Advisor, not “supervisor”

I want this blog entry to be a reminder to those who are already doing a PhD, and a point of consideration for those who are planning on starting a PhD. I want to clarify a misuse of terminology that I think every PhD student has probably made at one point or another, or, like me, far more often. PhD students don’t have “supervisors”, we have “advisors” -- the distinction between these two words is very important.

When I first started my PhD, I soon realised I could run pretty much any experiment I wanted (like this one) with minimal involvement from my advisors. In fact, a lot of students find it quite (frustratingly?) simple to go weeks at a time without even speaking to their advisors.

Sometimes going long periods without seeing the people you work with isn’t a good thing, but, advisors aren’t “supervisors” who stand over your shoulder checking your every step. PhD students need moderated independence from their advisors so we can learn how to stand on our own feet, work through some problems on our own, and learn from our own mistakes.

For me, the flip side to having independence from my advisors is knowing when to go to them for help, to clarify my thoughts, to ask “dumb” questions, or just to tell them I’ve got the shits with an experiment. Remember, PhD advisors are experts in their fields, and they’re probably familiar with a lot of the problems students encounter on their PhD Journey.

I encourage everyone to remember that the role of a PhD advisor is to give advice, not to supervise. If you’re already a PhD student, ask your advisors questions about things you’re not sure of and how best to plan for the road ahead. If you’re thinking of doing a PhD, find an advisor who you will feel comfortable going to for advice.

Personally, I like to try new things and test what I’m capable of doing on my own, but if there’s something I need advice on, I ask my advisors.

-Will
www.willjharrison.com

The quest for a 'useful' PhD topic

One of the first challenges a PhD student faces, is coming up with a PhD topic. This may not sound particularly challenging, but keep in mind that you will largely be dedicating the next three years of your life to this topic. When first setting out on my quest to find a PhD topic, I went well packed with my supervisors' support, a healthy dose of enthusiasm, as well as a list of requirements that my potential topic would have to meet. In short, the list I had created looked something like:

The first four points, from the beginning, provided some guidance in my search for a topic. However, the fifth point initially seemed to hinder my progress more than that it helped. I should have foreseen this, of course, when changing it from is useful for society to is 'useful' for society. Assuming that I am not citing somebody else's work, quotation marks in my writing usually indicate that it is unclear, even to myself, what I am trying to say.

Even though I didn't know what I meant exactly with the fifth point, I did know what I didn't mean. I didn't start my quest looking for a PhD topic that would revolutionise society [I'd probably never have finished in that case]. Neither was I looking for a topic that would make the world knock on my door in awe to find out about my research [idem ditto].

Though, had I known then what I know now, I clearly would have chosen chocolate as my topic.

Instead of exhausting myself trying to find a PhD topic, I saved a small amount of energy to ponder on the mysterious meaning of 'useful' for society. For many psychologists 'useful' may mean contributing to improving treatments for people suffering from debilitating mental disorders. But did it mean that to me too? No, I was quit sure that wasn’t the 'useful' I was looking for. Instead I expected that mystery would be more likely to be unraveled if I focused on everyday behaviour in everyday people.

After a couple of days largely applying Unconscious Thought Theory I agreed with myself that what useful means to me is that my research should have some value outside the lab. No matter how small. To keep myself motivated over the next few years, my research has to centre around a topic that could potentially be interesting for everyday people and their everyday behaviours.

In the end, the fifth point on my list proved a critical factor in deciding on my PhD topic. While I started out looking at how a specific type of emotional stimuli influences attention, the first, fourth, and fifth points on my list have lead me to wonder how attention is influenced by emotions themselves.

Though I cannot rule out that one day I may fall victim to media temptation, abandon the above topic and dedicate my life to finding out how attention is influenced by white chocolate.

- Joyce

Atypical day in the life...

Despite this blog being called ‘a day in the life of a psychologist', and Will pretending that he spends his days driving around Brisbane and on skiing holidays, there hasn’t been a description of what us PhD students do all day. This is not only because there are so many wildly different areas of research, but also because our work and personal lives vary so much.

For example:


People have many different jobs. These may include (on top of being a PhD student):
Tutoring, research assistant work, programming, part time checkout chick, research guinea pig, babysitting, bee keeping (you never know...)



