your academic FYP 30th January, 2025

Academia essentials hand-picked fortnightly for the informed scholar

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Image: The Study of a Hand; Credits: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington; John Davis Hatch Collection

Hey Scholar, here's what we have for you this week:

• Hey Scholar, here's what we have for you this week:

• PhD and Postdoctoral opportunities 🇺🇸 🇪🇪 🇨🇦 🇬🇧 ;

• The bullet(-point) proof evidence of ChatGPT use at university;

• A playlist for when you're drowning in journal articles at an ungodly hour;

• A 3-year-long PhD application timeline, visualized;

OPPORTUNITIES

💼Funded PhDs, Postdocs and academic job openings

• Postdoctoral Positions @ North Carolina State University, USA: click here

• PhD Positions @ Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia: click here

• Postdoctoral Positions @ University of Calgary, Canada: click here

• PhD Positions @ University of Dundee, Scotland UK: click here

If the idea of making your PhD application is daunting, here's a detailed guide to help you through the entire process👇

RESOURCES

📅Daily reminder

The Critic saw some pretty dark days during the initial phases of her thesis-writing: writer's block, not seeing the end of the tunnel, finding the will to write that damn thesis, you get the vibe. To inspire herself, she created this desktop wallpaper: 

🌌'research papers at 1am'

Being a scholar is 10% 'getting it' and 90% trying to get there. If you need a soundtrack to accompany the tortures of your intellectual challenges, check out this playlist. It's especially fitting for those late-night-drowning-in-journal-articles kinda sessions. 

🧱Paper writing basics: structure

If you're writing a paper - or at least trying anyway, then you might want to check out this article here which provides a list of ten simple rules for structuring a paper.

BRAIN FOOD

🫴Handcrafted Research (quite literally)

Writing by hand requires meticulous planning and leaves little room for error—at least that's what a recent article in The Guardian suggests. Maybe you agree with this critique of handwriting practices, and perhaps you can't even remember the last time you wrote by hand for your scholarly work. However, you might want to reconsider after hearing what another journal article has to say. Writing and drawing by hand are argued to be critical research techniques within the epistemic process, constituting "the step from potentially ambiguous data to stable facts, and from provisional ideas to guiding concepts." Essentially, physical inscription practices don't just require thinking beforehand; they facilitate thinking and are therefore especially valuable during the research development phase. By opting for digital methods over handwriting for efficiency's sake, you might be missing out on a crucial space for interaction between the collection of phenomena and the formation of theses.

🕶️Smart on Sight, Short on Insight

We've got a real chewy bit of brain food for you this week. In her article titled, 'The torture of the unphilosophical mind', Professor Callard writes that to live a philosophical life is to give our minds a task worthy of its powers. It's not enough to be only provoked by the things we observe: we need to stop being so damn shy about thinking too hard, lest we turn ourselves into nothing more than clever observers. Dear scholar, you might be wondering what's this got to do with my scholarship, my abilities to research? Well, in recent years, there's been a movement across disciplines - yes, STEM too - to bring the Ph back into the PhD. The powers that be are worried that the way our current doctoral programs are set up don't facilitate the production of thinkers, but only doers (they may be right). Engaging more philosophically in and with our research is likely to facilitate deeper cognitive connections for not only producing different research but for producing research differently. 

NEWS

🎯Bullet(point)-proof evidence of ChatGPT use

Using subheadings, bullet points and the phrase “in conclusion” twice was part of the evidence brought against Haishan Yang, a PhD student who was expelled for allegedly using ChatGPT in an 8 hour exam. The researcher is a non-native English speaker who has previously used ChatGPT to check their English but denied using it on the exam as it was expressly prohibited. Yang may be bruised but he is certainly unbowed: since their expulsion (from both the university and the USA) they have a solo author paper under review in a reputable journal, sublet their apartment to fund their travels around Africa and sued the university for over $1 million in damages and defamation.

🚫I Didn't Write This Paper

What's worse for your academic reputation than not publishing enough? After being named as an author on a paper you didn't write, you contact the journal to address the issue. The journal retracts the paper but does not amend the author list. Sounds crazy but it happened to this guy. 

KEEPING IT REAL

3 years, 41 PhD applications: Visualized

This Redditor had no problem demonstrating their resilience and willingness to put in the effort in the face of adversity, making 41 applications over 3 years before being offered a spot in a PhD program. Some lessons you could take from these they shared graphs are: it really is a numbers game sometimes (and making more applications increases your chances), don't be afraid to apply to a program again even if they reject you, Sankey Diagrams are pretty and you should consider using one in your next presentation.

*We know that ‘apples' don't capture the full spectrum of human expression, so let us know what you didn't like about it by replying to this email.

We'd love to hear from you either way, so hit reply to send your comments, questions or ramblings to us!