Bristol Clear – Year round up

And…. that’s a wrap! This week saw the last workshops that Bristol Clear will run for this academic year. Here is a round-up of what’s been on offer since our launch last October, and what we’ve learned for next year.

Before that, though, we have to say thank you… to you! If you didn’t attend the training, participate in writing retreats, book onto 1:1’s, sign up for mentoring, complete our surveys, or read any of our emails, we’d be finishing the year empty-handed. But because you get involved, we have masses to show for the last year.

Training

We’ve run 36 training sessions across the year and trained 530 people. (that’s over a third of the entire research staff community at Bristol!).

This year’s training was similar to last year’s, covering a range of topics that draws on the full scope of the Researcher Development Framework. Topics like careers, grants, writing & publishing, engagement, policy, communication & impact, research project management and personal effectiveness.

What we did differently this year was release the training schedule further in advance to allow you to sign up earlier. This has encouraged people to plan their training better… so we’ll be doing that again next year.

What we also need to do next year is let you know more about what’s coming up closer to the date. So that you can book on, and take advantage of any drop-outs, if you missed the original call.

Careers drop-in

Careers drop-ins were a new initiative this year, 19 were run across the latter half of the year. These sessions give you space to do your own careers research, check a CV, ask a question, or work on job or grant applications. We make laptops available so that you can explore online careers tools, a growing bank of our own online guidance, books and other resources aimed specifically at postdoctoral career level and a quiet space for you to focus.

These have been growing in popularity, but we think we can do more to advertise them… after all, you told us in CROS that you don’t have time to develop your career outside of your normal daily work – and these drop-ins provide just that opportunity.

Writers Retreats’

A day where you can step out of your norm and focus solely on writing – what a luxury! We saw how much you valued these sessions and so this year upped the number of writers retreats’ to one a month. We ran 9 in total at nearly full capacity each time!

Just think what you could achieve by taking out just one full day a month to write!

1:1’s

75 of you have taken advantage of a half-hour coaching session with one of our staff development officers. These are often about careers decisions. But we’ve also talked about things like prioritising writing, negotiating the authorship position you want on a paper, and planning a tricky conversation with a PI.

Mentoring

In September 2018 we launched the Bristol Clear Mentoring Scheme. We’ve run two cohorts so far (Sept 2018, and March 2019) and created 37 (you tell us ‘high quality’) mentor/mentee matches. The scheme will open to all faculties come September 2019 and we’d expect it to then grow considerably.

Alongside one to one matches, we’ve run Academic journeys events, where academics talk candidly about their own journeys through mentoring. We’ve also run several peer to peer events when staff could practice mentoring with each other and gain the benefits of being mentored by a peer.

Writefest

In November, we worked with the Bristol Doctoral College to run a month focused on academic writing. Throughout the month there were 3 video shorts containing 9 writing tips, 9 book reviews on how to write books, 5 weeks of activities, 4 drop-in writing days, 4 writing workshops, 3 thesis boot camp days, 3 writer’s retreats and 373,000 (approx) words written! Phew… roll on WriteFest2019!

The Post Doc Residential

In May 2019 we ran a 2-day residential for new postdocs. Those who attended spent two days, away from their everyday work, thinking about questions like: Where have you come from? Where are you heading? What are your values? Why do you do what you do? How can you be as productive as possible, and What do you need to do next?

Feedback was generally very positive, with some good ideas about how to improve the experience. One person found it truly transformative, saying

It was fantastic! I came away completely different, I’ve never had a professional development experience like this, it changed the way I feel about my career. I would like more early career staff to be able to experience this

More Communication:

In addition to these events, we’ve renewed and reshaped some of our communication. We’re now using Twitter (@UoB_Researchers), and have introduced this blog – which has run 35 blog posts through the year. We’ve also introduced the weekly Friday bulletins to keep you all up to date with what’s going on.

