Friday 30 June 2017

Working from home: what I make of it

Photograph: Connor Brook 


I’m a distance student (a separate post will be coming on this at some point), which means that I often find myself working at home most days. A lot of people think that having the opportunity to work from home every day is ‘luxurious’ and ‘freeing’ which, to some extent, is true. To outsiders, I’m not surrounded by colleague’s meaning that I don’t get interrupted by people talking when I’m trying to work. I also have the freedom to choose my own working hours and the flexibility to go out for a coffee or lunch whenever I want. I can even choose to work from the comfort of my own bed if I feel like it, although that's not something I actually do. 

There are definitely perks to the ‘working from home’ lifestyle, but if I could choose to wake up and go to an office on a regular basis, would I? 100% yes! In fact, I’m super envious of those that do work in an office and I actually view that as a ‘luxury’. After all, when you spend most days of the week on your own throughout the day, with literally zero human contact, it can all get a little too much. I feel like going to an office and being around people in your work day is so much healthier than being trapped inside on your own. At least when you’re in an environment with people in the same/similar situation as you, you can talk to each other about a particular problem or ask each other for encouragement/help, and just generally chit-chat on a break. When you’re on your own every day in your working environment, all of the challenges you face or general thoughts that arise are just kept to yourself, bottled up. Don’t get me wrong, some days I really appreciate that I’m alone whilst working on some of the things that I need full concentration on. But I can’t help but question if 1) being away from my institution and my academic network, coupled with 2) having only my home as my ‘office’ and my own company in the day, is healthy?

I’m not going to lie, I’ve found this lifestyle difficult to adapt to. I’m still trying to learn how to make the situation better for myself, but I still think I have a lot of figuring out to do. But here are a few tips that may be useful to some of you that are in a similar situation as me:


 Accept the bad days

The academic route, as I’ve said time and time again on this blog, can be a truly isolating journey. Fact. Especially when you’re in a situation where you have no choice but to live away from your university institution, like me.

Some days can just get a bit much, as there’s only so much isolation a person can take in each day. Therefore, when you’re feeling a bit negative about the situation, accept it and don’t feel bad for letting yourself feel a bit shit about it. Yes, you’ve chosen to go down the PhD/ research MA route, but it doesn’t mean that some days you won’t feel naturally rubbish about the isolating nature of it. Just make sure that you pick yourself up after a bad day, and focus on the job that needs to be done, and bring the positives back into your mindset.


Escape from your home temporarily

I know first-hand how much of a negative impact being in one place for an extended amount of time can have on both your health and productivity. I’ve definitely felt signs of cabin fever on my academic journey so far. I’m really trying my absolute hardest to, whenever I can, get out of my house and work somewhere else where there is people around. Even though I find it sometimes really hard to work in a coffee shop because of how loud it can get, I’m starting to make the effort to go there to work anyway because I find that when I work from home most days, it can start to make me feel really unproductive and restless anyway!

Push yourself to go out and work, even if working from home can sometimes seem the most easiest thing to do. I’ve found that when I separate myself from being at home all of the time, I feel much happier and more productive.

You don’t necessarily have to escape your home to go and work elsewhere. If you find that you work best when you’re not in such a loud environment, then simply separate yourself from the home environment temporarily by going for a walk, or something that will just get you away from it for a bit. It will make you feel a lot less ‘trapped’. I’ve also tried to go to public seminars relevant to my research at the local university too (I’m from Lancaster University but sometimes go to the University of Leeds events as Leeds is where I live). This has been a good opportunity for me to meet new people in a similar area to mine and learn new things, whilst simultaneously getting away from my usual environment.  I’m yet to find PhD students to connect with, though!!


Make your desk space nice

After all, you’ll be at that same desk a lot! Making the space in which you work nice is so important to keep your motivation and productivity at a maximum.


Commute to your university

Whether you’re a distance student or you live in the same city where your university is, definitely commute to your university when you can. Obviously if you live close to your university then this would be a very easy commute, but to anyone that lives away from your institution, try and travel when you can to your university so you feel re-connected with your academic network.

