Overview of Timmy on PostgraduateForum.com

Overview of Timmy

Signup date: 30 Apr 2014 at 1:53pm

Last login: 24 Jul 2015 at 12:13am

Post count: 63

Recent Posts

The value of PG publications

Timmy 63 posts
10 years ago

Thanks bewildered.

What Can I Do after being recommended to terminate?devastated

Timmy 63 posts
10 years ago

SilentLake it is not the end of the world. You can learn from this. You can use it to your advantage!

What language were you doing the PhD in?

I will add that in no place does this document say Postgraduate Journals are not acceptable places to publish work.

The document focuses more on the type of work that can be used as evidence NOT the place it is published in.

In fact the "Unclassified Quality" of work, is work of a quality that "falls below the standard of nationally recognised work. Or work which does not meet the published definition of research for the purposes of this assessment", and work that is published in PG Publications can of course be of a standard which "meets the published definition of research" (defined in my previous post above).

Having read this I cannot see how the journal is at all relevant other than being a publication.

If the research was in a Postgraduate Publication and was One star Quality i.e. "recognised nationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour" then Huxley you are correct.

The value of PG publications

Timmy 63 posts
10 years ago

Quote From Huxley:

Quote From Timmy:
This is a very interesting debate.

On the one hand (as Bewildered and Hutzy seem to be arguing) only established academic journals have good research in them.

On the other hand (as Huxley and Marstonmoor seem to think) postgraduate journals are good places to learn about publishing and also a place to get your work out there before going for bigger journals.

My questions for everyone are these -

1) Are the two points of view mutually exclusive? Can these opinions not be combined?
2) Why can PG publications not be submitted to the Research Excellence Framework?
3) Is the Research Excellence Framework not just for staff of Universities?

I wouldn't worry about Hutzy998's post Timmy the REF has not even been fully completed yet and is just another political monopoly.

By Hutzy998's logic everything intellectual that happened pre-REF era is "worthless".

This of course includes all work done by Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Confucius, Machiavelli, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, Galileo, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, etc etc, all of which is clearly valueless in light of Hutzy998's infallible logic.

The value of outstanding amateurs and autodidacts such as Patrick Moore, William Blake, Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Terry Pratchett, Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, Leonardo da Vinci, and Julian Assange has now rescinded in light of Hutzy998's and the REF's authority.

I can certainly see where you are coming from Huxley. On a more practical note I have just been looking at the Assessment Framework and Guidance on Submissions here:

http://www.ref.ac.uk/media/ref/content/pub/assessmentframeworkandguidanceonsubmissions/02_11.pdf

Acceptable output includes:

"work of direct relevance to the needs of commerce, industry, and to the public and voluntary
sectors; scholarship; the invention and generation of ideas, images, performances, artefacts including design, where these lead to new or substantially improved insights; and the use of existing knowledge in experimental development to produce new or substantially improved materials, devices, products and processes, including design and construction"

AND

"research that is published, disseminated or made publicly available in the form of assessable
research outputs"

The value of PG publications

Timmy 63 posts
10 years ago

This is a very interesting debate.

On the one hand (as Bewildered and Hutzy seem to be arguing) only established academic journals have good research in them.

On the other hand (as Huxley and Marstonmoor seem to think) postgraduate journals are good places to learn about publishing and also a place to get your work out there before going for bigger journals.

My questions for everyone are these -

1) Are the two points of view mutually exclusive? Can these opinions not be combined?
2) Why can PG publications not be submitted to the Research Excellence Framework?
3) Is the Research Excellence Framework not just for staff of Universities?

Mugged on way home from office

Timmy 63 posts
10 years ago

Hey sorry to hear about that. I wish I was there I would have beat him up for you. Did you go to the police? At least you didn't get hurt physically, although it is still a traumatic experience...

Question for the Arts and Humanities PhD students.

Timmy 63 posts
10 years ago

I think you have made the right decision because it is clearly what you wanted to do, even if it gets harder later. Everything will go well because you are feeling the pressure and will focus on the task at hand.

Yes I am familiar with discourse analysis, in a broad way at least. I have read a lot of Foucault and know about how power functions in language. If you are interested in language and power then Norman Fairclough has written a good book entitled (surprise) 'language and power'. So what I know of discourse analysis is predicated on Foucault's analyses of how desire/power have come to function in our institutions throughout history. I think his 'history of madness' pretty much covers the genealogical formation of desire/power in an institutional sense.

So my knowledge about discourse analysis is basically limited to Foucault's genealogical and archaeological explanations of discourse. So much more of a historical view on discourse rather than an analytical approach to institutional linguistic features, as my knowledge of linguistics is weak. Who are the big names in linguistic analysis of institutional regimes of truth?

Yeah my Master's degree research project is about the normative capacities of theological science fiction and fantasy.

Question for the Arts and Humanities PhD students.

Timmy 63 posts
10 years ago

That's brilliant that you have got a full stipend for you MPhil. Excellent news! If you can do it for your MPhil then you can do it for your PhD. What is your research project about?

Question for the Arts and Humanities PhD students.

Timmy 63 posts
10 years ago

Yes I think you are right about applying for the funding. I know a guy who just secured full AHRC funding today for his PhD and he is going to help me with my application for funding. I am very happy about that and he offered no problem without me even asking him!

