Carl Sagan on Writing

Follow me....

Blogger recently changed its user interface and one of the unique features that are now more accessible to its users is "Stats". According to the "Stats", this blog has had over 1300 page views. This indicates to me that people might be actually using the blog with their writing. If you are a frequent visitor to this blog I highly encourage you to become a follower. To become a follower, simply click on the "Follow" button near the search bar on the top left of the page. Once you are a follower you are able to receive updates on new posts. Now might be an opportune time to (re)iterate what I hope to provide by publishing this blog and how I distinguish this blog from other blogs and writing websites. The overall goal of this blog is to provide an indexed guide to PhD writing misunderstandings. Is this a new thing? No. This blog is a aggregation of various helpful writing guides. It is specifically catered towards the writing I do in pursuit of my PhD. Because I am a PhD student (now a candidate) at a large North American university, I think that a least a portion of these writing misunderstandings are at the "PhD-level", while certainly not being exclusive to that level. I made this blog public because perhaps I have aggregated information that will clear up a writing misunderstanding. I did not start this blog for some altruistic reason to help PhD students who have difficulty writing. In actuality, I merely wanted to catalogue all of the writing misunderstandings that I go through so that I do not do them again and subsequently get yelled at by my supervisor. A blog provides the ideal template to catalogue these misunderstandings by way of the search bar that I highly encourage you to use. If you cannot find what you are searching for on my blog, which I highly encourage you to consider as a starting point by becoming a follower, here is a short list of helpful writing blogs and websites that I frequent: Grammar Girl, Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL), and Explorations of Style. A final question, when will this blog come full circle? I believe it already has. In fact, I used my own blog in a separate tab to look up the difference between thus, therefore, and thereby to write this post. Thus, this blog has come full circle. For some funny commentary on the merits of aggregating information see the Colbert's interview with Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington on 4/18/12. Video can be found here for US viewers and here for Canadian viewers. Apparently I have a lot of readers from New Zealand, so in effort to get you to follow my blog if you are from New Zealand here is a picture of Hobbiton from the Lord of the Rings series filmed in New Zealand.

Source: http://www.traveljournals.net/pictures/34305.html

Posters! Glorious glorious posters!

Making posters is a lot of work, but is so much fun. When else do you get to put your graphic design skills from grade 8 to use? It is probably the only time in your graduate career when you actually get to be creative. Colors, shapes, its all coming back to me........

But I have definitely seen my fair share of color clashes, ppt slides pasted together to resemble a poster, and graphs persons with color blindness could not read at the last conference I went to. If you need some helpful tips and tricks to a creating a great poster, check out this blog. If you are me and make awesome posters, then go get yourself a coke.

Analytical Essay

We have all done it. I did it this morning. I cleaned the whole house. I emptied the litter box. I took a long breakfast. Anything to avoid having to start writing. While getting in front of the screen to type is hard, it becomes even harder when you don't have any guidelines or know what your superiors want. I have learned that knowing your audience and determining the type of essay that is expected of you is equally as hard as the physical writing.

What type of essay should I write? That should be determined by the kinds of questions that your superior wants you to answer. I kept writing a summary of a meeting for my superior, when in fact she wanted a analytical essay of the meeting. How did I know she wanted an analytical essay? After handing her the second summary, she went down a list of the types of questions she wanted answered. They were:
-What is the motivation?
-What did the meeting tell me?
-Did everyone agree?
-What are the issues?
-What are the open questions?
-What were the key themes?
-What was revealed?
-Was there anything that was not anticipated?
-Did anything new surface?

After getting down the kinds of questions my superior wanted. It was a simple task to determine the type of essay she wanted. I thought that she might want something like an op-ed, where my voice came through and my perspective on the issues were presented. At second glance of the questions and this website, I found that she wanted more towards a analytical essay.

It always helps to have a template to work from when writing. In the case of the analytical essay I choose this one.

What did I learn? When confused about how to do something, go back to the question.

The Meeting Agenda

One thing that apparently propels PhD research is meetings. One way to make sure you are getting everything out of your meeting that you want in an effective manner is to create an agenda. Your agenda should be focused on outcomes or objectives, i.e., consider what a good outcome of your meeting would be.
Do you want a decision?
Do you want to generate ideas?
Are you getting status reports?
Are you communicating something?
Are you making plans?
Be asking these questions and spending a few minutes prioritizing your agenda, you should have a meeting that truly mobilizes your research.

Thanks to mindtools for supplying the important considerations of what a good outcome would be.

Digitizing my Notes

Google Wave is dead. Too bad, I liked it. In a world where PhD students cannot afford fancy tablet PCs or dictate notes to a assistant, Google Wave offered the next best thing. Once I was done taking meeting notes I could go to the nearest computer and type them into the Wave via web browser where they were stored and could be accessed and edited by my professors (not that they ever did). For a Phd student who took lots of notes and needed them digitized and organized, Google Wave was a great tool.

Luckily, something came along that digitizes and organizes my notes in the same way, Evernote. Evernote does almost everything Google Wave does and it even looks the same; making the learning curve non-existent.

This transition from Google Wave to Evernot does allow me to pause and reflect on how my notetaking might be more efficient and or/ better. The majority of my notes are taken from meetings with my supervisors. So, the requirements for good notetaking at the PhD level for me are:
-notes are originally taken with pen/pencil on paper, for a good article on why NOT to use laptops to take notes read this
-actionable items are made clear and known to all applicable
-notes are indexed
-notes are easily searched
-notes are accessible
-notes are easily exported
-notes can be easily stored with other items (e.g., meeting agenda)

After typing or scanning in the original notes to Evernote, Evernote meets all these requirments. There are other options out there for digitalizing and storing your notes that do not require the typing in parts, but they cost money and do not always work. Examples are Livescribe and Camiapp.

Taking this reflection one step further, how can I take better original notes with pen/pencil on paper? One answer is to buy a notebook that is conductive to the types of notes you wish to take. For me, I make a series of check boxes in the margin of my notebook for items that require action. Turns out, they make a notebook with these things already in place -the Action Day Notebook. I think I will give this notebook a try and see if it helps my meeting notetaking.

RIP Google Wave

US or U.S.? U.S. or American?

"US" or "U.S."?
Answer: In everything but scientific writing, "U.S." is preferred.
-About.com

"U.S." or "American"?
For example, "he is from the U.S.", or "he is American"?

Answer: Either
"In modern English, "American" generally refers to the United States, and in the U.S. itself this usage is almost universal, with any other use of the term requiring specification of the subject under discussion."
-Wikipedia