I’m going to try and make this a more regular thing, as sometimes I still find it to be a hard reality knowing that I’m a distance student. Whenever I go back to campus, I always meet up with as many people as I can, as well as my supervisor, just so I feel re-engaged with those that are in the academic environment – after all, it’s always great to catch up with your academic friends and feel more human again!


Stay connected with people closer to home

Even if you’re not around people in academia on a daily basis – like me, again! – remember that you have people to talk to closer to home, so make sure you keep connected to them and tell them how you feel. I’m lucky that I have a really supportive boyfriend, who is my rock! There will always be someone that you can trust and talk to if you ever feel like the isolating nature of working from home can get a bit much. Keep connected to your friends and family too, even if they don’t live near you anymore, as it will make you feel like you have more frequent human contact than what you actually do on a daily basis.



Based on my own experience, I’ve found that working from home can certainly be trying sometimes, especially because I’m such a social animal; but as with anything, somehow you have to find a way to make things easier for yourself – and there’s always a way to do that so you can feel happier. It’s so important to keep your head above the surface and to try and remain positive, even when the negatives can strike you sometimes. Remember, we have the choice to either focus on the negatives or to focus on the positives.

Let me know if any of you reading this have also struggled with working from home and the isolation aspect, I’d love to hear from you so we can support each other! If you have, what do you do to make the situation better for yourself? Comment below, or if you ever want to message me via Let’s Talk Academia’s Facebook page  to chat, please feel free to – I always love it when you guys get in touch J


Hope this is helpful in some way,


Emily 


Want to connect more? Follow me on Twitter and say hi! :) 
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Thursday 22 June 2017

Working 9 'til 5, What a Way to... Ruin your MA?



Photograph: Connor Brook 

Charlotte completed an undergraduate degree in Theology at Durham University before pursuing a taught MA in Religious Studies at Lancaster University this year. Throughout her MA, Charlotte has maintained a part-time job in a café of one of Britain’s largest retailers. Though at times trying, it has been invaluable in terms of making postgraduate study economically viable and as an added bonus, it has also provided her with a wealth of comical anecdotes to be told in a variety of social situations! It is hoped that the comments and thoughts contained in this post will be helpful for prospective students who are considering attempting to balance postgraduate study with a part-time job. 



Securing funding for Postgraduate study is incredibly difficult. Being unsuccessful in this can be disheartening, but it doesn’t have to spell the end for your dreams of further study.


The government have recently set up a scheme offering up to £10,000 (increasing to £10,280 after 1st August 2017) for postgraduate students embarking on Master’s programmes in the UK. More information on this can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/postgraduate-loan

This is a fantastic opportunity, however it does all have to be paid back in the end. Personally, I didn’t find the idea of adding a whole £10,000 on top of my already exorbitant student debts exactly appealing, so I decided to borrow enough to cover my tuition fees and to earn money for everything else via a part-time job. Now, this was far from an easy decision. Embarking on a full-time MA whilst simultaneously holding up a part-time job was daunting to say the least. However, having managed to balance the two for almost a year now, I feel confident enough to say that it is possible and it need not negatively impact your academic work.

I’ve compiled a list of things that I’ve learnt along the way to hopefully help any prospective students considering attempting the same. 


1.  Search for the right ‘type’ of job for you.

This might seem like an odd place to start and it is tempting to take whatever job you can get – after all, beggars can’t be choosers – but it’s definitely something to consider right from the beginning. I work in a very busy café which means that I come home at the end of the day physically drained. Forcing myself to focus on university work after a day in that environment is sometimes incredibly hard. Luckily for me, I naturally work best in the evening/at night, so I do often manage to make use of this time after work. If this isn’t the case for you, perhaps consider searching for a less physically demanding job, or shifts that allow you to concentrate on your academic commitments at times that suit you.


2.  Balance.

This is also something to consider when searching for a job. Your MA should always be your priority. When applying for jobs make sure that your contracted hours will be manageable and will allow you enough time to dedicate to your course. I work 16 hours a week and find that just about doable, both in terms of how much I earn and the time that it takes up. The amount that you can do will differ for everyone though. Also, don’t be afraid to turn down extra shifts. It’s easy to think that you have to say yes to everything, but don’t. Your MA is your priority.