Good for you for having the ambition. Go for it. I firmly believe that if you try hard enough and for the right reasons then good things can happen. I am sorry to hear about your financial situation. What is your academic background? What did you do for your Undergrad? Have you completed a Master's? What are your plans?

Question for the Arts and Humanities PhD students.

Timmy 63 posts
10 years ago

Thanks very much Nick for your very balanced and informative post. I will take everything you said into consideration. I am indeed pursuing an academic career, however am under no illusions that I will actually secure one. One advantage I have is I speak French and I could apply to French Universities for work as well as British. In fact last time I was in France I was offered a job at a university, not as a lecturer or research assistant but as a tutor. I love research and love seeking excellence. I am trying to get published at the moment and am presenting at an academic conference I helped organise in two weeks. As long as I get to keep learning/researching then I will be happy. However I am not limiting myself either. I'd rather die than not try, and I am enjoying it all at the moment so am very optimistic. I've already been through hell with the secondary teaching and really cannot see it ever getting worse than that, even if I did end up in a homeless shelter and begging on the streets.

Question for the Arts and Humanities PhD students.

Timmy 63 posts
10 years ago

OK I will scan all the funding webpages of the Uni's affiliated with the Russell Group. Thanks.

Here's one for Maths and Physics PhD students and graduates in the United Kingdom. Thoughts?

Timmy 63 posts
10 years ago

Quote From wowzers:
I'm a teacher who left to do a PhD. I think children get like that as many can't see a point in education when they are told it will lead to a job and they know it won't. If someone said to you, "come to me for 5 years, do everything I tell you, don't step out of line, take work home with you and at the end you'll be lucky to get any job".....would you do it? (Oh yeah we are we're doing the PhD ha ha see even we've bought in! lol.) To change attitudes towards education the goals of education should be more hollistic - to be happy, be enlightened, better mental wellbeing, socialisation. IF you knew it was about those things and not just about jobs maybe there'd be a better 'buy in'. There's more to learning than earning! I value my education more than what job I'll get at the end and that's why I chose a PhD, it's probably/certainly not going to make me rich ha ha.
Education for social mobility through employment is also an unobtainable farce. I mean if everyone social climbs who's going to do the jobs at the bottom, and what's wrong with the jobs at the bottom!!! you're condemning those to being thought of as failures :( You can see from this that we are still stuck in education for employment mode and the types of mathematics and science they are talking about are heavily tied into capitalism and economic production. Who's to say that music and art aren't as important! What makes us human is our imagination after all. It makes me sad. I'd also be right peeved at a PhD swanning in and earning twice as much!

Agreed.

Question for the Arts and Humanities PhD students.

Timmy 63 posts
10 years ago

Encouraging words wowzers, thank you! How did you apply for your scholarship was it through AHRC? Thanks!

Here's one for Maths and Physics PhD students and graduates in the United Kingdom. Thoughts?

Timmy 63 posts
10 years ago

I am not a Maths or Physics graduate, but, as a Secondary Teacher of English with eight years experience I would question the willingness of post-Docs to get involved in behaviour management in schools when they realise British kids don't give a @#?* about education and just want to swing on their chairs, argue with the teacher, fight with each other, watch DVDS and just generally be horrible little spoilt brats. How many researchers want to deal with that? Is that why they did a PhD? Not to mention curricular changes, horrific politics, general exploitation and extremely elementary levels of learning, abuse from parents, inspections, logging of everything relevant or otherwise for no particular reason, bullying, lack of funding, resources and effective workspaces... buildings falling down and rain water dripping onto classroom PCs... etc etc... ad absurdum... ad infinitum. This is not why people do PhDs. It is a good idea in principle but it will never help education or post-Docs too much I don't think. Cynical but true I think. It just sounds like a way to maintain corporate control over education and our schools.

Question for the Arts and Humanities PhD students.

Timmy 63 posts
10 years ago

Quote From bewildered:
Timmy I think you are probably right and that you need a 1st or distinction at MA to get funding in such a competitive field, but would expect that a good proposal would secure a place at most universities. It's great that you have the money to self-fund, but just wanted to urge you to think what you want to get out of the PhD before you spend so much (not just in fees and maintenance but also lost earnings). It's just that doing a PhD often isn't fun - I enjoyed mine but several years of reading on here has persuaded me that I am a weird person - and the benefits other than personal achievement are not great. There are very few academic jobs out there, far too many PhDs chasing them, and the degree can be seen as over-qualification by other employers. I know several people who self-funded in my field, and who bitterly regret it, as they were naive about the reality of academia (definitely not a comfortable ivory tower these days) and getting jobs afterwards. You might be fully aware of how things are but as this forum makes obvious, many are not, and I thought it was at least worth flagging up as something to think about.

Thanks for your concern bewildered. I have wanted a PhD since I was 21, I am 33 now. I know that doing a PhD will be isolating and there won't be very many people that will be immediately interested in talking to me about my research, even other PhD students as they will be specialising in other areas. I am definitely a weird person also. I feel that I am a born academic and that I would not be happy if did not achieve personally the most I can in academia. You are right about the jobs situation it is terrible. I worked as a Secondary Teacher for 8 years on temporary contracts and it was pure hell. The only reason I went in to teaching was to save money for a PhD. That was a mistake. I should have bypassed the teaching completely and did my masters and PhD while working at MacDonald's. Yes I am aware I will die poor. But at least I would have been true to myself. Thanks for your concern. All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us. To thine own self be true.

:)