Conferencing for beginners

The coming few weeks there's a shed load of free (!) workshops for postgrads at my uni, so obviously I've enrolled in a few. Nothing as good as free education. I am a firm believer in free education for everyone, because education is the best way to enable people to make their own choices in life, but let's not get off on a tangent here. Conferencing was the topic of the day. As an academic you are expected to go to conferences, preferably 'giving papers' (which is academic jargon for 'doing a presentation' or 'public speaking about your work'), hence as a postgrad you have to work your way into the conferencing business. Good for networking, getting feedback from peers on your research and, not to be forgotten, having fun. The conference flyers all mention gala dinners and excursions to wineries etc. That would obviously be meant for networking, won't it?

Anyway, the workshop lady was an experienced conferencer and gave us some nice tips. Such as to be aware that the deadline for abstracts (of papers you might like to present) is mostly 6 months before the actual conference. This means you have to plan ahead and keep an eye out for 'calls for papers'. It also made me realise I'm very lucky, because I get additional money to spend on attending conferences, which is not the usual way apparently. Now I just have to find some useful ones in my area, which should be 'traffic psychology'. Unfortunately the traffic psychologists are very busy, so for this year I haven't found any conferences yet. But I'll keep looking, even if I have no clue of what to present, if anything. Being a participant would suit me fine for now.

The only thing from this workshop I totally disagree with is the tip to READ your paper instead of presenting it! As a journalist I have attended many conferences on a diversity of topics and the people reading their stuff are the most boring EVER. Participants actually fall asleep during some of these 'presentations', especially after lunch. Why? Because reading aloud is a very tricky thing to do, you tend to go too fast, use a monotonous voice and lose contact with the audience completely. So my tip is: do NOT read your paper. Practice you presentation until you know what you're talking about. Realise the earth won't shake if you forget to say something. Then just go out there and talk. Engage yourself with the audience. And HAVE FUN!

Supervisors

You cannot do a postgrad degree without having a supervisor. A supervisor has to be a superwoman/man, because they have to be knowledgable on your subject (preferably the most knowledgable), they need to be nice (or you might kill them before you finish your degree, which will result in huge delays), they must have time (or they won't ever get to reading your stuff until it is too late) and finally, they must be willing to supervise you (which mostly doesn't earn them anything extra, but is very time demanding nevertheless). In short: lots of wannabe-postgrads are desparately seeking a supervisor. I see the emails come in with different proposals, send out to all staff, hoping to find one.

I was lucky, I found the supervisor first (and he is all that) and he even agreed to take me on as a student, before I put in the proposal. So what more could I want? Well, first of all I would like to be not so intimidated by this lovely, non-threatening, friendly person. Somehow I feel like a first year undergrad, afraid to show him anything I've written or tell him anything I thought off, or ask questions (ouch!). I really want to make an impression of being smart and this makes me cautious to a ridiculous level, for fear of looking too stupid for the job. This person is there to help me, for goodness sake! The only positive effect is that I can relate better to my own students, who are first year undergrads. Sometimes they get terrified by me, now I know why.

Secondly, I need a little bit more direction every now and then. Sometimes I leave a meeting with 10 new questions instead of 2 answers on the questions I came in with. Solving the first problem will probably positively affect the second. Last week I actually had a meeting which gave me an answer, which yesterday made a quarter fall in my brain. Eureka! I've got a starting point, hurray!!

Organising

I'm still wandering through the labyrinth in a slightly dazed state. In a feable attempt to actually get started on my thesis, I spend today organising my stacks of useful peer reviewed (peer pressure is supposed to be strongest during your teens, ha!) articles.

This was not as easy as it seems. Although it is relatively easy to put paper in manilla folders (have you ever tried to remove the 'easy glide' tabs, get the tiny insert out, put it back in and then put the tab back on the folder????), you have to decide on which keywords are suitable as labels. And then decide on the articles that address more than one keyword. This last thing occurs quite often, which is in itself a good thing: it gives the impression the articles all have something to do with your topic of investigation.

I also tried to create some kind of guide for my research, which resulted in a totally confusing mind map. Sigh. I think I'm going to watch the Melbourne Open now. At least I'll know what I'm doing.

