Carnival time!

There's a new Carnival of GRADual Progress up. And the Frog Princess is looking for people to help out with it in future.

Carnival of GRADual Progress

There's a new one up. Over at lines ever more unclear.

The carnival of GRADual progress is up!

Go take a look. I'll still be here when you get back.

12th Carnival of GRADual Progress

With today's installment, the GRADual Progress carnival hits the one-year mark! Hooray!

Now for perhaps more sobering news. After a year, the carnival still seems to be averaging only three or four submissions. Also, a distinct lack of hosts. There have been six wonderful volunteers during the past year and I am very grateful to you all, but ultimately, that means I am hosting it one month in two. And I can imagine it will continue to be hard to find volunteers to host as long as the submissions are so few that hosting requires a lot of work to find posts as well as link to them.

Finally, I'm not going to be a graduate student much longer (graduation is finally in sight!) You can all see where this is going, can't you?

The GRADual Progress concept is up for grabs. It comes with a pre-made website and email account, should you wish to use these. You are welcome to do whatever you like to revive the poor thing. You can continue to run it as it has been run until now (good luck with that finding hosts thing), or change the format, frequency, whatever. If you want to be that person, please leave a comment here. Maybe several people might want to collaborate.

If I get no takers, we can always leave the website as a sort of permanent archive of grad-related posts, kind of like what Horace has recently put together, but from the student perspective.


Which brings me to this month's links

In a series that would go nicely in Horace's collection, Fabio at orgtheory.net has just written a set of posts on how to make it through grad school. I'm not going to link to all the older posts in the series, but the most recent three are on choosing your topic, other considerations for during the dissertation writing process, and finally, models for actually writing the dissertation. Jim Gibbon has kindly assembled links to the full set of posts.


There's been a lot of learning going around:

PhD Ladybug is exhausted and learning to establish boundaries.

Queen of West Procrastination is learning to allow herself to be human and is refocusing her academic self-image.

Ancrene Wiseass is learning to be herself.

EA is learning when to stop.

Kisha learns that there is a big gap between the metaphors of climbing a mountain and falling off a cliff.

Parts-n-pieces has learned an extreme strategy for making herself write.

Stewgad learns why you should avoid taking a decade to write your dissertation.


And some pondering:

The History Enthusiast wonders why we procrastinate. Her commentators have some ideas.

FemaleCSGradStudent wonders at the fact that moving from industry into academia didn't lose her the Dilbert-style managers.

Psycgirl writes a thoughtful post about losing her stride and finding it again.

Earth Wide Moth has a fascinating post about all the interrelated tasks that fall under the "canopy" of dissertating. Including staring off into the distance!

Turducken has some thoughts about the academic job market. Then there's the "most stereotypical PhD story ever". And don't miss the hilarious discussion of three different approaches to graduation!


And some suggesting:

The History Enthusiast reviews mind-mapping tools.

Academhack shares some fantastic "old-fashioned" academic tools.


And some milestones:

EA has finished writing up her participants' experiences.

Running Red Lettered passed her thesis defence.

Skookumchick turned in her Done Damn Dissertation Draft (DDDD). As did I!

Zelda has completed her minor revisions and her committee signed off on them.

WWW Mama may have found an exit-ramp from grad school that might just be an on-ramp to the rest of her life.

Finally, from the other side of the great divide, One Bright Star participated in her first defense as a professor on the student's committee.

Congratulations to all of us!

Grad carnival is up!

Geeka at When do you think you'll be done has just put up the latest Carnival of GRADual Progress.

So hurry on over there for lots of thoughtful and entertaining reading about grad student life, including some from new blogs that haven't appeared in the carnival before. Enjoy!

The 9th Carnival of GRADual Progress

Greetings and welcome to the 9th Carnival of GRADual Progress!

I have decided to start and end on a positive note this time round, so with no further ado, let's move into a round-up of posts that are so helpful you can count reading them as "working" rather than "procrastination".

Tips and tricks and general helpfulness:

Psycgirl asks for tips on how to study for comps, and her readers come up with some very helpful suggestions. And when the studying isn't going so well, she survives by fantasising about life after grad school.

Now that Working Writing Wailing Mama is clear on the big issues, she discovers a new mantra that I suggest we all adopt.

Mosilager discusses the pros and cons of Windows vs Linux, especially when it comes to thesis writing.

Jim Gibbon links to a useful article on dissertating without the agony, and recommends writing before you are ready.

EA reminds us that even when you feel like you are going backwards, this is still a kind of progress. Of course, on the rare days where you wake up to find that yesterday's work is still looking good, you might as well reward yourself by going back to bed.


But a grad student carnival wouldn't be complete without some tales of angst and woe...

The dark side:

Kristen's post about a conversation with other ABDs shows that the American PhD system of coursework plus dissertation means that grad students get to experience burnout before they even start writing.

Maria's grad school applications are inducing panic.

RussianViolets is scared of her advisor, worrying that getting tenure means she has to put out or get out.

T was about to graduate, only to get a letter from the university telling her she needs four more credits.

Clevergirl wants a magic style button to solve all her formatting woes.

Video has some conversations that make her wonder why we do this to ourselves.

Breena Ronan is experiencing the joys of grad school politics, as well as the problems of putting together a committee for an interdisciplinary topic.

Anastasia has been experiencing the extra pressure of trying to draft her (symbolically structured) dissertation with a baby due any day. On top of this, she discovers that a lack of family-friendly jobs at her university means that her only options for funding next year would earn her less than a dollar an hour.

FemaleCSGradStudent has noticed that her university is playing games with her, and she doesn't want to join in. (With bonus hilarious conversation).


Finally, back to that positive note I promised to end on...

Congratulations to:

Flossie, whose comps are over. Be sure to read to the end of this post for her hilarious solution to workaholism.

Sammy, who got a teaching position for the coming year.

Twirly, who has turned in a draft of her proposal and is now spending her time writing letters to her lab equipment.

Marcia, who has completed a draft of her thesis.

Elle, who has reached two grad student milestones: submitting the first draft of her dissertation, and falling asleep in the library.

Mike Slackenerny, who is finished at last, leaving some people very disgruntled. (What do you mean, he's a fictional character? Aren't we all?)


Finally:

Apologies if I missed anyone in this round. A plea to all readers to remember to tag or email in any posts they come across that they would like to see in the next carnival. It's so much easier on the host to have submissions coming to them rather than having to seek them out themselves (and it means a broader range of topics and blogs get covered).

The next carnival will be hosted by Kisha at 10 Year Plan on or around May 15th.

Volunteers to host future carnivals would be greatly appreciated and should contact me at the email address in the sidebar on the right. You can take a look here to see what hosting is all about.

The 8th Carnival of GRADual Progress...

... is up at Half an Acre! Hooray! Thanks to everyone who sent in links. The next one will be held here, but volunteers for future carnival hosting are still welcome.

Seeking hosts for future carnivals

The next Carnival of GRADual Progress will go up at Half an Acre in a few days' time. So if anyone wants to volunteer to host the next one (or the one after that, or the one after that), that would be fantastic. Just send me an email to the address in the sidebar here. Hosting isn't too arduous, it's a great way to increase your blog traffic a little, and there are answers here to some of the questions you might have.

This is probably also a good time to remind you to round up your posts from the last month about grad student life (or posts you have read on other people's blogs) and get the links to Acre in any of the usual ways.

Pssst!

The 7th Carnival of Gradual Progress is up at The History Enthusiast. Tell all your friends!

The Carnival of GRADual Progress: Christmas Edition

Greetings and welcome to the fifth Carnival of GRADual Progress! As an extra Christmas present, I've rounded up a huge number of posts this time round. And in case you don't make it through to the end, I won't leave you in suspense: The next carnival will be held on (or around) 15th January at Working Writing Wailing Mama's. You can submit your posts via any of the usual methods.

In other housekeeping matters, there is now a GRADual Progress button that you can put in your sidebar if you are that way inclined. Many thanks to Kristen who designed it! And I have also put up a blogroll of graduate student bloggers on the carnival website. If you are not on it but would like to be, just send me an email, preferably to this account (styleygeek at gmail dot com).

Now, don't mind me, I'll just be humming some Christmas carols to myself in the corner while you're reading.

...where the treetops glisten, and children listen/To hear sleigh bells in the snow...

I thought I'd start off today with a discussion that has been doing the rounds in the academic blogosphere these last few weeks: what it's like going through grad school when you have young children. As so many things do, it all started at Bitch PhD with one of her 'ask a bitchy feminist' letters. From there the discussion has spread to Academom, Geekymom, Mama in Translation, Adventures in Ethics and Science, Who doesn't love roses? and Mommy PhD. Some very interesting points are raised, and be sure not to miss the comments threads!

Happy golden days of yore...

There have been a couple of posts comparing grad student life to what it was like as an undergrad. Psycgirl is affected by the fun chaos that is finals week, even now that she no longer has any of her own. Mad Scientist discusses whether grad students really have it any better than undergrads. But Post Doc Ergo Propter Doc tops it all by arguing that post-docs have it even better than we do.


Making a list and checking it twice...

Marcia Marlene Hansen of M2h Blogging recommends making three lists, in fact.

Parts-n-Pieces is putting together a list of grad students interested in dissertation boot-camp.

Breena Ronan of Who doesn't love roses? has a list of links to people who are saying exactly what she wants to say.

Kristen at The History Enthusiast lists a whole lot of useful dissertation resources and also suggests some strategies for reading quickly and effectively.

GTD Wannabe has some suggestions for making yourself keep writing on those days you don't want to write, and Kristen wonders if we would find that writing can be fun if we had the right mindset, while Queen of West Procrastination's husband reminds her that she doesn't really have to write at all if she doesn't want to.

Elves are working overtime/Making all our toys...

A couple of us have dissertation-related Christmas wishes:

Mad Scientist wants someone to design her a program that allows her to save and tag research papers in the same way that Apple's iPhoto does for pictures. And I want someone to write a program that will turn my dissertation drafts into a video game.


In the bleak midwinter...

Some people are having a hard time of it right now, so run on over to their sites and leave them some encouraging messages, okay? They may not be trying to write their dissertation in something that isn't their native language, or trying to defend their thesis in a warzone, but...

Acre, of Half an Acre, feels like she isn't doing much of anything, and when she does get something done, she feels as though she's just making it up. CkTison of Hopeless Academic is also suffering from a feeling of lack of progress. Ancrene Wiseass feels the same way.

Clevergirl at Don't forget your shovel worries that her introduction revisions are driving her to a nervous breakdown.

Anastasia was rudely excluded from a discussion at a conference.

Twirly feels like the bastard step-child of her advisors.

Lucy, of Always Listen to your Pigpuppet, writes about the feelings of jealousy and inferiority that come from looking up other grad students to see how much they have published.

Heo Cwaeth is mad about the unfair differences in rates of pay for grad students from different disciplines.

My Life, My Pace's committee has gone and done the random shuffle, leaving her resigned to not graduating this year as planned.

Luckybuzz of Polyopia has also lost not just a committee member, but her advisor, leaving her wondering if this is the beginning of the end of her academic career.

And Shrinkykitten, despite her incredible record of achievements that makes the rest of us look like incompetent slackers in comparison, has been kicked out of her graduate program and is struggling with the question of where she goes from here.

If these are leaving you feeling that grad school is all about doom and gloom, you might be comforted (or not) to know that Bart Simpson agrees with you (linked by Mad Scientist).


...glad tidings of comfort and joy...

To move onto a happier note, lots of people are making progress, and not just GRADual progress but leaps and jumps of it!

Congratulations to:

• LaKisha from 10-year plan, who has just passed her prospectus defense and shown that her preliminary nerves were completely unwarranted,
• Derek Mueller of Earth Wide Moth, who just sat his quals (and incidentally has a good strategy suggestion for other people studying for similar exams),
• Psycgirl, who successfully defended her Masters thesis while simultaneously coping with a long-distance marriage and 14-hour workdays
• Smelt at School just turned in her Masters Thesis, but is immediately turning around to go back to the dissertation she had already started.
  
• ScienceGeek who is now Dr ScienceGeek,
• and Liz Kleinfield of Revisionspiral, who passed her defense after a nerve-wracking period of thinking it wasn't going to happen at all.

Sages, leave your contemplations/Brighter visions beam afar...

Of course, when we finish with grad school, there's the big scary problem of the rest of our careers to look forward to. Ancrene Wiseass compares the job market and 'The Rules', while Working Writing Wailing Mama talks about having to put together a teaching portfolio.

And since Working Writing Wailing Mama's is where the next Carnival of GRADual Progress (approx. January 15th) will be held, this seems an appropriate place to wrap this thing up.


Have yourself a merry little Christmas! (or Solstice, or Hanukkah, or whatever you choose to celebrate this time of year).

Spread the word!

The fourth carnival of GRADual Progress has gone up at My Life, My Pace and is packed full of fun reading.

The host of the next carnival on or around 15th December will be announced on the GRADual Progress website once it has been decided. Any volunteers?

Reminder

The next Carnival of GRADual Progress is going up at My Life, My Pace in a couple of days, and there have been almost no submissions so far!

So please, take a couple of minutes to skim back through your achive for November/October and tag or email any posts that relate to grad student matters. I know I've seen some good stuff out there in the last few weeks, so if it's yours, don't be shy! And if it's not yours, you can still suggest it!

Anyone who can pass on this cry for help via their blog would be appreciated too.

Third Carnival of GRADual Progress

Welcome to the third edition of the Carnival of GRADual Progress!

I've decided to run this one as a sort of awards ceremony with (imaginary) prizes for various categories of grad-school-related blog postings that I made up with no sort of structure or plan whatsoever that were selected according to a complex secret system.

In house-keeping matters, the next Carnival of GRADual Progress will be held on (or around) 15th November and hosted by My Life, My Pace: a big (virtual) award is on its (virtual) way as (very real) thanks for this. You can still submit your posts in any of the usual three ways explained here.

If you think this carnival is worthwhile, please spread the word about it far and wide (or at least give it a plug now and then on your blogs and tag the occasional post you think is worth including). The more submissions we get, the less we have to rely on the host randomly stumbling across good posts. And the less work the host has to put in, the more likely we are to find people willing to host the carnival in future.*

And now for the part of the evening you have all been waiting (approximately thirty seconds) for... the winners of this month's honour and glory!


Awards to be proud of (because I'm too cheap to offer any incentive more tangible than pride):

The award for most courageous grad student of the month is shared equally between www mama and Ancrene Wiseass, both of whom have posted a list facing up to their greatest fears about their dissertations. Stewgad at Pretty Hard Dammit has a list of a slightly different sort: her motivations for finishing.

Stewgad also wins the "I do this ALL the time" award for being terrified of doing something that, when tackled, turned out to be nothing to be afraid of: something most of us probably identify with.

Psychgirl gets the award for imaginary conversations that make me laugh (what, who says that doesn't sound like a real award category?).

I say "my life sucks because grad school is evil." and she says "Grad school isn't evil, if you change your attitude, grad school will be a beautiful utopia! Fairies will do cartwheels you'll be so happy."

The award for best open letter goes to an open letter to the director of the MD/PhD program, posted at At My Life, My Pace.

Post-doc at Minor Revisions wins the story-telling award twice over for her grad school stories: one about herself and one about a grad school drop-out.


There were a lot of candidates for the award for best practical strategies and suggestions for dissertators:

Liz at Revisionspiral gives some tips for juggling teaching and dissertating (and marathon running and parenting and more!). There is also an update to this post later on where she writes about the usefulness of gantt charts.

Parts-n-Pieces recommends a different sort of chart: mind-mapping software, as a strategy for mastering the literature review.

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast has a post-traumatic stress disorder-esque flashback to the experience of writing her critical review paper, and shares some thoughts that translate to the dissertation lit review as well.

Complete Your Dissertation also has a post on literature reviews: how do you know when to stop?

Lambda Ex, in a post that also makes some interesting comparisons between being a grad student in the USA and in Spain, gives some useful links to advice on writing conference abstracts.

Uncertain Principles has some tips that might come too late for many of us, but are nevertheless interesting, on how to pick and apply to a good graduate school.

Dr Crazy gives some useful advice on how to identify a good mentor.

In the end, though, I unanimously (me and the voices) decided to give the practical strategy award to Flossie at Stepping on Acorns for a technique that sounds deceptively simple but which, in the implementation, takes a lot of willingness to face up to reality. She is keeping track of the hours she spends working each day, splitting it into teaching hours, time spent preparing for comps, and her job at a literary magazine, in an attempt to find out whether she really does work more than a 40 hour week.


The in-depth discussion award is going to have to be shared by a whole bunch of acadebloggers for the on-going debate about "professionalization" of grad students.

Dr Virago at Quod She has a post on the question of professionalization from her perspective as a director of graduate studies (and also gives an example of a student behaving more unprofessionally than I would have thought possible). Other bloggers addressing this question this month are Heo Cwaeth (who incidentally gets the prize for knowing what she wants and how to get it!), Yellow Dog (who uses the discussion as a lead-in to some thoughts about the problem of conflicting advice), and JJC at In the Middle (don't miss the discussion in the comments). This is the post that started the debate (this time around, anyway).

On a similar theme New Kid has just put up this post on developing a professorial persona and at what point in the grad school process this kicked in for her.


Awards you'd probably rather not be receiving:

The award for the worst experience of a committee playing games with a student's sanity goes to Anastasia, who summarises what she has been going through in this post here, but has plenty of other horrifying (and some positive) accounts of the whole experience and thought-provoking reflections on it.

Disgruntled Julie wins the award for commitment (or possibly insanity: you decide) with this post about a long day in the lab.

1B* wins the "d'uh" award for discovering that grad students like snacks :)

And one of her colleagues wins the "interesting theory but totally tactless" award for her suggestions about a deeper meaning behind how grad students select their advisors.


To wrap this carnival up, I thought I'd include a few recent posts by people about different stages of the grad school (and, fine, post-grad-school) experience:

Queen of West Procrastination posts the story of how she ended up in grad school.

Honeybee at Life Science is starting to panic about her upcoming qualifying examination.

Liz at Revisionspiral is getting closer and closer to finishing.

Everyday Scientist has big plans for after graduation.

And Postdoc at Post Doc Ergo Propter Doc has some advice for anyone considering going on to do a post doc.

_________

* As it is, the majority of the posts here were collected by me rather than submitted by other people, since I'm not getting enough submissions to make up a carnival yet, so apologies if I missed good posts or if the carnival is too skewed towards the blogs I read on a regular basis.

The Second Carnival of GRADual Progress

As ever, the part of the blogosphere inhabited by grad students has been busy this last month. (If only we wrote as many words on our dissertations as we do on our blogs...)

Plenty of bloggers have been reflecting on the nature of the PhD process: what it is and what it should be (which are so often two different things).

Ancrene Wiseass points out that we do ourselves a disservice by viewing grad school as a temporary state and putting our lives on hold until we have got through it.

ScienceGeek suggests that a PhD program shouldn't just centre on getting the degree, but rather needs to involve rather more career counselling and real world advice than is usually provided.

Collin from Collin vs Blog submits this post where he criticises the commonly used metaphor of academia as a "conversation" and suggests we might instead want to think of ourselves as "collectors". I like the way that this metaphor shifts the role of grad students from passive listeners observing conversations that we don't yet know how to join to something more active: academics engaged in the valuable task of collecting and collating material.

Textual Life is doing well on the collecting front, but she worries that this obsession might be pathological.

I also like Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast's comparison of the dissertation process to getting chickenpox: some people see both as a rite of passage in which you prove yourself through suffering.


Are your ears burning?

A rather divisive issue has arisen in our part of the blogosphere recently: the problem with faculty using their blogs to vent about grad students is that grad students might be listening. On the other hand, as some commentators have pointed out, one of the great strengths of the blog world is that it provides places for open and free discussion to take place between faculty and students without either having to worry about whether what they say is affecting the way they are seen by their colleagues or harming their career chances.

Edited to say: I had one person's post in here as an example, but they have just taken it down and I can't find others to replace it with right now. Also, I felt kind of mean using one person to illustrate this, as it wasn't about them at all.

Anastasia writes about how these sorts of posts can make grad students feel.

If you are among the people who felt hurt by these discussions, though, a good antidote can be reading more positive posts from faculty about grad students: this one from One Bright Star, for example.

Profgrrrl writes a most instructive post on the proper care and feeding of graduate students. Take note!

And Psycgirl writes about what it feels like to be in a place that clearly doesn't subscribe to Profgrrrl's philosophy.


Advisor/committee anguish

Of course, it's not usually faculty in general that are the problem so much as a few particular faculty members...

Like Scersk's advisor, who doesn't return drafts.

This is a technique also shared by ScienceGeek's advisor. ScienceGeek also wonders what you do when you and your advisor disagree on the details of your thesis layout.

Anastasia is not only having problems with her advisor, but with her entire committee, and would like to know if anyone else has had to rewrite their proposal when their dissertation is already half-way complete. She also wonders whether there is a point at which the failure of graduate students to go on and succeed in academia becomes a failure of the program itself.


Can anyone loan me a dollar?

In case I haven't reminded you enough of your misery with the last few links, a couple of bloggers have been posting about the financial woes that accompany grad school.

Jenabean can't sleep for worrying about her money issues, and Thought Bubbles reminds us that grad students are financially worse off than Walmart employees.

Meanwhile, Shrinkykitten is reduced to selling textbooks in order to be able to buy food.

Yet from a post on Life, Apparently, it appears that some departmental business managers still think being a graduate student is all about free money.


Think happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts.

Let's talk about the good things that are happening.

Jim Gibbon has worked out how to defeat procrastination with a technique called contingency management.

Hopeless Academic submits a post about the benefits of intelligent practice techniques, not just for sports stars, but for PhD students too!

Marcia at m2h has realised how much she appreciates her friends.

And Lova argues that even if her thesis won't provide a cure for cancer, it can be an important contribution in its own right.


Whether for better or worse, grad school certainly changes you

New Kid on The Hallway reflects on how her perception of herself as a researcher and/or a teacher was changed by her experiences as a grad student.

Over at My Life, My Pace, there's an interesting characterisation of the different mindsets of grad students and med students.

(Of course, as a student of Profgrrrl's demonstrates, for some people one type of doctor is pretty much the same as another.)


Milestones

A few congratulations are in order:

MLE of The Muffin Chronicles has taken the plunge and is wonderfully optimistic after her first experiences with grad school. Ms Entropy... not so much.

At the other end of the journey we have Six Impossible Things, who is finally able to join in the "last word of the dissertation" meme!

It can be done!

Ist Monthly Carnival of GRADual Progress

Preliminaries

As this is the first Carnival of GRADual Progress ever, I haven't limited it to recent posts but have included some oldies as well.

Hunting and gathering the following posts from around the internet, I was struck with how much of what is written about grad student life is extremely depressing. I'm a little concerned that this carnival might send you all off to slit your wrists -- I guess the best to hope for is that reading it can also have the effect of creating a sense of shared experience (a trouble shared is a trouble halved and all), or maybe give the evilest of you a few moments of schadenfreude. And sometimes it just helps to know you aren't the only one who's struggling. But so as not to turn this entirely into the Carnival of Doom and Despair, I made an especial effort to sprinkle some happier (or even just neutral) posts into the mix. If you have particularly depressive tendencies, you might want to skip the first three or four: I promise they get cheerier after that.

But you don't want to hear me waffling on forever, so I declare this carnival officially open! Stop stuffing your mouths with candyfloss and hotdogs (it'll just make you feel sick when you go on the ferris wheel), and get to the reading!


The agony...

Flossie, from Stepping on Acorns, nominated Dean Dad's post on the wisdom (or otherwise) of going to graduate school. As she points out, it's too late for most of us, but reading it might help remind you of why you are here and what you want to get out of it all.

In case you are tempted to believe that Dean Dad is exaggerating the hardships of grad school, you might want to read this post, where Hopeless Academic compares research to a hell, "where satan deposits me in thoughts of proteases and nucleotides and SNP's and colloids and lasers". Hopeless Academic also shows he has time between lab meetings to be political in this submission.

Parts-n-Pieces writes about a couple of feelings we can probably all identify with: the fear it won't be good enough and the feeling of being an imposter, with some interesting ideas about finding a model of how to be a dissertation writer.

Holly, on Field Notes from an Evolutionary Psychologist also writes about the difficulties of being a first generation graduate student trying to find models of how to be in academia. Her question in this post is how you can get published in grad school if you don't have the sort of supervisor who lets you 'ride their coattails onto the royal road of publications'.

The PhD Explosion confronts the widespread acceptance that grad students will end up feeling suicidal and makes the radical suggestion that maybe this means there is something wrong with the system. On a less bleak note, the post on other people's reactions when you tell them you are doing a PhD is also well worth a read.


...and the not-all-that-bad, really...

In case reading about other people's struggles is starting to make you dwell on your own, the following few posts might work as a bit of an anxiety antidote.

With the benefit of hindsight, Collin Brooke from Collin vs. Blog reminds us that dissertations don't have to be good. They only have to be good enough.

Chris Uggen points out that even if you fail an exam, it doesn't mean you won't be a good professor.

