wasAs a PhD student, and unfortunately just in general, I am often mired by impostor syndrome (see my post on love-hate relationships with progress reviews). This is one reason why dry runs of presentations and peer review in general is incredibly beneficial for me. As someone who recently received her first set of feedback from reviewers on a possible publication, I can attest to how harsh professional reviews can be. In many ways, those types of reviews make impostor syndrome worse because reviewers don't actually have to be constructive in their criticisms. They just have to indicate whether they think the piece is worthy of being published. Now some reviewers do take the time to make their comments constructive, but there are others who don't. Sometimes, reviewers take the anonymity and use it as a tool to just tear down a work without worrying about the chance for an argument. After all, it is the author that has to defend their work, not the reviewer their comments. But I digress. The pipeline of official publication can be fraught with situations that can make a researcher doubt themselves, but before that pipeline is reached there is a great deal of opportunity for peer review and dry runs which can help combat impostor syndrome inspired by the official pipeline.
An example of this that I benefited from recently is a dry run of the lightning talk presentation I was set to deliver at the Forced Migration and Ethical Research workshop at iConference 2020.* Despite my propensity to volunteer to speak, I do not enjoy public speaking. While I am not paralyzed by stage fright, I am very nervous when speaking in front of people in a professional manner. For this reason, the more practice I can get the better off I am when presenting, and my colleagues at the Centre for Social Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University were very helpful in giving me both practice and constructive criticism. In our weekly research group meeting there are routinely papers to be read before being submitted for publication, or presentations to be practiced. For the papers, members of the research group will volunteer to be peer reviewers, reading the papers and giving constructive feedback to the authors. For the presentations, the research group will reserve an appropriate room on campus and the first half of the weekly meeting will be dedicated to the presentation. Each "audience member" will receive a little sheet where they anonymously mark what they think the presenter does well, what they think the presenter can work on when they present in general, and three suggestions for the final presentation. These three suggestions can cover content, format, or presentation demeanor. The point of these anonymous cards is so that the presenter can get constructive feedback on their presentation without necessarily giving more weight to the advice of someone whose opinion they care about most. This form of practice was incredibly helpful for me, as I could see those things that I did well when presenting (apparently I didn't seem nervous) and those things I could work on (not sounding rehearsed) as well as what I want to address for the final presentation (e.g., adjusting font size to fill the white space slightly more). The constructiveness of the feedback is what's important in this instance. The purpose is not to say "That was great" or "That was terrible." The purpose is to acknowledge what is done well and what could be done better. This is an aspect that is often lost one the day of presentation when the purpose is to get a question answered that wasn't clear in the presentation. In the same way, reviewers of submissions may focus on the things that could be better/should be changed/"are wrong" because their purpose is to determine whether they think a submission is worthy of being published, not how to make that submission worthy of being published. This is why dry runs and peer reviews before a submission/presentation are so important. These dry runs and peer reviews help researchers hear the good things about their work as well as give them something to improve, thereby fighting both impostor syndrome and arrogance. I am very grateful for the feedback I've received on both paper submissions and my dry run presentation, as they will help me continue to improve my research/writing skills. Happy Reading! *Please note that this workshop has been canceled due to Covid-19 issues. The iConference 2020 is running virtually but I will no longer be presenting.
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Performance reviews are something that most organizations require staff to complete. The timing of these reviews can vary. Some organizations have the reviews once a year, some twice a year, and some have them every three months. In my previous degrees the closest I came to performance reviews were the annual meetings with an academic adviser to discuss my course schedule. And I only ever went to two of those meetings. In my working life I had performance reviews once a year at each of the organisations I worked for, though the most recent organisation was moving towards a quarterly review process when I left. Both organisations required me to fill out a self-evaluation before the performance review and I hated it. Now that I'm in my PhD, the performance review is once again rearing its head and I'm dreading the meeting.
I appreciate the importance of a performance review, and the self-assessment that usually accompanies one. I think both are important to making sure that the employee isn't struggling and that the appropriate work is being completed. I'm usually quite happy with the results of performance review meetings as they allow me to express my needs as an employee without feeling like I'm doing so inappropriately. After all, one aspect of the performance review is to ensure employee needs are being met (or at least this has been an aspect of all the performance reviews I have attended in the past). It is the documentation leading up to the performance review that I dread. Despite being a self-professed writer, I don't enjoy writing self-reflective pieces that are going to be evaluated by other people. If I want to be self-reflective I do so in my personal journal or hide it under the guise of fictional characters, so writing a document detailing everything that I've done over a set period of time and how I feel about it is difficult for me. This is not to say that I don't think the self-reflective aspect of the performance review is bad. It often is a good way to combat my guilt of not doing enough because it shows me exactly how much I have completed over a set period of time. There are times when it doesn't assuage the guilt because for one reason or another I haven't made much progress, but in general it helps me see that even if my tasks have been different than those I maybe should have been focusing on, I have done a lot. It isn't the results of self-assessments that I don't like. It isn't the purpose of writing them. It is the actual writing of them. l have been taught my whole life not to "toot your own horn", which can be detrimental when trying to write a self-assessment. I tend to be unsure of the balance between being vain/arrogant and stating my accomplishments. For my past self-assessments as an employee, I was never sure how much of my daily tasks to include. After all, if a task is listed in my job description isn't it assumed that it is being done as long as there are no complaints against me? Do I need to include it? If I don't include it is it assumed that it wasn't done? If I do include it will it seem like I'm "padding" the l to make myself seem more productive than I am? Some of you may look at the above questions and say that merely by having that response it indicates that I'm probably on the right track and my supervisors will take that into account when they write up the documents for HR. But that doesn't actually address the issues I have with the writing of self-assessments. I tend to freeze