Words of Wisdom: Randy Pausch, 'The Last Lecture'

I first heard about this around October last year, thanks to a friend who sent me the link, and I remember sitting in front of it and finding it absolutely wonderful. I sat and listened and watched and made inspirational notes in a beautiful notebook.

I am currently in the process of throwing away and dismembering lots of old notebooks (as I am about to move home/ country for a bit, in search of a new adventure; there's only so many notebooks you can take with you, or keep and store in someone else's garage, so I have made myself go through them and throw them away, shredding the odd page of handwritten wisdom. I don't need to keep them all. The Tidying Bible would tell you that it's actually better for you to throw away things like that than to hold on to them; conversely, storing piles and piles of information in your house, useful though they may seem, doesn't actually do anything good for your brain.)

So I am throwing out the notes I made on this, and I am finally getting round to sharing it with all the users of this blog:

There is a lecture series in America called the 'Last Lecture', where distinguished speakers are asked to deliver a lecture on the most important things they've learned. The idea is, if you had only one lecture left to give in your whole life, what would you like to teach people about?... For this particular speaker, Randy Pausch, the 'Last Lecture' was particularly meaningful: at the time of the lecture, he was dying of cancer.

He gives the most amazing advice on time management, positive thinking, and in general just having fun and getting on with it. (I cite a couple of inspirational quotes from some of his lectures at the end of a previous post.)

Here is a link to one of his talks to get you started; there are more online, including a fantastic talk on managing your time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Enjoy!

'Hate My PhD' - Best Of

Recently, sitting on a train and having nothing to do, I pulled out my mobile phone and started rereading some of my posts on this blog.

I had a lot of fun rereading some of these. If nothing else, at least the one thing I got out of my PhD is this little collection of nice writings... (And I did get a whole lot more out of it, too.)

So here are some of my favourite bits from this blog (selected for you in one handy post - for your amusement and joy) :

It was fun rereading the blog post called 'The End'. This is my absolute favourite post on this whole blog (I think you all know why!) In the days leading up to this blog post, I was already composing it delightedly in my head, half unable to believe that I would actually ever get to write these words (when it's two days to the deadline and you still have an unfinished conclusion and about 2, 348 footnotes to straighten out...) I really couldn't quite believe that I would ever get to write this one. And when I finally did sit down to write it... I don't think I've ever enjoyed writing anything more in my whole life.

I also liked writing 'Violation of Rules' and 'I Have a Dream'. The PhD wasn't all misery and difficulty, and even some of the frustrating and miserable bits could be turned on their head, and mined for anecdotal gold. I remember laughing over the Violation of Rules scenario with a lovely friend over an afternoon coffee on a London terrace (ahhh, the life of a PhD...) and I remember coming up with the 'men in white coats' line whilst chatting on the phone, while I joked about how I could maybe just 'phase out the PhD'...

I enjoyed musing over the inns and outs of my personality in 'Lastminute.com'. I subsequently found all my theories on 'being a last-minute person' to be wrong, however, when I discovered the Procrastination Bible in March 2013. I began to think that maybe there's no such thing as a last-minute person. I also began to just do stuff.

And here's another one I like - here are my Top Tips for Doing a PhD.

Happy reading!....

CN

'From Thesis to Book'

Some useful advice here from a kindly young academic on how to go about turning your thesis into a book:

http://frenchhistorysociety.co.uk/blog/?p=374

I am finding this all very useful right now.

'How to Write Everything'

I got a great book for Christmas, entitled 'How to Write Everything'. It's great stuff. It tells you how to write a screenplay, write an article for a magazine, write a novel...

Alas, it does not have a chapter on 'How to Write That Academic Article You Promised to Write Ages Ago (and Now Your Heart Isn't In It)'... (If only there was such a chapter, I would be so excited.)

