The Dark Side of the PhD: Teacher Training, actually Teaching, and Not Being Normal

As has become rapidly apparent, a PhD is not just a three-year research project. Leaving aside any queries over the "three-year" part, there's an awful lot more that needs doing in that time for the PhD to serve its real purpose - as a qualification for a career in academia. At least, that's how I see it, though I recognise that there's plenty of other reasons to do a PhD and plenty of things it can lead to, depending on the individual.

One of the essential skills that a thesis can't provide is that of teaching. So many academic positions by definition require hours of teaching and lecturing alongside research, and everything that comes with it.

Do as the wall says. Picture by liquidnight

Taking the highest post possible in the UK, professor, there are two ideas contained within its etymology; firstly the idea of being an expert in an art or a science, but also the concept of being a teacher (OED, 3rd ed., 2007). It's easy to get caught up in the idea of research, from the heady experience of presenting and networking at conferences to the intense self-motivation required to see complicated projects through from their scrappy beginnings to polished, published ends - not least because of the emphasis on impact and the Research Excellence Framework, which (misguidedly, in my opinion) are the main ways in which the usefulness of universities and their employees are judged. However, just like teachers in primary schools are charged with making sure the next generation can be informed and involved members of society, so universities are crucial in guiding some of those school leavers on to achieve their aspirations and make the most of their talents, whatever they may be.

After all - the next generation also includes the next wave of academics, so in the interest of self-perpetuation, we need to engage with our students face-to-face, and not only through the intermediary of our work in journals.

Luckily, at York we have an incredibly motivated group of people called the Researcher Development Team who share the same views, and do an awful lot to make sure that we can make the most of any teaching experience we can get during our PhDs, and to make sure that the undergraduates continue to get the academic input that they're paying for (don't even get me started on how much they're paying...)

Lots of PGWTs hard at work

To this end, they took 31 of us out to a hotel in the middle-of-nowhere just north of York for two days, turning us into the captive audience for their PostGraduates Who Teach (PGWT) Residential Teacher Training Programme.

Our PGWT nationality map - 19 different countries!

It was an intensive couple of days, though, as Elly pointed out, the 'intensive' part referred as much to the amount of food shoved our way as the amount of work we managed! I won't mangle your minds with everything we learnt (I'm enough of a Teal Deer as it is), but here are highlights:

• PhD students are not normal. We kind of knew this anyway, but the important point is this - 95% (or so) of our undergraduates will not be academics - they will take their degrees and rejoin the outside world, and we need to recognise this in the way we approach their learning. (Thanks Linda Perriton)
• Getting on with research and planning teaching don't mix wonderfully well, but both are incredibly important - so give each the attention they deserve by blocking off time for each separate activity within your week (courtesy of Tamlyn Ryan)
• Teaching is not about the teacher, but about the students and enabling their learning. This is easy to forget when you're stressed, feeling exposed, and (if we're honest) wanting to be liked... (True words Duncan Jackson)
• Following Stephen Brookfield's 15 Maxims, it is important to be courageous, confident in your own abilities, and ready to adapt at any moment. (Preach, Karen Clegg!)
• Set ground rules with a class in the first session so that all participants know what is expected of them (I'll do my best, Russ Grant)
• Reflective practice and support from your peers make a world of difference (as shown by our facilitator, Jenn Chubb, and the 30 other fantastic PhD students on the course)

That's a quick run-through, but in short, if you're a York PGWWTT (Postgraduate Who Wants To Teach) GET YOURSELF ON THIS COURSE, and to those who've already done it, best of luck and keep in touch!

The deer is teal...so I'll stop here.
Image by queercatkitten

The Dark Side of the PhD: The LaTeX Edition

Despite the somewhat suggestive title of this post, this is not going to be some kind of "50 Shades of Doctoral Study". Instead, in what may or may not become a mini-theme, I'm going to look at one of the hidden difficulties I've so far come across in my PhD; namely, learning how to use the LaTeX program for word processing.

For the uninitiated (and titillated), LaTeX, pronounced [leɪtɛk], is a word processing program which involves using packages and codes to produce documents. It is therefore much less straightforward than a program like Microsoft Word, but produces some very attractive syntax trees, equations and formatting which isn't likely to go straight to hell the moment you open the document on a different computer. Or, as Hannah put it:

LaTeX is a computer programme put on this planet to taunt linguists with its promise of beautifully formatted documents while preventing any chance of making one thanks to endless reams of complex code needed to get there. Guaranteed to make you want to hurl your computer out of a window, but when it works, a hallelujah chorus sounds and everything is wonderful once more.

Which is pretty accurate, really.

