Diary of a Wimpy Wordsmith

Posted by Steph Clutterbuck

I can’t write. Not this blog post, I have no difficulty waffling on, verbally or otherwise, about trivial things to anyone in the general vicinity willing to listen (just ask my fiancé! *Ba doom ching!*). Rather, I can’t write my thesis.

This poses a bit of a problem to someone trying to successfully complete her Ph.D. I don’t think it is an issue of being lazy as I had no problem getting stuck into all the other areas of my research, i.e. the ethics, the recruiting participants, the running experiments, the sorting the data, the analysing the data. Nope all of these tasks I took on with enthusiasm, gusto even. But now it’s time to write and I am stuck. Luckily, I know I am not alone. Inevitably postgrad student small talk at conferences or in lunchrooms will at some point turn to the reluctance/inability to write. It is the most daunting part of the wild ride that is the postgraduate degree. But why is it so daunting? Why does something that we are clearly capable of doing and exercise hundreds of times each day by way of emails, texts, various research related documents and reports, suddenly seem so impossible?

Well, since you asked, the following is my sage opinion: There is no place for hiding anymore.

Canadian women’s 2012 Olympic soccer team. Our valiant warriors of the Great White North! (Photo by: Toru Hanai/Reuters)

When I was growing up I played a lot of soccer. Apologies, but I am Canadian with a die-hard Dallas Cowboys fan for a father. Football to me will forever be synonymous with giant muscle laden men wearing very tight stretchy pants and overhyped million dollar Superbowl commercials. 

Anyway, sometimes when playing a particularly good team our coach could be heard screaming from the sidelines, ‘Clutterbuck! Stop hiding out there and get in the bleeping game!!’. Coaches aren’t always known for their diplomacy skills. What I imagine he was attempting to communicate, if he had taken a moment to compose himself was, ‘Stephanie, please refrain from shying away from your responsibilities on the field as a defensive midfielder. Your teammates would appreciate it if you would mark your opponent properly and stop cowering behind the keeper.’ 

Now I loved playing soccer, I loved my teammates and I was generally able to hold my own, so to speak, on the field. So why was I hiding? I was hiding because the girl I was meant to be marking was stronger or faster or more skilled than me. Sometimes she was all three of these things at once. The dreaded triple whammy. Quite simply she was a challenge and a challenge can be terrifying. Don’t get me wrong when you think you stand a chance challenges are exciting and even energizing. However, when you think you won’t quite cut the mustard a challenge can be paralyzing. And at those times it always seems easier to hide. If you hide then no one finds out you are actually a crummy soccer player and your spot in the starting line up must have been a fluke. Likewise, if you never get down to writing your thesis no one realizes that you actually know nothing, are in fact a fraud and your supervisor(s) have made a massive mistake in giving you the Ph.D. post.

So how did I manage to stop hiding on the field when my opponent threatened to damage my pride? Well, to unabashedly steal and conjugate a catch phrase, I just did it. I did it to stop my coach yelling at me. I did it to avoid being benched for the rest of the season. I did it because I loved the game and I knew it wasn’t always going to be easy but that’s what I signed up for. 

As for writing my thesis, again, I will just do it. I will do it to stop my supervisors yelling at me (they don’t actually yell but disapproving silences are somehow worse). I will do it because I don’t want to be kicked out of grad school. And I will do it because I love the game (i.e. research) and I know it isn’t always going to be easy, but that’s what I signed up for.

A room of one's own

Posted by Stephanie Clutterbuck

I have never read "A room of one's own". But I thought it made a snappy title for a blog post so I did what any self-respecting early career researcher does when she wants to make sure she is not talking complete nonsense- I Wikipedia-ed it. Turns out it fits quite nicely. You see Virginia Woolf believed that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction". And although I have no interest in writing fiction I can see her point, a woman must have participants and a room of her own if she is to do science.


Virginia Woolf, by Frederico Novaro

There I was, March 2012, a bright-eyed PhD student confident in my experimental design, armed only with some predictions and a dream. Against my better judgment I believed that data collection in schools would be easy and as long as I asked nicely for ‘a quiet room’ my wish would be granted leaving my data collection to roll merrily along, untainted by extraneous factors.

Fast-forward two months, seven schools and 200 participants later and I have learned an invaluable lesson: schools have very different definitions of ‘a quiet room’.

At my first school I was shown to an open corridor where I was told I would run my experiment. Admittedly, I had to suppress my inner toddler from stamping her feet and screaming ‘This is NOT a quiet room!!’, but I made do. And in fact it would have worked well if the corridor wasn’t simultaneously being used as a makeshift studio for yearbook photos. And then as a meeting place for all the Year 5 boys to earnestly discuss the moral implications of stealing the Year 6’s football during break. To be fair it was a lively debate and I could see their point, why should the older boys get the ball - isn’t that ageism?

Still, data collection continues to roll along in various schools and I have become adept at managing my inner meltdowns regarding the unreality of tightly controlled experimental conditions outside of the lab. I was able to force a smile when a teacher barged into my quiet room (which happened to also be a kitchen) and rattled the contents of every drawer and cupboard in search of a knife to cut cake. And I have learned to tune out repeated renditions of ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ and ‘Heart and Soul’ sung by jubilant five year olds in nearby music rooms.

Fortunately, for my sanity, I feel data collection enlightenment is within reach. The other day I unflinchingly accepted that there was nothing I could do about the man in muddy overalls wielding a shovel and walking through my quiet room. Twice.