A wise friend of mine once told me, 'If there is something you really really dread doing, then how about just... don't do it?... I was once supposed to make some changes in an article I was writing... and I just couldn't bring myself to do one particular part of it... and I thought, what would happen if I just - don't do it?... And I left it. And it never mattered.'

That's all nice, and that is actually very good advice, when you think about it; if it makes you feel a surge of dread and if the mere thought of it has you breaking out in hives, consider not doing it.

That's all very nice, but... I still feel like I have to do this article, which I promised to (and am contracted to) do. Somehow, I don't think a 'sorry, I just don't want to do it anymore', a month ahead of the deadline, will cut it.

Note to self: from now on, agree only to do those things which quite clearly bring me joy. Or maybe my note-to-self should be: from now on, say no to absolutely everything.

Mothers and PhD Students

I am working a little bit on The Thesis, soon to become The Book. Have reread the examiners’ reports (which say nice things and which also suggest many improvements); have opened the thesis and started to reread it, and have been struck by its beauty, clarity, and general amazingness, qualities which I never expected to find in there. (You remember those months on end when I worked and worked, getting more and more tired and frustrated, and no end seemed in sight?... This is what I was doing in those months, it transpires now: polishing, prettifying, making concise, making coherent. Rendering beautiful. It really is not bad, this thesis. To everyone who is struggling hopelessly with their thesis: it may not feel like it right now, but all this hard work IS making it better…)

In other news: this summer I read an article (which I have been trying, and failing, to hunt out again, so I could put it on here) about a group of mothers who were being interviewed because they had written and produced a play about motherhood. These women were speaking about the isolation and depression they had experienced as first-time, full-time mums; their play was their attempt to externalize some of the problems they’d faced, and to counter the the taboo nature of what they were feeling: depressed, lonely, isolated, struggling with a daunting, difficult task. It struck a chord; reading phrases such as ‘I felt alone’, ‘I felt isolated’, ‘It was too hard’, ‘I felt like I was failing’, I wondered if the new mother isn’t essentially facing some of the same issues as the struggling PhD student: a huge and daunting task, for which she feels ill-prepared; the feeling that there is not enough support from others; the feeling that the task in hand (looking after a baby/ writing a PhD project) is so monumentally important that the possibility of failing is not even to be contemplated; the guilt at not being ‘better’, the comparisons with more successful mothers/ colleagues, the feeling that you should be ‘good’ at this and should not be saying ‘this is too hard; I can’t do this.’

Having recently spent some time in the company of friends who have just become mums, and having admired how they cope with caring for their newborn offspring, I think my general observation would be: it IS kind of the same. It’s the same demons we’re all fighting.

It made me wonder: we feel very alone sometimes… and I wonder how many other people there are in this world, feeling just as alone, and falling prey to exactly the same demons, just dressed up in a different disguise. It made me feel a little bit more empathy towards the people I thought I know well, and the new people I meet.

For an earlier blog post on the link between babies and PhD theses, click here.

I heart PhD students

A friend of mine, who is a journalist, has recently written a not-terribly-controversial article, in which she takes issue with some young female beauty vlogger’s attempt to reinvent herself as a ‘feminist’. The issue being that, if one minute you are claiming that ‘teenage girls should love their bodies and faces and should, like, go out without makeup sometimes!’, and the next you are making money by encouraging them to spend their own cash on your preferred tube of mascara, then there is perhaps something amiss there.

Anyway, she published this article, and spent the next day reeling from an unbelievably savage barrage of assault on Twitter. The tweets mostly ranged from unbelievably mean (and unjustified) comments on her personal appearance, to suggestions that she should be sued/ shot/ killed.

Attempting to make light of the situation, she tweeted a joke, saying that ‘next time she’ll publish an article called ‘Why I hate One Direction’. This resulted in her getting tweets like ‘THINK TWICE BITCH’ and ‘I FUCKING DARE YOU’.

