needs to be continued for as long as is necessary, and this shall be different for every person and for every idea formulation process. I have spent long periods of time during the Ph.D so far and before the Ph.D writing ideas on paper as they come to me either through reading research papers and having ideas formed whilst reading, or through ideas forming whilst actually writing ideas. Ideas can produce other ideas, and when these start free flowing there is that need of time and space to write all these ideas down and really develop them as best as is possible at that particular time

Question is: where can you be at your most productive? Inside, outside, or both?

The Warwick blog post “How to create 'head space' for writing” is an excellent recent blog post, and whilst the focus is on Ph.D post graduates I believe that it applies to any level of education that involves learning methods that are beyond what occurs in the classroom. As the author of the blog post states, there are limitless places where learning can occur and therefore where post graduates and other learners can work. The trick is to find what is suitable for your own style of learning and your own personality and general way of working. I prefer peace and quiet, and at the moment the majority of my work is done at home but during the times of really intense writing or intense idea development I prefer somewhere even quieter than that such as a quiet area in a library. But sometimes, I prefer simply going out into the countryside.

Even the other day, it really mattered that I went out. Whilst I was out I came up with a strategy for tackling the literature, a strategy for managing and analysing variables that would be of most important interest to investigate in the research that then led onto uses of different software that would assist in variable management, and then I contemplated the direction of the research environment. It almost felt like all the independent ideas that I have been thinking about during the past few months had come together into a single whole and the process revealed itself to me in a way that might have taken longer if I were at home at that particular time.

So, make sure that you get to know where you can work best because there are people who try to work in an unsuitable environment and they don’t even realise which environment is best for them. Get to know yourself, and get to know the environment that works best with what you know about yourself. It is worth the effort!

Alex Darracott : 24 Nov 2014 20:41 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Ph.D thesis and creativity: some initial considerations

There is little doubt that many PhD learners have been pouring over many, many guides giving advice on the way to set up a PhD thesis and the way that they should present their PhD thesis. All of the guides online that I have come across have obviously been very useful, but they have something in common: they have not at all touched on the creativity that is involved when writing a PhD thesis. But what is creativity? What is the process of being creative? Is it a behavioural measure? Is it a particular type of thinking? Is it a cognitive state? Is it a mental state? No doubt my conception of what it means to be creative on a PhD will perhaps change during the PhD, but let’s have a little exploration in this initial post on creativity exactly what it means to be creative with the thesis.

It’s important, and probably figured out, by now that there is a definite structure to the PhD thesis. There is the background / introduction chapter, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, and then an assortment of different appendices. Within each chapter there will be sub chapters and various headings flying about the place. Some people who are not academic writers have dismissed this approach as suppressing creativity; that too much structure and the language used does not promote creativity. But really, there is an element of creativity, and perhaps at the moment at least initially, this could be called controlled creativity, not supressed creativity: the structure of the thesis allows for your creativity to shine, but in a controlled, structured way. I’ll explain this further.

I do view the PhD thesis so far as creative, simply because of this: this is your research, this is your chance to explore the areas that you want in various creative ways, this is your chance to communicate creatively with the technology that you have, this is your chance to use technology creatively to assist you with your objectives, this is your chance to communicate using academic language creatively to effectively, and creatively, communicate your research ideas and findings to the academic and wider community.

You can be creative in terms of the research areas you want to explore. Investigating research literature can be very creative even though you are following a process of literature investigation. From investigating the literature you can select and design your methodology creatively. You can use and present the data that you have collected and analysed creatively. You can explore and discuss research results in creative relevant to the research questions and hypotheses, which themselves have had an element of creativity in their design and development.

As can be imagined I do believe that there are many ways in which any PhD learner can be creative in their research from research conception, through analysing existing literature, through designing research questions and hypotheses, through designing and implementing methodologies, through analysing collected data, and through discussing and disseminating research findings.

This is an area that I shall be discussing a fair bit on here as I travel through this long and winding journey of post graduate research. Till the next creative related posting, keep creative, creatively!

Alex Darracott : 20 Oct 2014 21:39 |  Tags: Creativity Dissertation PhD Thesis |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

My first blog post!

This is all a bit exciting isn't it? My first blog post on my Warwick University blog!

It's been a bit of a journey getting to the point where I'm now officially a PhD post graduate at Warwick University, with confirmation taking place as soon as I collected my University I.D card! I've learnt a lot already during latter part of the previous year and the earlier part of this year when I was exploring different Universities and producing different research proposals for Universities. I actually appreciated the diversity that each University provided in terms of word counts and level of explanations within each research proposal, because this further trained myself in communicating my research within any word count limit and according to the needs of the audience. Some people might suggest that it's a lot of extra work sending off proposals to multiple Universities, but there are many benefits coming from this and I'm sure that in time I shall be discussing these further on this blog.

What is this blog about? I'm going to use this blog to detail my experiences as a part time PhD researcher who is living many miles away from the main campus, and also my experiences of setting up a freelance writing business and balancing all the work that comes with owning a business and participating in a part time PhD. I shall also be using this to reflect upon my personal and professional development in conjunction with the evidence provided as part of my Warwick Portfolio.

This blog therefore shall compliment another personal blog that I'm working on. Whereas this blog shall discuss my research from the perspective of research training, professional development, personal development, various reflections, and so on, my other blog shall delve into research areas relating to the PhD and discuss these research areas from a general perspective.

Hoping you enjoy it!

Alex Darracott : 05 Oct 2014 15:30 |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem