PhD diary
A journey as a doctoral student between 2017 and 2020. I keep these posts because, looking back from my early days, I can see how much my perspectives have shifted as a reminder of the learning journey.
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Week 91: Being together for three years
This week has been relaxing and felt slow. My supervisor has told me to take some time off after the conference. Without feeling guilty about taking a break from work, I have been spending time reading some non-academic books and recipes. But I need to finish revising my chapter by next weekend. I worked a read more
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Week 90: Oral presentation
This week, I spent five days in Cardiff attending a conference. Cardiff was truly beautiful. Sadly, I didn’t have the opportunity to explore the city beyond the university area, but I would like to go back one day and travel around Wales for sightseeing. The architecture in Cardiff, such as the National Museum and the read more
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Week 89: Presentation rehearsal
I have read tips on how to present research at academic conferences. This week, I rehearsed my presentation again and again and revised my script and slides. In the first practice run-through, I covered most of what I wanted to include, which took 40 minutes (but my slot is only 15 minutes). My last rehearsal read more
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Week 88: My second conference
My first time in Sheffield was fun and productive! I stayed at a hotel in the city centre for three days and enjoyed walking around the town. On Thursday, I took the tram, attended a conference at the university and met a couple of Japanese scholars (but most of the attendees were British scholars based read more
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Week 87: Transcripts and Russian pelmeni
Throughout the week, I made transcripts of audio data of five cases and translations with a three-line interlinear gloss format. Until last week, I didn’t think it would take one hour to transcribe about three minutes of audio data in this way. It took me seven hours to complete one full consultation. This routine task read more
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Weeks 85 and 86: Chapter revisions, fasting and baking
The whole of last week was devoted to revising a chapter. I am used to rushing to meet deadlines and working intensely for long hours, but I found revising, going back over content repeatedly, much tougher than writing the first draft. The longer your to-do list, the more you tend to avoid it. Spending time read more
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Week 84: Tasks in parallel
I didn’t send the quick sketch version of my draft to my supervisor in the end. Instead, I spent the whole week describing the relevant dimensions of my framework and building its structure. Transcription Transcribing audio data is really time-consuming. My supervisors often tell me that I shouldn’t waste time transcribing unnecessary parts of read more
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Week 83: A sketch of the framework and Focaccia
This week wasn’t as productive as last week, but it was wonderful to have a coffee break with my colleagues. We discussed our research progress and gave advice to one another. I explained that I have been setting up a provisional framework and also reorganising my literature review chapters. One of my colleagues, who is read more
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