Made myself a half-caf with Fast Forward and Slow Motion from Counter Culture and oh my goodness it is so good. (With liquid stevia and oat-almond-pea milk.) ☕
Finished reading: Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of ’80s and ’90s Teen Fiction by Gabrielle Moss 📚
TFW you’re coding an interview transcript & say to your past self, “PLEASE have asked this follow up question” and you keep reading & your past self DID ask that follow up question.
First Med Deli gluten free chocolate cake in about 4 years. NOM NOM NOM.
How do people do things? Do I seem to do things? I feel like I do no things. I feel like my life is just sitting with my kid & eking out a tiny bit of research each day. If you can be not me, and tell me a thing you noticed me do, it would really help me. Thank you!
🔖 5 Productivity Practices That Helped Me Finish My Dissertation
Thought I would feel attacked by this post, then I read it and it said “If I was experiencing pain, brain fog or fatigue due to my chronic health issues, I gave myself permission to take breaks, rest and take the rest of the day off.” I do this too!
W. and I have now been married longer than we were together before we were married. He continues to make me laugh. He is a delightful spouse and father. We make our own fun. I’m glad we’re married.
🔖 The Allure of the Nap Dress, the Look of Gussied-Up Oblivion
I don’t have a clothing budget these days, but if I did, you can bet I’d be scouring eBay, ThredUp, and Poshmark (among others) for nap dresses. I have many aesthetics and would love “Victorian Ghost” to be one of them, though I think I like the idea of embracing my Madwoman in the Attic status even more.
A post-ac/alt-ac reading list
Posting this list of books here in case others might find it useful. It will probably grow with time.
- ‘Making it’ as a contract researcher : a pragmatic look at precarious work - Nerida Spina, Jess Harris, Simon Bailey, Mhorag Goff
- Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers - Kathryn E. Linder, Kevin Kelly and Thomas J. Tobin
- The Freelance Academic: Transform Your Creative Life and Career - Katie Rose Guest Pryal
- Succeeding Outside The Academy: Career Paths beyond the Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM - Edited by Joseph Fruscione and Kelly J. Baker
Last updated: August 1, 2020.
Advanced Literature Review Tips
By far, my most visited blog post ever is my Start-to-Finish Literature Review Workflow and honestly, I return to it myself fairly often. I sent it to my EdCamp friend Allison Rae Redden when she was writing her first critical lit review in grad school. I also tweeted a couple more advanced lit review tips at her, and I wanted to gather those here. So here goes!
Make a concept map before you outline. If you haven’t concept mapped before outlining, go back and do that. (I scoffed at my prof who suggested this. I thought I was so good at lit reviews I didn’t need it. I was wrong.) I like to use bubbl.us, which I learned about from Dr. Summer Pennell.
Synthesize. It’s tempting and easy to just summarize studies, but putting them in conversation with each other is much better. Synthesizing the results of multiple studies is a good way to bring them together. Focus on grouping them by findings and briefly mention context and methods as you introduce each article.
Explicitly articulate critiques of studies. Identify gaps and point them out. I usually say something like ”It’s worth noting that none of these studies address…" or similar. I try to be descriptive rather than speculative - noting what’s missing - without directly pointing to how a specific study could be improved, but that’s just me.
If you simultaneously synthesize instead of summarize AND provide a strong description of each study’s context, methods, and results, you’ll be way ahead of most people.
I hope in the future to provide more specific examples for these tips like I did in my earlier post, but I decided it was more important to go ahead and get this out in the world than to wait until I had perfected it.
Cross-posted to: Twitter