Posted on by mamothena

No matter your PhD needs, PhD Twitter has you covered…

In keeping with the spirit of being a millennial…I’m going talk about PhD Twitter and how great it is 🙂 . Before I did my PhD I hated Twitter. I found it too random, for lack of a better word. And not even lists and carefully curated content made a difference. I would login once and forget to come back for another six months. Until I started my PhD…

It started off with following the organizations I like, and then I got into PhD Twitter hashtags. #PhDchat #PhDlife #PhDadvice, #PhD… you name it. The information was still random, but now I felt connected to it. I was entertained, encouraged, and sometimes even enlightened. You cannot go 2 tweets without something that brings an emotional response out of you. And that’s why the platform is so addictive. Follow with care!

PhD Twitter can encourage you just as much as it can freak you out. Often people share horror stories of their experiences, or their disillusion with the PhD and academia…and you will wonder why you logged in. Here are some of my favourite (and not so favourite) things to engage with on PhD Twitter:

  1. Practical advice

This is a checklist on dealing with supervision. The best part for me is the comment from the PhD student, who balances this neat checklist with a little dose of reality. Some advice out there will miss the nuances of your situation, or your motivations at the time. As one of the responses state, sometimes your desperation to get into a program makes it hard to make sure your supervisor and project meet some criteria.

When you feel you can do the research and the supervisor seems nice enough, you do it.  We settle for the acceptance letter, and plan to solve all other issues later.  For better or worse. But it is good to always have this kind of advice around. PhD consultants abound on Twitter. There’s a checklist for everything.  And we don’t mind… we are begging to graduate and we are not choosers.

  1. Solidarity

Sometimes it takes only a few words to express it all, when others have had that same experience. And that is one of the most comforting feelings for any human — more so the PhD student. This person expressed a challenge without getting into detail, and was able to get support and sympathy from other PhD students. With every little word of encouragement, retweet, and heart, she felt a little better.

Even old acquaintances reached out to suggest a little coffee break…

…you can tell our PhD student hasn’t been all that reachable on the phone.

  1. Much. Relate.

Sometimes you stand in solidarity with others because you know you might need it someday, or you know how it feels to need those words of encouragement. But sometimes someone’s challenge seems like an exact replica of yours. And a comic strip captures everything that you go through or feel. When someone out there tweets about something this real, we can’t help but testify.  We say things like “I feel so attacked right now” (this is a good thing), “stop talking about my life”, and like this person, “behold, the gospel”.

  1. The dark side…

Sometimes someone will give you a little dose of reality regarding the PhD journey – the low paying academic jobs awaiting you, the poor job prospects overall, how overqualified you are for most positions, and how unsuitable you are for industry. When this advice comes from a well-rounded source it is palatable – perhaps a current academic trying to find their way in the milieu, someone who quit but found something valuable to do (“industry”, their own passions etc.).  Anybody who is not all doom and gloom.  But then there are pages like this:

Is not having any more PhD students the solution to all of challenges facing academia and society? With pages like these you don’t even do an example tweet. Just do a quick scroll through the timeline and if you are a PhD student, tell me if you aren’t scared. And discouraged. Or at least mildly concerned.

  1. PhD secrets. How many secrets can one field have?

PhD secrets are like PhD advice 2.0. They aren’t regular advice; they are things Big Academia is hiding from you! Sometimes they are educational; sometimes they are to the tune of number 4 above. These secrets are multifaceted. Some hide in plain sight…

Some are really, really magical hacks you would otherwise have not uncovered…

Who knew changing the name of a file you have been working on forever could give you a new lease on life? Changing your perspective on something changes how you deal with it for sure. Sometimes we make things harder for ourselves by thinking they are more complex than they really are. And little mental hacks like these are the little miraculous things that we didn’t even know could unlock our creativity and keep us going.

  1. Big ideas on the PhD in the 21st century…

Through PhD Twitter you get access to all of the latest ideas on how universities can reinvent the program and stay valuable to society.  Through these ideas, we as students can also see where our careers are headed. We know that change is inevitable, and graduate programs will have to continually evolve to fit better into their contexts. This means negotiating our own place in it, thinking about the meaning of what we do, and because we are the custodians of the future PhD …maybe even think ahead on the best way to advance science and the PhD in the future.

These are just six of the multitude of things you encounter during a brief session of PhD Twitter. Sometimes I get tired of the self-obsession of the platform. But sometimes it’s the only thing that can keep me going. A little bit of hope goes a long way. And virtual hugs sometimes work.  PhD twitter is great. Anyone, big or small, can have a say in things. Get advice. Feel connected to a bigger picture. All at the tap of an app…

Posted on by Loosely Translated

Scientists should unlock the Mandela in them

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

Many people are familiar with this quote from Nelson Mandela and understand the power education has, whether you embrace it or fear it. Today, in the post-truth era we live in—where experts are dismissed, where there is a lack of interest in evidence and facts, where alternative facts and the opinions of popular public figures seem to matter more—education is more important than ever!mandela-education

I was fortunate enough to go and listen to former US President Barack Obama deliver the sixteenth annual Mandela lecture at the Wanderers stadium in Johannesburg. He reminded the thousands of people sitting in the stadium (and those tuned in all over the world) of the crossroads we, as global citizens, face—something very similar to what South Africans faced pre-1994.

Obama_Nelson Mandela LectureThe solutions to South Africa’s and the world’s problems, according to Obama, lie with the youth; an undivided youth who love more, who lead and build communities that fight for what Mandela, and others, were and are trying to build. I was inspired by Obama’s messages of hope and the vision he has for achieving an undivided, educated and loving global community. I want, more than anything, to be a part of that community.

A recent piece was published on the Global Citizens website, looking at seven ways Madiba’s legacy still resonates in the world today. I want to highlight four of the seven: his participation in the fight against HIV/AIDS; his dream to bring education to rural students; his fight for children and youth; and his promotion of scientific and environmental education.

Madiba dedicated his life to making a difference in these areas, and while he did more than most, there is still a lot more to do, which we could achieve, largely, through education. Education really is the most powerful weapon in our arsenal and should be used more often to continue Mandela’s fight against HIV/AIDS, to continue to empower young people in the developing world, to develop science and technology to help tackle global issues and more.

Although Obama only mentioned “science” once and “technology” four times during his nearly one and a half hour speech, I know he values both for the advancement of humanity. As a global citizen and a scientist, I thought I’d build on and add to what Obama said with quotes from the lecture.

Obama alluded to the failings of our world leaders and the dangers this has for turning the world backwards. We, as global citizens, need to stop “the promotion of anti-intellectualism and the rejection of science from leaders who find critical thinking and data somehow politically inconvenient” because, “as with the denial of rights, the denial of facts runs counter to democracy, it could be its undoing.” To stop the people and processes eroding democracy, which Mandela fought for, “we have to insist that our schools teach critical thinking to our young people, not just blind obedience.” Our problems aren’t going to be solved by the leaders of this world, who have different agendas, but by the people who think and do for themselves to reach a global agenda—a world for all.

Science-March

We, as scientists, are armed with the most powerful weapon in the world and we need to do a better job of arming everyone else. When we are educated, it makes it difficult to manipulate us, it makes it difficult to lie to us, it makes it impossible to argue that race, gender, sexual orientation, choice of faith, class, makes us less human than the man, woman or child next to us. When we are educated, we understand our problems better and that there are no quick fixes. When we are educated, we put faith in the facts and not those who would try to deny them. It is time to take responsibility of this world and the state we leave it in. We cannot continue to blame the leaders we put in power for taking us down the wrong road when we have the means to push the world in the right direction.

It begins with us.