And other things:

And then there are lots of other things that we also do that are probably less visible: support the Reps network and the work of the Research Staff Working Party, meet with Heads of School, run the CROS survey, etc.

They are hugely important, though, as they support everything else that we aim to do.

This summer, particularly, we’ll be working on analysing the CROS data, and getting an action plan ready for next year.

And that will also detail our programme for next year, so look out on our webpages and blog for updates on what we’ll be doing for 2019/2020!

NEW Early Career and Post PhD funding for Industry engagement and skills training from the BBSRC

Forwarded from RED:

BBSRC have awarded the University of Bristol £251K to run a Flexible Talent Mobility Account (FTMA 2) until 31st December 2021.

The FTMA is targeted at talented early career researchers (ECRs), postdoctoral researchers, PhD students who have submitted their thesis and those early in their career who are equivalent to BBSRC David Phillips Fellows or equivalent from industry (PGRs) who have the potential to be the next generation of leaders within UK academic and industrial research.

(Translation: This means that the UoB has been given funds to support researchers to spend time training and preparing to move (or to be ready to move) outside of academia and into industry (usually) – see below for what can be applied for – usually secondments, placements, or other specific ‘mobility’ training).

The deadline is the 11th February.

The focus areas are:

1) Innovation Fellowships. Through awards of up to £20,000 we will support the mobility of talented ECRs and industrialists to realise the potential of their research and innovation. Secondments will take place in areas which align to Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF) themes of: ‘early diagnosis and precision medicine, leading-edge healthcare, transforming food production, and manufacturing and materials’. The duration and nature of each secondment will be determined case-by-case. Secondments may be up to 6 months, carried out as a block of time or a series of shorter visits, to maximise exposure to different research environments and technologies and to facilitate new interactions or support established collaborations. Inward secondments to the University will be designed to align with company needs. International mobility: 25% of the funding available is ring-fenced as part of the Rutherford Fund, to recruit researchers from outside of the United Kingdom (including UK Nationals) to live and work in the UK for the duration of their award. See Guidance and Innovation Fellowship Application form.
Funded Awards need to be spent by 31/12/2021.

2) Innovation Placements. These awards are up to £15,000 to support Submitted Postgraduate Students (S-PGs) to second into Industry for up to 3 months. Projects should align to the ISCF themes given above. We are looking for novel ideas that develop new collaborations with Industrial partners and have a transformative impact on the careers of our talented students. See Guidance and Innovation Placement Application form.
Funded Awards need to be spent by 31/11/2020.

3) Prospective Engagement Awards of up to £1,000 to support ECRs on short visits to companies of interest in the UK and abroad to explore secondment and collaboration opportunities. We want this fund to help develop ECR’s/PGR’s own relationships with Industry and develop their own network and understanding of industry prioritises, aiming to create the next generation of Research Industrialists. Eligible costs are travel and subsistence. See Guidance and Prospective Engagement Application form.
Funded Awards need to be spent by 31/12/2021.

4) Skills Development and Training awards enabling ECRs to take training opportunities tailored to their development needs: these may be internal or external courses and seminars. The ambition of the fund is to create a step change in the translational culture of our ECRs by enabling them to acquire new translational skills, recognise innovative starting points for translation. Eligible costs are course, travel and subsistence costs. See Guidance and Training Application form.
Funded Awards need to be spent by 31/12/2021.

If you are interested, then please contact lisa.kehoe@bristol.ac.uk, RED, Knowledge Exchange Associate (KEA) for Life Sciences to discuss your ideas for secondments, prospective engagement and/or training.

And… that’s a WriteFest wrap!

It’s the 30th November. Which means that tomorrow it’ll be the 1st December. Which means that Academic Writing Month, aka WriteFest 2018, is done!

So what have we achieved

Well, this month, as a university, we’ve produced

  • 3 video shorts containing 9 writing tips
  • 9 book reviews on how to write books
  • 5 weeks of activities
  • 4 drop-in writing days
  • 4 writing workshops
  • 3 thesis bootcamp days
  • 3 writer’s retreats
  • Several other blog posts
  • 1 limerick (a bad one)
  • … and written 373,000 (approx) words.