3.  Be nice to your manager.

A good relationship with your boss is invaluable. They can swap your shifts around if necessary – say you need to go into university to meet a supervisor unexpectedly, or you need to have an extra day working on an essay before a deadline – if they like and trust you, they are more likely to help you.


4.  Be realistic.

It is going to be hard. There will be times where you feel that spending a day at work instead of at the library is a day wasted. There will also be days where you can’t concentrate on your job because you are panicking about the half-written essay due next week. The fact is, you can’t do anything about it whilst you’re working, so stop worrying and enjoy a break from the stress of the academic world! I actually find that when I have unproductive weeks, going out to work and doing something completely different can refresh my motivation so when I get home I can get some serious work done!

Alternatively, if you are stressed about your workload, you can always take some with you to do on your break. I’ve done this every now and then and have found it great for calming fears about not having done enough work. I usually either take a short article to read or printed out essays and edit them whilst eating lunch. Just don’t rely getting loads done here as the staff canteen usually isn’t exactly distraction-free!


5.  Plan-ahead.

This is a tip for anyone embarking on an MA. In fact, it’s a necessary part of completing any degree, but when attempting a Master’s with a job on the side it is imperative. Note down deadlines and work out well ahead of time how you are going to ensure that they are met.

Also, if you end up working in retail be prepared that Christmas holidays will be hell on earth. There will be extra shifts that you’ll be expected to do, more customers to deal with, you’ll likely have essay deadlines due at the end of the holidays (in my case there were 2 and 1 to plan), and in all of that you’ll probably want to actually celebrate Christmas at some point. It can be a struggle, especially when you consider that these are the first essays you will have written at MA level, therefore making them automatically more stressful. Nevertheless, if you plan-ahead, it is definitely possible to ace them.


6.  Take time off.

This ties in with number 5, but be sure to plan in time off. This is so, so important in terms of keeping healthy – both physically and mentally. Mental health issues are so common in academia and given the constant stress, deadlines, competition, impossible workload and the perpetual sense of not having done enough, it’s no wonder. Don’t let your health be compromised just because you wouldn’t let yourself enjoy life every now and then!

On a similar note, book your holidays wisely. My contract had me working weekends. Unfortunately, my essay deadlines always fell on a Monday. I found it so helpful to book time off from work the weekend directly before the deadline. This being said, don’t just book time off to do more university work; you need to live as well!


7.  Don’t take work home with you.

Your job will sometimes be stressful. You might leave feeling angry or frustrated but don’t take it away with you, it will only stop you getting on with your uni work when you get home.


8.  Start early.

If you are going straight into an MA from your undergraduate degree, you will likely have a whole summer before your course begins (and before you are expected to pay any tuition fees). Use this wisely. Yes, enjoy it, relax, and have fun – you’ve earnt it – but also consider working through it (if you have any pre-booked holidays when you begin, most companies will honour them and let you have time off). During summer, you’ll likely have few other commitments, unlike during term time, meaning that you can pick up any and all shifts that come your way. This is great for a) giving yourself a cushion of cash to fall back on should something unexpected crop up later on, and b) getting yourself in your manager’s good books – see point number 3!



*

Before I began my course I searched high and low for advice on completing postgraduate study alongside a part-time job. Unfortunately, I found very little and therefore I began my MA unsure of whether what I was attempting was even possible. Of course, every situation is different and what works for me might not work for everyone, but hopefully this post can help prospective students in some way, even if it is just by proving that it can be done!   
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Thursday 15 June 2017

You never know who might be watching...



Mike Ryder is a PhD student at Lancaster University. His research interests include biopolitics, sovereignty, science fiction and war. He is particularly interested in the intersection between literature and philosophy, and the works of Giorgio Agamben, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault. In today's post, he talks about digital marketing and being cautious about what we publish online as academics. Go and have a look at his (fab) personal website: www.mjryder.net and check out his Facebook page: www.facebook.com/MJRyder.net



In my previous blog I shared some of my personal experiences of academic networking. I’d now like to share some of my other experiences, drawing on my ‘former life’ as a digital marketing professional in higher education.