And despite what we've all heard about the shrinking academic job market, Minor Revisions shows it can be done. I'm going to quote a whole passage of her post, because I find it soothing when the panic starts to build:

It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t find a job after grad school. After a period of panic where I was terrified everyone had realized I suck, I had a nice batch of interviews, followed by a good group of offers, and picked what was clearly the best one in the right area. I make enough money, work with delightful people, and can pretty much do what I want with my time.

Admittedly most of these 'antidote' posts are by people who are no longer graduate students themselves. But maybe that is a good reminder that some things that seem like big deals right now might not look so terrifying a few years down the track. (Or, you know, that the world has got a whole lot nastier since these people were at grad school. Whatever.)


...and the ecstasy (Yes, you thought that wasn't coming, but I fooled you)

All the same, some current grad students seem to be having a good time of it. Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast has a post about being in love with your research, reminding us that when things are good, they are very very good.

And Stewgad at Pretty Hard Dammit writes about what it's like to really own your dissertation.


The hilarity...

If you're still not having fun yet, Ranjit Warrier at The Warrier's Kraal is bound to make you laugh with his signs you are spending too much time in the lab or his post on what would happen if virologists could name movies. He's not someone you would want to go through airport security with, on the other hand.


... and the ingenuity

If When I manage to complete my dissertation, I know it's all going to be thanks to the tips, tools and tricks I nicked off other people's blogs. So here's a brief catalogue of some useful strategies I've stumbled across lately.

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast recommends some unexpectedly low-tech tools.

GTD Wannabe has a helpful post on personal experiences in implementing the GTD system as a grad student.

Earth Wide Moth at Indexical Thinking gets thinking about the usefulness of indexes.

If you've ever struggled with the tension between wanting to keep your partner informed about your PhD progress (or lack of it!) and not wanting to answer yet another bloody question about how the thesis is going, Pretty Hard Dammit has a suggestion for a stress-free compromise (and it wins extra points for being based on a scene from Buffy!)

Aunt B. at Tiny Cat Pants isn't a grad student herself, but I found that her Free Advice for Academic Authors is equally applicable to dissertations.


The soon-to-be

Let's now take a few minutes to step into a daydream about the (maybe not so distant!) future and look at a few posts on finishing and beyond.

First of all there are a few useful posts on how to get finished.

HistGrad at Eating an Elephant writes about How to Finish a Dissertation in Two Easy Centuries (Part I and II).

ScienceWoman at On being a scientist and a woman also has a post on finishing up in reasonable time. While some of her suggestions are only relevant to North American Readers (classes? comps? prelims?), there's plenty of more general advice -- also in the comments.

Over at this site, on the other hand, you'll find a whole heap of suggestions for how to avoid graduating. After all, some of us are here because we like PhD student life: why would we want to leave?

If you do want to finish on time, but aren't sure what you need to be doing when, here's a useful calculator to help you work it out.

Porkorama at Dissertation Hell tells us about the final step: the oral exam. This is a horror story with a moral ("Do it or don't do it, but don't just stand there suffering!").

Finally, just in case you are about to make it out of here in the near future, Dr. Mom has a comprehensive list of what needs to go into a faculty application package (thanks to ScienceWoman for the tip-off).

Many thanks to everyone who submitted something, or who pointed me in the direction of something that deserved submission. Huge apologies if you submitted something and I somehow missed it. Please let me know if that was the case and I'll tweak the system (or my brain) so that it doesn't happen again. Hopefully the next month will bring many more submissions from people who didn't know about the carnival until now.


... and the cup of tea.

I'm off to make one, anyway. Won't you join me?

Grovel*

I have a favour to ask youse.

In case you haven't seen the website for the Carnival of GRADual Progress lately, I decided to hold the first carnival on 15th August. Now I don't have a problem with making the first one consist almost entirely of posts that I have stumbled across myself rather than actual submissions, but that does mean that I'll probably miss a lot of good stuff.

So it's actually two favours:

1. If you come across any posts about grad student life during your browsing over the next week that you think are submission-worthy, please let me know (via one of the ways described on the Carnival website).
2. A little publicity for the carnival on your own blogs (a post? a link to the carnival website in the sidebar?) would be most excellent, since you probably all have larger readerships than I do.

I have no doubt that it will get some momentum of its own after the first couple of rounds, but for now, the more publicity there is, the better reading will be coming your way on the 15th.

________
* Which is one of those words that, when you look at it all by itself, doesn't really look like a word at all and sends you running dictionarywards to check its spelling.