Happy New Year, Happy New Researching

2013. Doesn't look quite right yet, does it? I personally think that it looks like it has more get-up-and-go then 2012, but there is no good reason behind this, apart from a slight tendency towards synaesthesia (the number 5 is pink and fluffy, don'tcha know? Though it looks a lot scarier when attached on the end of 2015, where it signals THE END OF MY STUDENT CAREER. Hopefully.)

Ahem. In any case, if there's a bit of energy (perceived or otherwise) knocking around, I am determined to make the most of it. The end of last term left me on the ropes, the blurry and half-formed face of my Quasimodo thesis staring down at me from a great height and just about ready to put the boot in, before Father Christmas scooped me up, up and away (at least as far as Chester). I am not at all delirious, but merely cognisant of the ever-changing, glowering beast that the PhD experience can seem to be, which differs so greatly from the in-yer-face and away-you-go whirlwind MA year. I have so far learnt:

• Literature reviews are blimmin' hard to start, when you're trying to coherently group the 21 sources you have so far pored through in great detail
• Even 1st year exam marking has its charms, when there's another chapter that needs reading
• There is no perfect starting point. Every answer throws up at least three more questions
• Fixed deadlines are beautiful, rare jewels that I never appreciated when I had them, and which I greatly miss now
• Teaching is awesome and will keep you sane, even if it continues to induce stomach churning and unnecessary sweating every other Wednesday morning

The view at my desk...a bit post-it note heavy, but it works!
Also very pleasant to be able to survey the wildlife from time to time.

There's just a few pearls of wisdom (read:garbage) for you on the back of one term's PhDing. It seems that the main themes running through this are the need to avoid isolating yourself, and knowing how to make massive jobs into itty-bitty-manageable ones. Here's my plans for dealing with these issues:

Avoid isolating yourself

• Ensure that daily lunches with lovely linguists (happily no syntacticians, so no fear of chatting shop) continue this term
• Continue to revel in teaching, without using it as a distraction tactic
• Keep finding fellow syntacticians and semanticists to bounce off, even if κύριε καθηγητά is off doing exciting things in Boston 

Breaking down massive tasks

• Post-it notes. As anyone who has seen my desk knows, it's ALL about the post-it notes. And they genuinely do help
• Don't expect to get things perfect (e.g. the literature review in the perfect order, or the ideal abstract structure) first time. Drafts are not only OK, they're a blimmin' good idea
• ...following on from the point above, getting words onto paper (real or digital) is GOOD. My head just won't hold all this information on its own, no matter how hard I try...so why am I trying?
• Reading must be punctuated by thinking. Otherwise it won't go in, and I won't get anything original out of it anyway. GET AWAY FROM THE LAPTOP MORE FREQUENTLY!
• Creating deadlines for myself. Be it a supervisor meeting, a postgrad conference abstract submission to get me motivated about a bigger conference's deadline, I need motivation, and this is the most effective way for me to get it

I don't think that all these things are possible all of the time, and I'll find other ways and means of dealing as the year goes on. But as I am fortunate enough to have good people around me, and little gems of projects showing up from time to time, I think I'll be OK. And that will do for the meantime.

Little things that keep you going

As we're approaching the end of our first term of PhD study and Christmas is only 2 weeks away, we're all getting a bit delirious up in Berrick Saul Towers. But the following examples seem to suggest that this is not a fleeting state of mind, and might in fact come in quite handy if we're to become academics in linguistics...

...things talk and go bump-in-the-night in semantics...

"Together, these observations will build a strong case against Kaplan's theory of indirect discourse, and in favor of the monster-based alternative that I lay out in Section 5."

(Schlenker, 2003)

...but the monkeys are fighting back in phonological development...

"[...] a grammar ought not to contain explicit statements against monsters (they use the NO-BANANA example in order to show that there is no point in explicitly excluding real bananas from UG by an explicit statement therein)"

(Scheer, 2011)

...whereas kangaroos are on the march in psycholinguistics...

"It is plausible that, say, human acts of hopping are more likely than kangaroo acts of hopping to be marked as such in Greek, regardless of listener characteristics, just because these gait types vary in typicality for the named animals. But it is also likely that such usages are to some degree tailored “on line” to the inferred expertise of the listeners—more manner information expressed concerning hopping, say, to Frenchmen and Balinese than to Australians, during kangaroo conversations."

(Papafragou, Massey and Gleitman, 2006)

...and it's all just a bit gross in phonetics and phonology...

