Community and Resources
The chart above shows how many words I have written each of the last 15 days. My goal was 500 words per day. It was a stretch goal. I would have been happy with 300 words. What is most amazing here is what you don't see: any empty days. Before #AcWriMo, my average day consisted of …
Continue reading "Day 24: How #AcWriMo is helping my fear of Writing."
Life is about balance. Yes - I am working a lot and very hard on my dissertation proposal. At the same time I am taking care of my health (the reason I am in DC and not at my University). But it is important to take time to live - beyond work and health. Today, …
November has been an uncharacteristically productive month. This is thanks to #AcWriMo and my own 100 Day Challenge. The interesting part about that realization is that I have always had it in me to be this productive - so why wasn't I? PERFECTIONISM A long time ago, my husband told me about the idea of …
My dissertation consists of three papers. When I began this challenge, my plan looked like this: A literature review of something? Some idea? Some other idea? If you are concerned about my future as a PhD at this point, you are in good company. My goal is to have the front-end (or theoretical arguments) drafted completely …
Why are these milestones every five days? Goal setting theory essentially suggests that people perform to meet their goals. The goals that we have as future scholars are measured in years. So it is really easy to get lost. After making no discernible progress in a year, I started the 100 Day challenge as means to keep …
I have been making steady, but slow, progress on my literature review. And I am officially over it. I still find the research interesting, and the process is enlightening. I know more than I could ever have imagined knowing about a single topic. But I just need it to end. Yesterday, preferably. I am close. …
Continue reading "Day 19: This Literature Review Needs to End"
Yesterday, I relaxed in the afternoon. And I may have stayed up way too late. I was supposed to sleep in - just a little bit. But now, it seems that my early morning habit has taken effect. I woke up at 4:55 am - before my alarm! While I am thrilled that after only …
Today was a good day. All the reading I have been doing trying to recreate my spreadsheet paid off (today, at least). Revisiting the literature in that much detail, years after I originally read it, has given me a new perspective. I think I finally have worked out how I am going to organize my …
I have been hard at work finishing my literature review. I originally thought it would take me three weeks to complete. It has been three weeks. I am not even half-way done. What happened? Missing files. This is one of the worst nightmares of graduate students and researchers everywhere. Actually, this is a nightmare for …
These milestones come too fast! I am always surprised! On Day 10, I set myself some SMART goals, This is how I did: Here are the goals for the next five days: I sent an update to my advisor. I sent update to Mentor 1 and 2 at the same time. I became familiar with Norton …
Every morning, I wake up in time to get to my local Starbucks when they open at 5:30 am. Then I challenge myself to read and write for one whole Pomodoro cycle (which takes about 2 hours). I usually write for about 1 hour and read for one hour. I get 500+ words written …
I started my PhD in September 2012. And I quickly realized that I was out of my depth. Not in the way impostor syndrome makes you feel, though there was plenty of that happening. I was out of my depth because of the amount of reading. There was more reading and writing than I had …
Today, I worked from home after my writing sprint in the morning. This is my work space. I have the Wacomb tablet and the cheat sheet I discussed in the Dyslexic Grad Student's Toolbox post. I am not writing much on this blog today. My brain is a little bit fired for the following reasons: …
Continue reading "Day 12: I’m just here so I don’t get fined"
Yesterday, I posted this on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ScienceClau/status/660814052223025152 I wrote this in order to remind myself (and anyone reading) that dyslexics can, indeed, write. Does that mean that it is easy? Nope. After years of writing and practice, has it gotten any easier? Not really. So, what is it like writing with dyslexia? It is different. …
It is Day 10, which means it is time for a reckoning! Did I actually accomplish my goals? Almost! On Day 5, I set myself some SMART goals. This is what I accomplished: I wrote only 2,258 words in total. I did not meet this goal because of my Day 6 distraction: Getting the Harry Potter tickets! …
Once upon a time, I was an early morning person. I used to get more done by 10 am than most people could accomplish in an entire day. Then grad school happened. It was hard to keep up a routine. There was virtually no external structure. I inevitably lost my super early morning edge. I tried …