Blogs revisited

During my time working for Canterbury Christ Church University, I had the pleasure of being involved in working on a number of fairly high profile academic blogs including the Policing blog, and Discursive of Tunbridge Wells (Clinical Psychology) among others. One particularly important lesson for me, was that you never know who might be reading your work online. In one particular case, a colleague actually got invited to publish on the basis of several blogs that she had written and shared online. This then led her to further networking opportunities and a major boost for the department. No small achievement for a small blog cast out into the ether!

I’ve also had similar experiences on a personal level with my own website www.mjryder.net. Back in the early 2000s I had my website added to several student blogrolls, and from this I was contacted by none other than the University of Auckland (NZ) asking if they could use my website as a case study for their students! This taught me a valuable lesson about the power of the internet to reach countless others whom you might never otherwise meet. I’ve never been to New Zealand, and hadn’t even heard of the University of Auckland until they contacted me, but it just goes to show how far reaching your work can potentially be.  

On the basis of this example (and a few others) I was chatting to a member of the Sociology department at CCCU and he asked me if I might like to present to his students. Of course I said yes, and as a result ended up giving two careers lectures to students based on my experiences as a lowly English student seeking to enter the world of work.

While this final example may not be academic as such, it does go to show is that you never know where your activities may lead you. Networking and engagement can never be in vain, as someone somewhere will be affected by your work. 

A word of warning 

But a note of caution. You can’t just produce work and hope that someone somewhere will find it. I have two key rules that I follow when it comes to online publishing:

  • Anything you publish online can be found.
  • Just because you publish something online, doesn't mean it will be found. 


What this means is that anything you do online, for good or for ill, has the potential to come back and haunt you. Having an off day and feel like a rant? Don’t do it! Take a step back and think again! Even deletion won’t necessarily help you as people can take screenshots, and there are internet archives that scour the web and store material from years back.

     The other rule is just as important: don’t assume that just because you throw your work out there, someone will find it. People are busy, and your blog may not necessarily be very well known. Equally, it may be that there are hundreds of other blogs out there on a similar topic, and you might not even make it onto the first few pages of search results.

     If you want to take blogging seriously, it’s important to have a content strategy, and even more important to think about how your work fits in with your wider project of marketing yourself as an academic. 
     
     So if there’s one lesson to take from this blog, please remember this golden rule: your online activities should not exist in isolation. Just because you throw your work out there, doesn’t mean it will get picked up, or reach the audience you intend it for. It’s therefore crucial that you don’t consider your online activities in isolation. When you share a business card, why not also mention your blog / website / social media? Why not even mention them when you present at a conference? Better still, add them to your slides, your business cards, and your email signatures.

    You can also reach others by networking with your intended audience directly via social media, by tweeting relevant publications, groups or individuals. You can also post on blogs, or use guest blogs to help promote your own work. But whatever you do, don’t ‘fire and forget’. There’s a lot of information out there, and without a strategy to your communications, your work is very likely to go un-read. 




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Thursday 8 June 2017

Entering the Academic Job Market: Dr Emma Cole's Perspective


Emma very kindly collaborated with Let's Talk Academia by allowing me to use her extremely helpful YouTube videos on the topic of entering the job market, where she talks about her own experience in the academic job-hunt process and offers some much needed advice along the way. These videos are a must watch if you're planning on staying in academia after your PhD and are keen to approach the academic job market. 

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Emma Cole is currently Teaching Fellow in Classics and Liberal Arts, and from August will be Lecturer in Classics and Liberal Arts, both at the University of Bristol. Her research focuses on the reception of the classics in contemporary experimental theatre. She has previously published on the work of Katie Mitchell and Martin Crimp, and her co-edited collection Adapting Translation for the Stage is forthcoming with Routledge this July. She is currently writing a monograph for the Classical Presences series at Oxford University Press titled Postdramatic Tragedies, and her next research project will explore the reception of Aristotle’s Poetics in the twenty- and twenty-first-century theatre industry. Alongside her research, she works as a dramaturg on new writing and classical adaptation projects. Check out Emma's YouTube channel here and follow her on Twitter: @Emma_Cole1 




I doubt that anyone embarks on a PhD expecting that entering the job market will be easy. However, I was certainly unprepared for just how hard it would be. I first began actively monitoring the job market in January 2015, in the final six months of my PhD. At this stage, I was targeting teaching fellowships and post-doctoral research positions in both Australia and the United Kingdom, and I had to wait until May before anything appeared for which I felt qualified to apply. Come July I had made it through to the final round for two separate positions, the interviews for which—just my luck—happened to be on the same day.