(All sung to the tune of ‘On the first day of Christmas’)

It’s not just about the words, or the events though. Because what comes from writing is theses, and articles, and books, and grant proposals, and job applications, and these lead to PhDs, and grants, and publications on CVs, and jobs.

So, we have reason to be proud. And next year, we’ll try and do more.

Thanks for spending the month with us!

 

 

 

 

 

A Tuesday limerick

Since writing comes in all shapes and sizes, here’s a limerick for a WriteFest Tuesday:

There once was a male academic
For whom writing was a bit of a gimmick
When at last he was fired
He claimed he’d retired
But his victory was somewhat pyrrhic

(OK, it’s not very good, but you try find something to rhyme with ‘academic’!)

 

 

Writing for peer reviewed journals: Strategies for getting published – by Pat Thomson and Barbara Kamler

(by Sérgio Waitman, Research AssociateDepartment of Aerospace Engineering)

As I was midway through the book by Pat Thomson and Barbara Kamler, it occurred to me that the choice of the subtitle “Strategies for getting published” might seem a bit misleading. Indeed, as the authors themselves emphasize throughout the text, the objective of the book is not to provide a set of writing guidelines with dos and don’ts and article recipes. Instead, they focus on more conceptual notions about the development of the writer identity and how the text should be seen as part of a conversation among members of a particular scientific community.

The book is mostly aimed towards PhD candidates and early career researchers. The first chapters are of particular interest, as they help inexperienced writers to understand the importance of locating their argument within the body of literature of a given journal as well as that of the scientific community in which it exists. The focus is then not on how to write a good report of results, but on how to put forward an argument that fills in a previously identified gap of knowledge.  The author is encouraged to present its paper as another brick in the ever growing research wall, building on previous results and theory, but with a distinctive new take that will allow the wall to keep going up.

The last chapters are more directly related to the writing work per se and provide some good insights into how to put all this in the paper, as well as how to deal with co-authoring duties and feedback from peer review.

My only criticism of the book is its insistent reliance on examples from the field of Education. Even though it is understandable, given the background of both authors and their active research in this area, I would have expected more variability, especially with the extensive experience of the authors in ministering writing workshops around the world. Even though most of what is being said should remain valid and helpful for the majority of academic researchers, it is sometimes hard to appreciate how some of the arguments would be translated to the specificities of different subjects. Nonetheless, I would recommend this book to anyone starting their academic career and struggling to find their voice in the scientific discussion.

Daily Routines of Creative People

When we’re talking about writing, we often suggest that a regular routine is best. That routine doesn’t, however, have to be one that fits into a neat 9-5 day. As the following examples show, the routines adopted by some of history’s most creative people, vary widely.

Visualisation of creative routines

Some are more 9-5… Maya Angelou worked regularly from 7 a.m. to about 3 p.m., and then took a break, doing about a half hour’s more work at 7.30 p.m.

Some, though, are very different. Honoré de Balzac, for example, did most of his creative work between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m., had an hour’s snooze, and then worked again from 9 a.m. until about half past three in the afternoon.

Charles Dickens worked only in the morning, spending the afternoon tramping for miles around London and in the countryside soaking up the atmosphere that he then wrote into his prose.

Voltaire, on the other hand, appears to have done little else but work, sleeping only 4 hours a night, and pausing only briefly to eat.

And in terms of working environment, they differ too. While Dickens wrote in absolute silence in his study, Angelou wrote only in hotel rooms. John Milton was blind by the age of 40, and so dictated his work. W. H. Auden (and this is one that, even as much as we encourage productivity and focus, we probably wouldn’t recommend) took a daily dose of Benzedrine to aid his concentration.

Visualisation of daily routines

What’s your routine? And your own working practice?