Today was a day of meetings and errands. But I still need to get some writing done. Not just because crappy words on paper are better than no words at all. But because I have to send an update to my mentor tomorrow morning. In the past, I have taken days of meetings as permission …
November is just around the corner and that means that Academic Writing Month (#AcWriMo) is upon us! The best advise I have seen prior to taking on this challenge is to be prepared to write. These are the steps I am taking in order to be ready. First, I announced it to the world: https://twitter.com/ScienceClau/status/659722302108602368 …
What do you need in order to succeed in grad school? ✓ Hard Work? ✓ Determination? ✓ Passion? ✓ Luck? Absolutely! And if you are dyslexic, you are going to need a lot more than that. This is my personal Dyslexic Grad Student Toolbox. Mac Laptop Every grad student needs a laptop. I recommend the …
I had high hopes for today. Wake up early, get Harry Potter Play Tickets, work on my dissertation the rest of the day. I was so wrong. The Naive First Attempt I woke up bright and early at 6 am, full of excitement. I got my priority email and immediately clicked it. After waiting in …
Continue reading "Day 6: “It does not do to Dwell on Tickets and Forget to Dissertate”"
It has been 5 workdays. Time for a reckoning. What were my goals? I did not really specify them. My bad. Shameful, really. Well, what did I do? I wrote 2,256 words. I completed the first section of my literature review. I re-worked the hypotheses for my second paper. I got a new idea started …
Today was a very frustrating day because DYSLEXIA. All I wanted to do was read. The problem was that I just wanted to read a book. A print book. (cue dramatic music). Writing may be the bane of my existence, but reading is just as hard. I often scan what I need to read, run it …
Today was going to be a writing day. But it turned out into a meeting-and-getting-new-projects-started-day instead. It is only the second day, and I am already behind. I am behind, by one set of metrics: number of words written. By other metrics, I am doing just fine. So why is there disconnect? Priorities. In grad …
Overestimation. That is a problem. Today, I had hoped to read two different papers and write one page (about 1,000 words). Alas, I did about half. I have mentioned before in my post about how to survive grad school with Dyslexia, that my general rule of thumb is to work twice as hard for twice …
I passed my Comprehensive Exams on September 23, 2014. It has been over a year and I am STILL NOT a candidate. Sigh. There are plenty of excuses as to why: First, I had to recover. The comps process was very hard on my body and mind. I needed to get those back up before using …
Regardless of what you are studying, you have to consume an incredible amount of information. And you have to keep it all in order so that you do not waste time remembering something you read several years ago. When I started my PhD, I started a spreadsheet. Every paper I read (and want to remember) …
This is a chronological list of every 100 Day Challenge post. Join Me! Just go to Day 1. This is day one of your challenge. Come back to this page every day, select the day of your challenge, and leave a note describing your progress on that day! It is OK if you make no progress (just …
It is very likely that at some point during your PhD coursework, you will have to lead a seminar. Professors usually let the senior students do it first so that the junior students can see them in action. In order to prepare to lead a seminar, you need to do the following: ONE: Read all …
This is where you will find my posts with resources for Dyslexic PhD Students. These are my Guides and Resources: Surviving your PhD with Dyslexia The Dyslexic Grad Student's Toolbox Preparing for the GMAT/GRE These are my post that discuss Dyslexia: The Irony of Writing for a Dyslexic Audience An Embarrassing Dyslexic Moment How I Use …
Earning a PHD is hard. REALLY hard. My advisor recently told me that if I ever met someone who had an easy time writing their dissertation, they were lying. This is a process that is supposed to fundamentally alter your thought processes. You become a scientist. It is exhilarating. It is hard. And if you …
A brief story of how I eventually learned I was Dyslexic - and the power of songs to make sense of words. Struggling during the Early Years I always knew there was something different about me. I was in 5th grade and I still had problems spelling my name. In exams where I had to …
If you are anything like me, you are a professional who has been out of school for more than a few years. You might also be the first person in your family who went to college (not to mention getting a Master's degree or PhD). If so, there is little in our networks that will help …
If you are a brand-new doctoral student, you might be wondering what life will be like. More importantly, you might wonder what you need to do to prepare. With the new academic year about to start, I decided to start this new series of resources. These are the posts that I will write over the …