The two positions were in two different disciplines (my work bridges classics and theatre studies), and both required a presentation tailored to the teaching opportunities offered at the respective institution. I did one interview in person followed by a skype interview for the other position, and vlogged my off-the-cuff reactions to both, plus my reflections after the outcome was known.


Two years—and several more applications and interviews—later these videos still stand as a good overview as to how the academic job market works, the types of questions one might be asked in a humanities interview, and the dos and don’ts that I learnt the hard way. I hope you find them useful. Good luck with your own foray into the job market!






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Thursday 1 June 2017

Networking like a boss



Mike Ryder is a PhD student at Lancaster University. His research interests include biopolitics, sovereignty, science fiction and war. He is particularly interested in the intersection between literature and philosophy, and the works of Giorgio Agamben, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault. In today's post, Mike talks about the importance of networking in the academic environment. Go and have a look at his (fab) personal website: www.mjryder.net and check out his Facebook page: www.facebook.com/MJRyder.net



One of the great joys of networking is that you never know who you might meet, or where a conversation might take you. In November I attended the second day of a drones conference that my supervisor had organised at the Storey in Lancaster. There I chatted to a fair few people about all manner of subjects, not really thinking about the networking opportunities on offer. A few days later I received an email from one Josh Hughes, a law PhD interested in autonomous weapon systems. I hadn’t given him my contact details, and yet he had looked me up after the conference and thought he’d get in touch. A few meetings later and we’re now collaborating on a reading group project funded by the AHRC.

I hadn’t set out to start a reading group – I hadn’t even prepared myself fully for the consequences of going to a conference, but here I am a few months later with some excellent new contacts (and dare I say friends), having greatly expanded my academic network – all without even trying. To think what I might have achieved if I had gone into the conference planning to expand my network...

Let's talk business cards 

From my experience, if you want to network effectively, business cards really are a good investment. Most universities offer an in-house business card printing facility, but you can also source your own (cheaper) versions from an external provider.

The issue I found with my own case (Lancaster) was that the business cards offered internally were quite limited in their customisation. I wanted to include my own website, and I didn’t particularly want to share my Twitter handle (I don’t use it for academic purposes), nor my address. What I did want to include however was my academic interests – something most people leave off their own cards.

We’ve all been there: you get home from a conference with a handful of business cards from people you’ve spoken to and can’t for the life of you remember what you were talking about or why you took the card in the first place. Why not then make networking easier and add a few select interests to your cards to help you stand out? It will certainly help people associate you with your chosen subject area. 

The blog circuit 

Another useful way to network is to follow their blog, maybe even comment on it. I follow a range of blogs, and although I don’t get time to read them all it can be useful to set some time aside each week to read blogs and engage with them if you can, as you never know where it may lead. You can certainly pick up useful information, and it may give you a line into a conversation with someone at a later date. You may even find you can write a ‘guest blog’ or contribute in some other way. While blogs may be a relatively new innovation (in academic terms...), they are crucial I feel for young academics trying to make a mark in their chosen field. Engagement and impact are two major ‘buzzwords’ in academia today, and blogging is the ideal means through which to engage with a wider community and spread the word about your own particular research.

Considered a website?

Of course while it’s all well and good writing for other people’s blogs, you could consider setting up your own – though this does come with its own challenges.

For my own networking purposes, I actually set up my own website www.mjryder.net back in 2007 when I was an undergraduate studying English and Creative Writing. At the time I wanted to raise my profile and stand out from other students. Not only did I learn a number of really useful skills, but it also helped me find work! 



Now I’m an academic I am less concerned with showcasing my writing and web-based work, and am now turning my attention to more academic disciplines. However the basic principles are still the same. But a word of caution: running a website is not easy. Remember that your website doesn’t exist in isolation. Just because it exists, doesn’t mean people will find it. A website is only ever a means to an end, and not an end in itself, just like any other networking tool. 

Share your thoughts

What are your thoughts on networking? Have you learnt any useful tips? If so, please do share your experiences below.



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