"When relaxed the vocal folds are relatively thick, and open and close in an undulating manner, the mucous membrane moving somewhat independently like flabby skin on a waving arm."

(Boden et al, 2003)

Thanks to Catherine, Dann and J respectively for insights into their areas of linguistics - who knows what we might turn up next? But whatever it is, at least we keep each other smiling.

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...

1 week down, just 155 to go...

As I wrote the title of this post, a little déjà vu hit me. I then realised that I wrote a post with a very similar title at the start of my Masters, 51 weeks ago.

If you haven't (re)read it, I talked about the work (heinous amounts of reading), the personal side (life with new housemates and, oddly, netball) and the joy that is the Cambridge Lindy Exchange (CLX).

So what's new this time around?

The path along the River Ouse in Autumn. Pukka.
Photo by AndrewB47

Personal life first. I have a new crop of housemates but I'm in the same house - the first time I've had an address for longer than 13 months since I lived at home with my parents. It was sad to see so many fantastic people leave at the end of the MA, but a pleasing amount have stayed on in various capacities, and with an abnormally large crop of 17 PhD students, I'm not in danger of being lonely too soon. I'm also increasingly at home in York as a city - it is undeniably beautiful, and is showing all its stunning colours in this chilly autumn, which is a joy to see. I think it has taken me longer to settle in York than in other cities, for example Cambridge or Belfort, but I think that's because it is the first time in a while that I have committed to one place for an extended amount of time - for a military brat like me, it's not easy to keep still. But I'm slowly getting used to it (train trips most weekends notwithstanding).

I don't entirely agree with the framework here, but the
example is still a classic. If you don't recognise it, you can't
honestly call yourself a linguist.
Image from Wikipedia

I think the greatest difference between this year and last is the work, both in terms of the amount of it and what it entails. It's a strange feeling, the start of a PhD...this is my first year of non-taught study - I have been cut loose...maybe a little too loose. My answer to "so, what's your topic?" usually starts "well, it's very vague at the moment...", though reassuringly, my supervisor's not too concerned about this, and doesn't think we'll even look at it too much until the Spring term. In the meantime, I am reading around (lots of reading, but self-selected this year) and teaching myself semantics (just hoping that I understand it properly). Luckily, though, I have one bright flash of timetabled joy on my horizon - I am taking one seminar group for the first year undergraduate Introduction to Syntax course. It's a bit nervewracking to imagine teaching 16 first-years about something I was only learning 6 years ago, but it'll be fantastic experience, and hopefully at least some of them will be sober and compus mentis at 9am on a Wednesday morning. What's more, having something set in my timetable to work around will really help me prioritise and organise my time better around those sessions.

Oh, and CLX? Coming up this weekend, and will be a glorious whirl of polka-dot bepetticoated dresses, good friends, and fairy wings...!

Feeling fresh for a fifth Freshers' Week?

Technically, this is my fifth Freshers' week (it's my sixth year in tertiary education, but one of these was spent working in a high school in France, so I missed out on the revelry that year).

I'm feeling fairly fresh, in that late September/early October always signifies a new start for me, be it a new city, a new home, or a new course - this year, shock horror, only the last one is true, as I embark upon my PhD. As soon as the leaves take on a russet hue and the light jackets come out, I feel like something new is starting. I also have three new housemates, a new haircut, and a renewed vigour for York post-holiday to Germany and France.

However, it's a raggedy kind of start to a new year, seeing as there's quite a bit to mop up from the MA - I've spent today writing a summary of my dissertation to send out to all the parents and schools who were so wonderfully helpful with lending me their children, and I am now exceedingly motivated to turn my and Samir's dissertations into one entity, as our joint talk at the MancSalFiL is now officially on the program, and as such is officially just 33 days away. I've also had the pleasure of a little side work in doing some style editing for the journal Iberia, as a result of meeting the excellent Ángel at last month's LAGB conference.

As for the start of the PhD, it's currently enshrouded in a haze of unknownness. To be fair, term hasn't officially started yet, so I'm not exactly behind before I've started. But for the first time, I really don't know what I'm getting into - my days of taught tertiary education are now firmly behind me, and research is my future, but I don't know where to start with my (fairly vague) proposal, whether I do have any lectures or training sessions, or when I'll next interact with a colleague face to face.

I guess that, for the moment, I just need to focus on the projects I still have to do, and not worry too much about the PhD just yet. After all, I'll have three years to worry about it, starting at the welcome meeting on 10th October...