The process of earning is a PhD varies from school to school. And from discipline to discipline. In a Business program, the process generally unfolds in three stages. In this post I will discuss what each stage entails, what faculty expect of you, and most importantly what YOUR agenda should be as a student and …
Hi there! Earning a PhD is hard work. No worries, though. There are a few things here that may be worth your while if you are a PhD student (or know of PhD students that could use some help). Last updated: January, 2017. Mentoring Network! Join a growing mentorship network - because I cannot handle all …
It is so hard to stay on track when there is no structure: there is no one checking on my progress, I don't have any coursework, I don't even have to teach. I do want to graduate in time (and by that I mean within 5-6 years). So I constantly struggle to find ways to …
With a little more time since I finished reading all those abstracts and papers, I have had the space and time to reflect on what I have learned. But first, some fun facts: I read 2,142 abstracts This is roughly 291,024 words I looked at 227 articles more closely As it can be expected, at …
This is my always up-to-date page of Learning Resources. As I navigate the PhD process, I will make sure to collect as many resources as I can. At the moment, I have collected resources for Statistics, Programming, and Writing. Last Updated: August, 2016. STATISTICS Learning the Basics Khan Academy: Probability & Statistics Khan Academy provides …
I have often been told: "If you didn't write it down, it didn't happen." And I never wanted to listen. It just took too much time and effort to write things down. But when I started my PhD, I knew I would need some sort of way to make sure that I stayed on track. …
Here I am at last: 2014 (and In Press). There were 588 articles total. YIKES! And yes. They all ran together near the end. I will have more thoughts later. When I get to think about the 5 years as a whole. Almandoz, J. 2014. Founding Teams as Carriers of Competing Logics When Institutional Forces …
Another year in review. There were 343 articles. YAY! And by that I mean eeks! It somehow just hit me. Each year there are about 345 spots in the A journals in my field. How am I supposed to publish in these places - seriously. And it is not just me. It is everyone on …
In 2012, I looked at 325 articles. I must be getting better at figuring out what I like, because there are only 26 articles in the short list! I am trying to be careful about what I read. And think carefully about each article on the short list. It is hard though, at this point …
This year, I reviewed 327 articles. I liked 54 of them. That is more than usual, but during this year there were some pretty awesome meta-analyses and other articles describing the process of theory-building. Which, in my book, is the equivalent of finding gold at the end of the rainbow. Only better. Because what would …
Another year, and more confirmation of my preferences. I am not surprised that I am paying close attention to institutional theory, institutional logics, and change processes. I began to look at those topics as a first year for my Year One Summer Paper Proposal. For this year, I looked at 295 articles in the top …
I am overdue with an idea paper. On October 24, I wrote about Top Management Teams. I should have had an update on October 31. No excuses. I missed the deadline. So, even if it is late, this is my latest research idea. BRIEF LITERATURE OVERVIEW Friedland and Alford’s seminal essay paved the way for …
Continue reading "Exploring the Institutional Logics Literature"
If I did not know I was a researcher focused on organizations, this year certainly would have cleared it up. Since the management department at my school is divided between organizational behavior and strategy, it is good to see evidence (in the form of a word cloud) of my preferences. I originally chose strategy because …
My computer is the source of all the things. It is both my place of work and entertainment. I connect with my family and friends and conduct meetings. I have all the papers that I am writing for my degree as well as a science fiction I have been working on. I learn by participating …
I spent today trying to create a brief overview of the Top Management literature - well beyond my review for comps. This is but a small step in my quest to identify an area to make a theoretical contribution. BRIEF LITERATURE REVIEW In their 1984 paper, Hambrick and Mason (Hambrick & Mason, 1984) lay the …
A lot of my work takes place in a web browser. Unfortunately, that is where all my distractions happen too. In order to minimize distractions, I have been finding ways to move my work away from the web browser. Enter Mailbox for Mac. It was quite a quest to get a betacoin in order to …
The third year in most management doctoral programs has the potential to be wasted. This is the year that marks the beginning of the transition from knowledge consumer to knowledge producer. Making that transition is the key to successfully completing a doctoral program. The first two years of my doctoral education consisted on exposure to …
Dyslexic PhD 