PhD Christmas School
A bus-based revelation
I was reading a great post by @MillwoodMara on the @ThesisWhisperer blog this morning whilst en route to work on the dark, bumpy bus ride, and it got me thinking (which is no small feat at 7.30 am on a cold December morning). Being a complete newbie to the PhD world, I haven’t really come across the concept of an academic summer school before, and all the name conjures up for me is images of sulky looking teenagers wishing they were at home with their friends instead of stuck at some Scout/Cubs-run organised ‘fun’ affair.
Academic summer schools
However @MillwoodMara explains that the grown up, academic version is a small (ish) group of academics, mainly PhD students, who come together over the summer to participate in discussion, workshops and debate. This sounds much more up my street! Unfortunately, they mostly seem to take place in America, which is a little far for me to travel.
My own personal PhD Christmas School
Not wanting to waste time sitting and sulking about how I couldn’t get involved, I decided the best course of action would be to run my own version of a summer school, albeit over my Christmas break, here on my blog. Yeay! I may be running it from my bedroom, and it may only have one delegate, but hopefully it will still help me to be productive and creative over my time off work, much like the proper summer schools in the US.
So this is how it’s going to work: the #PhdChristmasSchool will run from 19th December – 2nd January, and during these 2 weeks I will aim to post around six blog posts, each tackling a particular part of the PhD/research process. I will make sure to post them on Twitter using the hashtag, and hopefully some people will pick up on the hashtag and use it to hold discussions.
Most likely I will end up the only one in the discussions, but it will still be an interesting exercise, and will keep me focused over the Christmas break. (When I;’m not too busy eating my way through a ridiculous mountain of cheese, crackers and chocolate that is). So please do look out for the hashtag #PhDChristmasSchool and join in!
The misadventures of Dr Beech... 