Why don’t you get your ears pierced and wear drop earrings? They will make your face look smaller and less round.
Why don’t you settle in one place and start a family? It’s what everybody else is doing.
You don’t like your nose? There are non-invasive procedures for that these days.
You’re doing a PhD? I’m not sure if men will be all that pleased to marry somebody with a doctorate.
Aren’t cartoons for children?
Aren’t science museums for children?
Just get a real job.
Never show any weaknesses you might have, don’t let other people know.
If only you would apply yourself to one thing.
Love yourself for who you are.
Number ten always seems to be an afterthought following one or several of 1-9.
N.B. This is not genuine advice from me to you. These are things that have been said to me and other people in similar positions in life to myself over the recent years. If you’re after real advice ask a close friend. If I am to advise you on anything off this list, it would be not to jack with your face without having a really good think about it first. And then to consult with professionals. Go with your gut. The healthy gut bacteria should produce healthy gut feelings.
Here’s a picture of a puppy if you need calming down.
I recall making a promise last year to continue documenting the less academic parts of research-life in China in a series of retrospectives, which never came to fruition. This year I make a second attempt, and will (try to) keep things bite-size for benefits yours and mine.
I shall be dreadful (dreadful because one of the rather Chinese sides of my upbringing state that “‘sorry’ means nothing” and “excuses are useless”) and start with two disclaimers:
1. For those interested in the intersectional (wherein it is noted that, for instance, a person who is black, a second person who is female, and a third person who is black AND female may all have different, mutually exclusive experiences of a situation) perspective, I have been called, by a bona fide Chinese person, a “banana”. A “banana” is yellow on the outside, and white on the inside. This is a label I grudgingly accept. The grudge comes more from the label than from the label’s implication: as a distinctly Oriental looking and SOUNDING person, with my quite European upbringing, I cannot (really) refute the label of “banana”.
2. As I am a human being, I make mistakes. (To err is human, to arr is pirate.) I am not beyond writing about my mistakes on the blog, and if anybody has constructive suggestions on avoiding future mistakes, please share your thoughts, and perhaps we can all learn together.
Disclaimers over, I thought we would begin at the preparation stage. Personally, I constantly feel like a rookie (until the moment when I suddenly want to prod somebody between the shoulder-blades because they are being daft about something that is obvious, inevitably, only to me) so some of these thoughts will be long standard procedures to many of you, although I believe in repetition as a method of enforced knowledge.
Start early. This means your applications. If your research proposal suggests that you may need to go abroad, start applying for things (or look for opportunities) in your first year. If at first you do not succeed, it is good practice. If you are successful but aren’t ready to go, deferring is usually an option. If you get it and can go, well done and enjoy!
Contacts. Of my two case studies, one was already arranged when I arrived, and I could start work from day one; the second, I had to spend time working my way in, which was eye-opening, and incredibly frustrating. If you can arrange contacts before you leave, do that. However, in my experience, be prepared that people may take their time with responding to your queries until you (o lowly research student) arrange a meeting in person, when your contacts will realise that you are a real person with very real deadlines (and genuine enthusiasm).
If you do not know anybody (at all), in your destination, be it your location for field work, your overseas host institution, or simply the city/village/town(/country?) you are going to, ask around to see if anybody “at home” can put you in touch with somebody. It could end up awkward, or you could end up with really good new friends. I consider that a worthy (non-)risk to take.
Find out all you can about your host institution (if you are going to one). Go through any information they have sent to you, or look them up online (if you did not do this during the application). If you are applying for a scholarship in a long-running scheme, see if anybody at your home institution has gone before, and ask for a low-down. I was contacted by a PhD student at Oxford who deferred their place last year and is about to head out this month, and we talked on skype. I am never certain that I am any useful, but the student said they felt more prepared ahead of the situation afterwards. They also offered me a tour of Oxford, that can’t be bad, right?
If you are a big user of social media, find out any popular platforms that are used in your host country. For me, it was a jolly mix of Weixin (WeChat – Chinese whatsapp) for casual-ish exchanges, and QQ for work. China is apparently not big on emails, and people will suggest you add each other on either Weixin or QQ before they ask for an email or a phone number. Yes, even the university professors and museum directors. When in Rome…
Rehearse your “elevator pitch” (the quick intro to your research) in your host country’s language, or at least translate and memorise the key words. It will make you feel more confident, it will save time, and it will look like you really are trying.
Jabs, vaccinations, etc. You truly never know. We had a measles breakout in my building when I was in China and we all had to plod along to the medical centre to get our shots. Personally, I take issue with neither jabs nor needles, but why make things inconvenient?