I personally sometimes am tempted to write something slightly more racy than my usual repertoire, and publish an article containing my thoughts on feminism/ body image/ global politics/ capitalism/ whatever. The thought of saying something which might be deemed controversial, however, and then having to read stupid and horrible comments about myself all day long, is something which has previously entered my mind, and has more than once stopped my hand from hitting ‘Publish’. Now I remember why.

It made me think, also, that I really DO know how to pick my audiences, don’t I?... I have chosen to write a blog which is more likely than not to be ready by only PhD students. Who, in my experience, are basically the nicest, most logical, rational, sensible people there are. PhD students do not, by definition, read something and immediately react with ‘What utter crap. DIE, BITCH!’… No; the very nature of their training and profession means that they consider evidence carefully; they read critically, but with an open mind; they say things like ‘While one might be tempted to respond by saying ‘DIE, BITCH’, IS there really enough EVIDENCE to suggest…?’ and so on. Things are not just black and white to a PhD student, and anything we do not immediately understand or agree with does not automatically get consigned to the dustbin.

It made me appreciate the fact that I work with, and deal with, and write for, academics and PhD students. It made me remember how, when I was on the verge of PhD despair, a Graduate School Guru who was speaking at a seminar on motivation made me feel better by pointing out that there are many things in this profession to be grateful for, one of them being the company of clever, wonderful colleagues and friends.

You are all pretty wonderful. Keep at it. That would be all.

Anniversary

Tis the anniversary of The End. I am now one year on from the finishing of the thesis. I am cheering for everyone who is submitting their PhD, or who has done so in the last few days.

Today I am working from home. I have a scented candle lit in front of me (recommended by a useful motivational blogger as a pretty thing to have on your desk, to make your work space/ office 'more appealing', and therefore more likely to inspire you to work). I have a cup of tea. I have projects and plans, and ideas and books to read.

I'm still the same as I always was, mind you, I still procrastinate, waste time, wonder sometimes where the day has gone. I still haven't made my six-figure salary (damn) and I still contemplate going off to sing in the street to make some extra money. But I'm much happier. Finishing the PhD has served to make me start taking care of myself, to start treating myself a lot more nicely. I no longer do any of that beating-myself-up stuff that I used to do ('I'm not good enough/ I can't do it/ It doesn't matter what I do, I'll never get there/ This is too hard/ Why do I always do everything wrong?'/ etc etc etc). I don't do that anymore.

It's interesting, too, how I've been reacting differently every time there's a spanner in the works, or a brick wall in front of me. Instead of throwing my arms up in the air and going 'Oh well, too hard', or 'Waaaah! Why can't I have what I want? Why is life so unfair?...', instead I've surprised myself by thinking 'OK, so I can't have it my way. So this means, if I want it, I'm going to have to do it another way. So first I have to do XYZ... And I'm perfectly capable of doing XYZ. Let's do it.'

'I get the feeling that for you, this wasn't so much about getting a PhD', a friend said this summer,'as it was about sorting your head out and working on YOURSELF. YOU were the thing that you had to work on so hard!' And we drank to my success in working on me.

The thing is, I don't mean to brag, but I've noticed some changes. You read enough self-help books, I guess that stuff eventually gets to you. There hasn't been that much of a change noticeable to the outside world as yet. But occasionally, just occasionally, I say I'll do something and then I actually do it. Instead of procrastinating on it for months, and then forgetting it was ever meant to happen, and then wondering why my life is not going anywhere, I've started to make things happen for myself. I've started to notice that the people who get things done in this world are not necessarily the best people at doing those things. They're just the ones who decided to get into action - and they stayed in action. The other day, the Lover noticed this new propensity for actually doing what I say I want to do. He says he finds the new me a bit 'scary'.

'You know, it's actually frightening to think how far you could go, if you really decided to go for what you want to do', he said the other day.

Quotes of the day (from my favourite self-help books, of course) :


'What would you do with your life if you found that you have only six months to live?'

and

'What would you do if you were very bold, and you knew that you couldn't possibly fail at anything you try?'...