In early January I wrote the time for “just writing” was over and that I needed to get back to my PhD and that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing.
More than 10,000 words written. My third of six or possibly seven case studies about family wine businesses now largely written, and the c
In the last few weeks, I have just been writing for fun. Four published blog posts and a couple of drafts for future reference.
It’s been nice to just free write after spending most of the last year working on my PhD thesis. Over the last twelve months, pretty much every time I have thought about just writing, I have had a sense of guilt that I should be working my thesis. However, across the Christmas New Year period, I made the decision to put the thesis away and have a break. Continue reading
A recent conversation with my daughter-in-law and the birth of our first grandchild provided a point of reflection on where I am at in “What’s Next”. Perhaps my impending 60th birthday was an added impetus?
It’s been over three and a half years since my last day in the office. While I didn’t formally retire until 30 June 2015, I effectively retired from my firm at the end of March in that year.
So here’s my report card.
I haven’t missed the office for even one day! Continue reading
A brilliant Spring Adelaide day
I am in the middle of my second annual review for my PhD program. The upshot is I’m going well but I have a lot to do!
So knuckling down across a long weekend I was faced with a pile of data to analyse and a dilemma of what to listen too while I got into it. Through a few hours of Ireland’s RTE – Gold ( I discovered RTE Gold last year when we were in Dublin) I moved onto Spotify and quickly onto my own playlists and within a couple of hours to my 60s and 70s playlist.
My 60s and 70s has hundreds of songs and provide good background as well as an opportunity to pause from my analysis, listen and reflect. These are all songs that I found in the 70s my high school and Uni days (that’s the first time around Uni!).
I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts about some of the songs I paused on Continue reading
The Old Library, Trinity College, Dublin
As I have put my nose to the grindstone and got right back into my research, my principal supervisor’s early advice that you read your way to a Phd has really been ringing in my ears.
With Christmas out of the way and a quiet New Year, I have been slogging away.
My goal was to have my draft Literature Review completed by the end of the first week of January. I have laboured over it for so long and had really thought I was nearly there but I just am not!
The advice of rejection for a journal article I submitted before Christmas has me going back to basics. The rejection letter said, go back and read more, do more to make the research more robust. On the one hand, I was annoyed as I felt in conjunction with my experienced co-authors that the article as submitted met, the criteria at least for a revise and resubmit, but apparently not.
On the other hand, I was thankful that the rejection letter came with advice about what needed to be worked on.
As the journal article was the culmination of my Honours Research and is the basis of my PhD research, the advice in the rejection letter has had me rethinking how robust my PhD project is. How robust is my literature review, am I approaching my research method correctly, what will my contribution be? It’s later that is the fundamental step in being awarded a PhD.
As I read one of the journal articles recommended I found myself asking whether I had really nailed a key construct in my PhD research or was I just kidding myself? Continue reading