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Writing Your Own Schedule

By Emily  It’s 5:50am and I’m sitting at my home office (a desk jammed between the bed and wall in our spare room, complete with tenacious, lap-seeking cat) ready to start the writing day. How did I get into this horrendous situation? I am four months into my PhD....

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Making the hidden visible – with a little help from my friends

By Karina Judd When I applied to do a PhD in October 2019, and was accepted to start in mid-2020, I had some ideas of what that experience would look like. None of those ideas involved two years of a global pandemic and months of working from home in...

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Nearly halfway through already!!

AcWriMo is already near the mid-point. The register is filling up nicely as you record all the words and editing you have produced so far. Those theses will soon be ready for submission… I’ve had a few conversations recently that remind me how some people have really great ways...

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One week in to AcWriMo

Hello fellow writers! One week into AcWriMo and lots of you are powering along. It’s great to see the numbers adding up. Lots of you have had all sorts of other responsibilities and interruptions outside of your research, so I’m particularly impressed that you’ve also managed to commit energy...

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Starting AcWriMo

It’s great to see the register starting to be populated with your word counts and hours. Well done for simply sitting down and DOING some writing! I find it motivating to think that there are lots of busy writers out there keeping me company. I’d love to hear how...

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Day 5: Are your beginning and ending close enough? Examination and the PhD

The Introduction and Conclusion that bracket your thesis need to match closely. These sections play a key role in unifying the project (this becomes even more important if you are writing a thesis by compilation – these are the crucial moments in which to demonstrate that your PhD is...

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Day 4: Is your thesis original enough? Examination and the PhD

A key criterion for awarding the PhD is that the work is ‘original’. But what exactly does this mean? Presumably your TRP (or other process confirming that your project is suitable for the degree) included an assessment of whether your project was likely to meet the examination criteria. For...

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Day 3: Is your thesis story clear enough? Examination and the PhD

Story in the Table of Contents One of the first things an examiner will read (after they’ve seen your abstract and made the decision to take on the task of examining your thesis) is the Table of Contents. This is an important tool to help them navigate your work...

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Day 2: Is your thesis big enough? Examination and the PhD

As we saw yesterday, the criteria for what constitutes a PhD at ANU is actually pretty vague, especially when compared with the assessment criteria or rubrics you may be accustomed to in undergraduate or coursework Masters degrees. The examination criteria that a PhD must make a ‘substantial contribution’ to...

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Day 1: Is your thesis good enough? Examination and the PhD

Welcome to the first post for our new mini-course, ‘Is your thesis good enough?’. This Pomodoro Break is designed to give you short, targeted information while you are having a coffee break. Each day this week we will explore topics related to the final document you submit for examination,...