and second guess myself. And in terms of the most recent self-assessment I wrote for my upcoming PhD performance review, I was second-guessing myself all over the place (how I was writing it, whether I had included unnecessary information, how I could not include that information and still make it to the appropriate length, etc.). The point is not whether or not I'm capable of doing a job/PhD and able to show my capability in a performance review. It is that I feel incredibly anxious every time I have to write a self-assessment or have a performance review meeting. And I don't think I'm alone in that feeling. Which brings us back to the title of this post: a love-hate relationship. I fully acknowledge the importance of performance reviews and self-assessment. I think they do a lot of good. But I have a very hard time going through these reviews myself and so have complicated feelings on the topic. That being said, one thing that has helped me a bit is to re-frame how I think of these reviews. I try to remind myself that the self-assessment is a socially acceptable medium for "tooting your own horn". Your supervisor (whether in a PhD or in the workplace) probably already has an idea of whether you do good work. The self-assessment is there so you can remind your supervisor and yourself what you do above and beyond the good work already inherent in your job description. And it never hurts to remind them of the daily tasks that are actually in your job description. This isn't a perfect solution for me. I still get anxiety about these documents and meetings. But it does help a bit, and I have hopes that continually reminding myself of this fact will gradually decrease my overall anxiety surrounding performance reviews. Happy Reading! Did you know that depending on where you are in the world, the final written product of a PhD is called something different? For example, in the UK a thesis is the final written product of a PhD but in the U.S. a dissertation is the final product. Now, this isn't really a big issue until you take into account that undergraduate and masters degrees can also involve some sort of finished product. Depending on the field, they might be called capstone projects or theses/dissertations. In the U.S., a thesis is the final product of a masters degree and sometimes an undergraduate degree. In the UK, it's a dissertation. So if you ever study internationally, make note of what that final project is actually called because otherwise confusion ensues. Now, on to the bit that pertains to the title of this blog post.
When a person thinks about a PhD the final product, be it called a thesis or a dissertation, seems to be what the degree is all about. After all, it's a published book that you have to defend in front of colleagues who are knowledgeable in the field. You've devoted at least three years to the research involved and you've had to do all of this while under pressure of tuition and living costs (yes, even if you're degree is fully funded those issues exist). The final product is no small thing. But it isn't the only thing. What is sometimes forgotten when a person embarks on a PhD is what they are going to do after they finish. Are they going into academia? Industry? Both? Do they want to be an independent researcher? Be tied to a specific organization? Travel the world in a burnt-out haze wondering why they completed the degree in the first place? That last one may not be a want, though it's definitely a possibility. Regardless of your plans, they will probably involve having more experience than just completing empirical research and writing about it. Which brings me back to my title. Your PhD is going to involve a lot more than just reading the literature, completing the research project, and writing the thesis/dissertation. You'll probably be drafted as a student helper for events your university department hosts (this is quite enjoyable but can take time out of your PhD process), attending conferences, teaching courses, going to meetings, going to trainings, etc. Your PhD is a massive undertaking of which the research, write-up, and defense is a relatively small part. Now, that doesn't mean that the physical product of the PhD isn't important. You still need it in order to say you've earned a PhD. But it is also important to realize that you won't be able to spend all your time in the office reading/experimenting/writing. And in fact you don't want to. When you're trying to make progress on the project it can sometimes be frustrating to be "derailed" by other things that don't seem to be your PhD, but those other things are going to allow you to make connections within your chosen field and have a better chance of employment after you receive your degree. A PhD is not just a thesis/dissertation, it's a lot more. And that's a good thing. So embrace the things that take you away from the final product even while thinking about how they will help inform it. After all, we all need a break from reading literature and writing academically sometimes. Happy Reading! Yes, I know it's a bit late, but I actually have a pretty good reason. And that reason is three letters and the whole rationale for a second blog page on my website: PhD. Also, yes, I do expect you to hum the tune of the song as you read the title.
Now, the bulk of the work of my PhD has started, which means reading is my predominant job these days. The literature review could be considered the most important part of a research degree, because without a good literature review, the research can be torn apart before it even begins. Literature reviews aren't just to show readers that the research did his/her research (I feel like that's some sort of important literary device but I can't decide which one it is). Rather, literature reviews help provide the foundation for any set of empirical research. The literature review tells a researcher if something has been done before, if there are any gaps in the field that need to be filled, and if there are any research techniques that can be re-used in the current study. In short, without a literature review a researcher is operating with hands and feet tied, and is blindfolded to boot. So right now I'm in literature review mode. Sort of. I mean, I'm taking time out to write this post but overall I'd say my life is in literature review mode. I'm reading articles, books, and conference agendas to determine what research has already happened in my area and whether my current proposal can hold water. Not only am I reading, I'm critiquing. In research, if there's a critique it means there's a chance to rework the methods and try again. Now in the more physical sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) this might be as simple as changing a basic variable and seeing what happens. In the more social sciences, that can be difficult because there is no ethical way to say "alright, we're changing this variable of socio-economic status, so that one person who was getting by needs to lose all their money and sink into poverty." Not only is that unethical, it's also not something a researcher can control. As such, reworking methods, or even just repeating the exact same methods as before, can be very complicated (this is not to say that it cannot be incredibly complicated in the physical sciences as well, just that the ability to change a single variable is almost never possible). Hence, the literature review. So while I am deep in the throes of reviewing literature to make sure my proposal is both doable and hasn't been done before, blog posts might come more or less frequently. It all depends on how the reading is going and whether I need a break or not. Hopefully, things will just stay right on schedule in all aspects of my life. But that's sort of a dream and we'll see where reality takes me. Happy reading! |
A Second Blog Page?This is the part of the blog specifically about my PhD. It will include updates, musings, and advice. Archives
August 2022
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