Anyway. Learning LaTeX is clearly a necessity, not least because el supervisor is something of a devotee and I, in a paroxysm of boot-licking, promised to use LaTeX for all future documents.

Cue the long, long slog to LaTeX nirvana. First step was trying to drag up from the back of my memory any of the starter stuff I learnt during my MA. Second step was remembering just how important EVERY slash and parenthesis is. Third step was attempting to create a bibliography for the first time. Fourth step was being reminded again JUST HOW IMPORTANT EVERY SLASH AND PARENTHESIS IS.

And rinse and repeat. To spare you the details, I now, with a little help from Moe, Robert, Ruwayshid, Luke and myriad Google searches, have an attractive, well-aligned, Harvard-referenced document just begging to be read. Here's a couple of links that I found useful:

• http://tex.stackexchange.com/ - Forum with a vast amount of very knowledgeable users. Especially if you're starting out, you can be pretty sure that your question has already been answered here.
• http://www.stdout.org/~winston/latex/ - A cheatsheet to help you out with the basic structural bits. I've downloaded it to my desktop for instant easy access (and it is ALWAYS open)
• http://merkel.zoneo.net/Latex/natbib.php - A run-down of commands for use with the natbib bibliography package, making citing easier.

...and there's so many more that I haven't mentioned or haven't yet found, so keep searching and let me know if you find any other corkers.

Now I just have to go and make the content of the document in question as good as its formatting...

Conference Mk II

So it would appear I'm becoming something of a conference fiend, as I attended my second in two months at the start of November - namely the Manchester Salford New Researchers Forum in Linguistics. Of course the whole point of endless conferences, other than getting your name about, is to learn something new each time - so what was different?

• The "warm-up"! As there were 5 Yorkies going to Manchester, we decided to combine forces to present our papers to the department before throwing ourselves to the conference lions. Three of us were able to present...and subsequently got rinsed by the department. Actually, that's not fair - our audience focused on the areas in which we could improve, which was crucial so that we could give the best possible accounts of ourselves. Shame there wasn't quite enough time to get onto the positives though we were assured that there were plenty of positives, and we all agreed that our papers were much the better for having that first airing.
• Collaboration! This time round, I had a co-presenter, the lovely Samir from Sheffield via Exeter. My MA thesis was based to a certain extent on his, so we decided to combine forces (and data) to hit our listeners with 40 - yes, that's FORTY - simultaneous bilingual children, 15 French-English and 25 German-English and their very best dative constructions. This was an interesting challenge, not least because Exeter is a blimmin' long way from York, but also because I was much more familiar with the material than Samir, having worked more recently on both projects. I therefore took responsibility for the early slide drafts, which Samir then fine-tuned. We also both learnt a lot about the pros and cons of using Skype to collaborate and practice - verdict? Largely very useful, as long as you can find a quiet-but-not-silent area to go to, though the face-to-face practice the morning of the talk was invaluable.
• A new topic! As I hinted above, we were presenting on a combination of our two MA theses, which were both about the acquisition of dative alternation by simultaneous bilingual children. An acquisition talk involves less hardcore formal theory than my LAGB talk, but in some ways demands a much more careful approach when interpreting results. We also had to account for a large range of factors in our methodology, such as the socioeconomic status of our participants and the ways in which we tested participants' proficiencies.
• 10 minutes fewer! At the LAGB, I wittered my half-hour talk in under 20 minutes. At the MancSalFiL, our allotted 20 minutes were filled to the brim - it's always MUCH harder to be concise than verbose...

Cupcakes (like this one) make conferences
brighter. Image from dreamstime.com

And the outcome? We were really pleased with the way our talk was received, and benefited from a wide range of different perspectives, as we had syntacticians, pragmatics and even the odd sociolinguist offering their very welcome thoughts. Hours spent on Skype turned out to be very well spent, and we think the delivery was pretty smooth, if we do say so ourselves! Here are the slides if you fancy a look yourself.

Furthermore, the entire conference itself was hugely useful for networking, looking at how other people approach their work, and an exceedingly useful careers panel from four kind, willing victims volunteers. Not to mention the aforementioned volunteers' cracking plenary talks, a constant haze of enthusiasm and some insanely good cupcakes. Well done to everyone involved, especially the three amazing organisers.

Best way to get to know your new colleagues?
A trip to Evil Eye

Good times all round, which seem set to continue, largely. There have been enough highlights so far in my 5-week-old PhD to balance out all the reading - in particular my seminar teaching, some cracking new colleagues and a new side project I'm working on with my supervisor George...more to come on that another time though.

And just before I leave you - it's official - I got a Distinction in my MA. Very pleased indeed :D

Now it just remains to try to write again before December...