(note – Due to copyright restrictions, these images are screengrabs. But various versions of these have proliferated online, so you’ll find alternative, or better quality versions by simply searching for ‘Daily Routines of Creative People’). 

 

 

Writing when you have nothing to do but write!

There are two common problems that academics face when it comes to writing. They are linked by one thing: time. It is one of the most important resources when it comes to writing. We need time to reflect on our research and to think about the best way communicate it to our audience. During some phases of your career, you will need to fit writing around a range of other commitments and may feel that you simply do not have time. At other times, particularly when faced with long periods of research leave, you will have the opposite problem, too much time, making it difficult to focus.

Personal relaxing with laptop in a hammock

This post addresses that second question.

Writing when you have nothing to do but write!

So… You have a year to finish your monograph. Your teaching time has been bought out, your administrative roles have been re-assigned. Time seems to yawn ahead of you. Distractions are tempting as you feel the need to fill your time to feel busy and productive.

Here are five steps to think about:

  1. Choose to start
  2. Choose an approach that will get the best out of you
  3. Understand your project and plan
  4. Seek inspiration, not distraction
  5. Write regularly, write smart

Choose to start

… because, you know that old adage that ‘if you don’t choose a path, then someone will choose it for you’.

I’ve known a number of people start an entire year of writing with a wonderful sense of freedom, but then fail to deliver the promised monograph or research bid… or anything, in fact. The reasons that they give often boil down to the fact that they didn’t actually ‘choose’ to write.

In my book, choosing to write is OK, and choosing not to write is OK. Both are empowering, in different ways.

What’s less empowering is not making a choice – because that’s still, really, making a choice. Just not one that we own.

If we want to write, we have to choose to start.

Choose an approach that will get the best out of you

Take time to plan. Having chosen to start, simply piling into writing might be the worst thing that you can do. You have time – loads of time. So take time to plan, to think, to experiment, to reflect, to change your approach and try again. If you find your best approach and rhythm, you’ll get a lot more done, and better, and with better mental health, than simply putting fingers to keys and seeing what comes out.

Be self-aware. Think about how and when you have worked at your best in the past. Do you write slowly and methodically, or do you take the Jack Kerouac route? Do you need human interaction to develop your ideas? Do you need seclusion for long periods of time? Do you need to move your writing space regularly? Do you need noise or quiet? Different people need different environments to produce their best writing. Work out who you are as a writer and arrange your time and space to fit your best habits (not your worst!).

Understand your project, and plan

Bring together all the tasks you need to do to achieve your project(s). You’ll almost certainly have background reading, data organisation and choice, structuring at different scales, writing (in chunks), proofing, image selection, correspondence, bibliographies etc. When do they need to be done by? What else is there that needs to be fitted in? Conferences, travel, training, being ill? Family birthdays, housework and improvements? Christmas shopping? (it’s a whole year remember, and anything that you can plan-in is planned and won’t hijack your timetable).

Break your writing into segments. Like eating an elephant, one person I know got so much stress from trying to work out how to write their PhD ‘as a whole’, that they were on anti-depressants and only days away from giving up. And then they realised that if they wrote just 500 words a day, they’d produce a chapter every 6 weeks, and the full thesis would write itself in about 9 months. Then it just became a question of hitting a very achievable daily target.

Prioritise and allocate time. Make a list of all the writing, the tasks, the deadlines and put them in order. Make sure all your objectives have an appropriate list of tasks to get them done – is there anything missing from your list? Then allocate time to each task. And be generous.

Be kind to yourself. And, if you miss a deadline, be kind to yourself and reschedule. In many ways, that’s the advantage of planning. If you miss one target, you can see it in the context of the whole (which is planned) and don’t feel like the entire project has gone off the rails.