School saver

The uni is only a 15 minute bus ride from my home, so that is quite handy. It would be even nicer if the bus frequency was a little higher than one per hour, but hey, you can't have everything. Since I officially became a student, complete with student card-with-ugly-photo to prove it, I can use a school saver 10 rides card for the bus. Yes, the same card the kids use to get to school. It still feels a bit funny to use a children's card, but so far no bus driver ever asked to see my student card. I guess there are so many adult students in Oz, that they can't be bothered to check it. Today I needed a new one and I went to the uni shop to buy it. However, the helpful person behind the counter advised me that the card is actually not valid during the school holidays. Oops. I had just used it to get to uni and luckily wasn't caught. For a second I felt silly, then I realised that this information was nowhere to be found: not on the bus, not on the website, nor did the driver say anything. Apparently this is common knowledge, or so they think. If they are thinking at all. Stuff the students that are taking summer school. Anyway, way back when I did all communication for a public transport company in Europe, this obviously would never have happened. And I got to ride busses for free then. ;-)

Library

A big thing in academic life is the library. This might sound funny in this day and age where you can find 'virtually' anything on the internet, but it is still true. When I did my Masters in Linguistics, many many years ago children, computers were just entering the uni, but definitely not available for students. And nobody heard of a thing called internet. Studying meant spending long hours in a library (you know, the place where all the books are?) reading through journals, books, other peoples' theses, and writing notes on little cards. This is not how it works today. For starters, the library has lots of computers for students to use. Most of its journals are available in digital form, accessible through inter/intranet. Which leads to the funny situation of students surrounded by walls of books and journals, reading everything on their screen. It is a bit like commuters cramped together in a train, all talking or texting on their mobiles to someone not present. Weird!

The upside of this is of course that you can access everything from your home. Which is what I did yesterday, when I finally got myself to do something resembling studying. As was to be expected (on whatever day you start your diet, someone will celebrate their birthday with cake), I got stuck. I got the references, but I could not get to the actual articles, because the program did not accept my student number and password. Luckily our uni library has the best librarians, who are not only knowledgeable, but also friendly, which is an admirable combination. So after we spend half an hour on the phone not being able to solve the problem, the librarian emailed me the articles (this is where the friendly part is very important).

After I hung up, I suddenly found some info on the website I had never seen before in the 2 years I'm working at the uni. Something about a uni certificate ... Which I downloaded. Which solved the problem. Bingo! I felt very much like when I have been looking for something in, say, the supermarket and the moment I recruit a shop attendant to help me out, the thing I was searching for suddenly pops into view, the very moment I'm asking the question. Know the feeling?

Room without view

Good start of my new status as a postgrad instead of lecturer: I lost my room today. Boohoo! Even if it did not have a view, other than the photo's I put up, it was a handy space to leave stuff lying around and I had my own computer. Back to dragging everything around in my backpack, as students do. Being a student sucks!

Procrastinating

All of a sudden, well, to be truthfull after 6 weeks of frantic work and another 6 weeks of nailbiting, I was the proud receiver of a research grant. The first step on my way to a Masters by research/PhD, so I can be a real academic and not just a uni lecturer and tutor, as I am now. On contracts anyway. With the grant, massive amounts of stress came into my life as a free bonus. First of all, there is an amazing amount of bureaucracy attached to academic life, which makes me think it is all a trick to be learned: the content of your research matters less than adhering to all the milestones, rules and prescribed ways of doing things. (I do hope this is not true though.)

Secondly, now I've finally got my foot-in-the-door with the uni, I have to say 'no' to all offers of employment, because the grant requires fulltime study. A luxury problem, but still a bit daunting. In order to be able to continue what I love doing (teaching), I have to stop doing what I love doing for the next years. I tried teaching and studying together the past semester, but combining being a unit convener doing 2 lectures a week and fulltime study does not agree with me. Unfortunately I'm one of these people who gets stressed, depressed and burnt out easily, due to my overly responsible and perfectionistic nature.

The perfectionism and responsibility thing does not help in reducing stress by the way. I feel obliged to the grant suppliers to succeed and I want to do a good job with it too. I did quit a good job last semester, which is probably why I still have to recover from it, passing the IELTS academic with 8.5 and getting an HD and an Di in my research units. However, now the 'real' thesis is starting and I'm dreading to start with my literature review. 20.000 words are required and I haven't written anymore than 3.000 so far (for the review that has to go in your research proposal). That's why I'm lost already/again. And why I am procrastinating (love that word) by starting up a new blog on my research adventure. Well, that is done. The first post is a fact, and don't we researchers love facts. Actually, I discovered I'm more inclined to do qualitative research, but my topic requires quite some quants. But ... okay, STOP WRITING. Get to work. NOW!