The clothing-part of packing. For those of us in arts, humanities, social sciences… as in those who do not have field-specific uniforms (mechanical engineers’ boiler suits and doctors’ white coats come to mind): if your trip only lasts one “season”, pack for that season, with a few extra items for eventualities. If your stay is longer than six months combined (like mine), I suggest packing a capsule wardrobe, that you add to if/when you encounter freak weather once arrived. That way, you are already there, and can feel the climate for yourself, and shop according to your own needs.
One extra stand-alone paragraph about contacts, specific to my trip(s). China is a country where contacts seem to be a way of life, in a rather six-degrees-of-separation kind of way. If you don’t have contacts in the area where you wish to research, there is little wrong with asking for somebody you know to recommend you to a person, who will recommend you to another person, etc. This may sound commonplace in the West too, but the application of these arrangements somehow seemed really magnified in China. So, know your contacts. Especially if you are on a scheme attached to a governmental organisation (the “N” in “NGO” in China can be questionable) or a host institution, save numbers for whoever is in charge of your scholarship, your host-institution supervisor, and the International Students’ Division office (or indeed their Weixin or QQ) before you leave.
Is this all patronising enough? It is? GOOD.
Also, find out about the weather. This picture and the one below were taken on two consecutive days, proving that the deities of the climate are confused sods.This is Beijing during smog season. Arm your face-masks.
Jumbled up notes, but quite useful. All thoughts and ideas belong to the persons in the title, unless otherwise stated.
1. Write. 600-800 words once or twice a week to begin with. Shows commitment and consistency.
2. Worry not if there are no visitors – you are building a portfolio.
3. Get into a dialogue with the people in the field you want to work with.
4. Find science communication folk on twitter. Or better, find their communities.
5. Contacts are important, but keep an eye out for essay competitions, blog vacancies, etc.
6. Mix things up, opinion pieces and factual pieces, one is harder than the other, but it’s all practice.
7. Writing about your research can veer into simply-another-form-of-academic-writing; book reviews, or making-of blogs can include research, like a diary, but be more relaxed and allow you to showcase fun trivia that you find, that may not place in academic papers.
8. Cats are good.
9. You could take on a twitter alter-ego, e.g. write as an interesting historical character.
10. Read and comment on other peoples’ blogs, it’s just as big a part being one of the community.
11. Retweet anything you want, even if you think “all my followers follow X already”. In all likelihood, there will be at least one follower who doesn’t.
12. Find your own voice. Do not be an ersatz-sci-commer-that-you like.
13. Be brave and blog under your own name. Or at least blog under a constant pseudonym. Pick a suitable one.
14. Co-blog. Takes the pressure off overall output, but puts pressure on in the sense that you need to pull your load.
15. The sharing and readership of posts may be better an indicator of reception than the quantity or quality of comments.
16. Pop-sci and topical sciene unsurprisingly get more views. Troll-bait will get trolls. No surprises there either.
17. Bear in mind that sometimes people do not feel qualified enough to leave a comment. This links into the way you pitch your posts. Relaxed, quirky posts may fetch comments just because they invite them.
18. Blogs are allowed to change theme. Usually with the author’s circumstances. No biggie.
19. Established bloggers sometimes look for relief bloggers. If you have a thematic, well-written piece, it may just be worth emailing, and swapping the work for the exposure.
20. Vi Hart’s video-blog, recommended. Vlogs and podcasts can be good if you are interested, but you cannot skim through them, which is what most people do. (Personal note here: they can be good to insert into a blog every now and again just for a change in format and bring a bit of novelty. Perhaps your reader will like it. But they are more time consuming – you will have to script them, even an al-fresco pod will need to be “written” and edited.)
21. If you want to try the book-route, and have an idea, get an agent first! Popsci books are still a niche field, it is, so far (never say never), difficult to make money off them. Blogs will provide an audience for your book.
22. You don’t have to know about…stuff… to write a blog. You can write a blog about you finding out about something or somebody. If you’ve chosen a person though, aim for somebody who is dead. Living people will findit creepy. And frankly, you do know stuff – you’re an expert at being a student.
23. It’s perfectly acceptable to have different identities to your co-bloggers, it would be weird not to. As long as you have a common theme, it could be welcome to hear from different voices.
24. As long as your byline is constant, readers do not necessarily look out for your affiliations. At all. A relevant blog can be good for the job, if not, the employers will likely be indifferent.
25. If you are aiming for a writing job – a bad blog is better than no blog. (Where “bad” means boring or amateurish – not libellous and fictional. Well, unless you like to communicate your science through sci-fi adventures, in which case, make that clear.)
26. Learn about writing from other blogs. The structure is free to take.
27. Nerdblogs always find their readers. Always. You may have a niche audience, but they will read it all. As long as it’s well-written.
The Real World for Young People 