Seek inspiration, not distraction

Allow yourself to seek inspiration. Distraction [Dis-traction – or being ‘pulled away from’] prevents you from concentrating on a task. Inspiration [literally ‘breathing into’] feeds ideas into your task and transforms it.  A key difference between the two seems to be the mental state that each puts you in. Distraction is about mental agitation, which prevents you from focusing on anything. Inspiration comes from deep focus – even if that focus isn’t your work. I’ve had some of my most inspired moments pruning fruit bushes in the garden!

Be in the moment, rather than being ‘always in the writing’. If you’re working to a plan, then this should be possible. If you’re on holiday, be on holiday – don’t be thinking all the time ‘I should be writing’. If you go to a conference, then ‘be there’. If you’re ill, then ‘get better’. If you’re reading, then ‘read’. Being always in the writing is – again – a state of mental distraction. Be where you are, and enjoy – knowing that the bigger project is planned, and still safely on the rails.

Write regularly, write smart

You’re looking to make all your writing time count. So these all bear repeating:

Once you have planned your writing project, then half and full days are best. Start each writing session by planning what you are going to do that session – don’t just start writing!  It’s not always possible to write every day but write regularly, even in your research phase, to keep in practice and keep improving. Book onto our Regular, Productive Writing workshop to learn more about getting into good writing habits.

Or try the Seinfeld method known as ‘don’t break the chain’. Make a cross on your calendar every day when you write something – even if it isn’t much – some days it will be just enough to open up a new idea. Most of all, the visual cue of the calendar can help motivate you to make sure you write a little every day – just don’t break the chain:

Calendar with crosses against each day

  • Plan each writing session. Think about how much writing you can manage in the time you have – write a few sentences specifying what content you will cover and how that will fit into the larger structure of the piece you are working on (if appropriate). This gives you focus for the day and stops you from getting distracted by your larger project.
  • Eliminate distractions. Turn off your e-mail, switch off social media, put your phone on mute. Try to ignore that itchy feeling. It’s easy to distract yourself when things get hard. Enjoy a deeper focus without distractions.
  • Write with others. By agreeing writing time with others, it’s easier to feel compelled to use it properly. Invite a colleague or a small group of colleagues to write with you. Agree a place and a time and commit to being there. Attend one of our writers’ retreats to try a great structured approach to writing regularly and together.
  • Take breaks. For every 1.5 hours you write, you should take a ½ hour break. Your brain needs time to rest properly and regularly when you are working it hard. Most of us don’t take breaks because we are afraid of losing our train of thought or momentum, but it can be very damaging. A practical solution to this is to write a short summary of what you’ve written so far and what you want to tackle next before taking a break to help your brain rest properly and to help you get going again as quickly as possible.
  • Find the right place. If you find you are interrupted too much in your office, write somewhere else. Or simply lock the door and unplug the phone during your writing periods – let the world back in for breaks and non-writing days.

 


Three things to read if you want to know more:

  1. Cal Newport, Deep Work. Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (London: Piatkus, 2016)
  2. Rowena Murray and Mary Newton, ‘Writing retreat as structured intervention: margin or mainstream?’, Higher Education Research & Development 28:5 (October 2009) 541-554
  3. Maggie Berg, The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016)

 

Writing when you have little time

There are two common problems that academics face when it comes to writing. They are linked by one thing: time. It is one of the most important resources when it comes to writing. We need time to reflect on our research and to think about the best way communicate it to our audience. During some phases of your career, you will need to fit writing around a range of other commitments and may feel that you simply do not have time. At other times, particularly when faced with long periods of research leave, you will have the opposite problem, too much time, making it difficult to focus.

This post is about the first problem. A second post, coming up on Wednesday, addresses the second.

Note – If you simply do not have any time and space to write because your teaching or administrative load is too great then take care of yourself first. You will not write well if you are stressed and tired. Don’t simply add writing to an already exhausting workload:

clock with wings

Writing when you have little time

Four steps to writing when you have little time:

  1. Make time
  2. Prioritise
  3. Allow time to plan
  4. Write smart

(more…)