Our work can also vary greatly depending of the stage of the experiment or study.
We could be frantically researching to ensure our brilliant idea hasn't been done yet, or stuck in the lab trying to figure out where our programming went wrong. We could be wading through data and statistics, or writing an article that is going to make us famous.


Schedules vary depending on the size of your social circle!
There are the coffees and lunches, and then the journal clubs, meetings, presentations and seminars. If you're really nice, or just can't think of an appropriate excuse in time, half of your life is spent doing friend's experiments for them!

I would like to share one such day. This was my Thursday:

Arriving at uni at 8:30 (damn car parks filling up so quickly), the first half hour was spent catching up on emails and facebook (this is the last I mention this, although you can be sure it occurs regularly throughout the day of a student).
9-10am: Analysing data and doing statistics for my first completed experiment (yay!)
10-11am: Writing an outline for presenting these results to my supervisors.
11-2pm: Testing participants. As this primarily consists of watching first year psychology students press buttons, this also allowed me time to practice a speech, grab lunch, and start programming a new experiment.
2-3pm: Finished programming the experiment, and then decided it was terrible.
3-5pm: Analysing the latest experiment (those were the last participants needed!), and adding these results to my presentation outline.

At 5pm was the three-minute thesis competition. I do not like public speaking, however being a researcher requires presenting your research, so I entered this to get feedback for future reference. I will leave the details of this competition to Will Harrison, and offer my congratulations for his winning it! For those interested, the SBS finals for this take place on the 1st Sept, come along and support psychology!

Keep in mind that my day is in no way indicative of how others spend their time. For example, while I tend to stick to the hours of 8:30 to 5, many of my colleagues stay after hours and weekends. I prefer to keep my weekends free for things like drinking, sleep, trips to Melbourne, and bacon.


Nonie



Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog?? Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Retreat!

Last week, Katie gave us some tips on how to write a lot. Her best bit of advice was to allocate an hour, lock yourself away, and write. Although sometimes—especially with the constant interruptions and the regular chime of email notifications—an hour just isn’t enough.

Each year, academic staff receive strategic funds to spend on improving their research or teaching. Rather than being selfish and getting an iPad, my supervisor treated Wen and I to a writing retreat week on Stradbroke Island. Although there was lots food and even more red wine,

it was largely a serious affair. We rented a beautiful house near the beach and severed our internet connections...

We put on our pajamas, brewed some coffee,

and wrote...

And wrote...

And wrote. Until Wen’s pet parrot could no longer bear the boredom and proceeded to chew everything in sight.

The lab writing retreat was a great experience and we each achieved a lot. So if you have writing to do (and who doesn't), I suggest putting yourself in a situation conducive to writing—whether it's escaping to an island for a week, or just unplugging the net for a couple of hours ;-)

Matt Thompson

The Code for Success

Three weeks ago I set myself the goal of learning how to program experiments and run data analyses using MATLAB. Up until now I've been working with a program called Presentation Neuro-Behavioural Systems which uses a language loosely based on C and Basic. Although the capabilities of Presentation meet my programming needs at the present, a number of my colleagues currently work with or are switching to MATLAB and I feel I should follow suit. On top of this MATLAB is just a far more powerful software package than Presentation, capable of performing complex data analyses that presentation can not.

So how much progress have I made over the last three weeks? Conceptually very little sadly, though I have manage to successfully write my first MATLAB based program which displays a series of Harry Potter images. It's always a bonus when you can mix work with pleasure :)

Learning a new programming language is tough and it doesn't come naturally, at least not to me. I find programming is very much a love hate relationship, especially when you're starting out. I seem to spend a lot of time cursing profusely at the computer and flailing my arms around, frustrated that MatLab won't display or do what I want it to.

In fact I find it much like trying to learn a musical instrument. You know the sound you want to produce, it's all there in your head, yet when you try to play it it just sounds like white noise. The same goes when I'm learning to program. I know exactly what I want my experiment to look like and I just wish I knew all the MatLab commands to make it happen instantly. Instead my efforts are met with countless errors telling me that my script reads like nonsense.

Perseverance is the key though because the upside is worth it. Finally getting a line of code to work or even better an entire program is incredibly satisfying! It's like a shot of adrenaline and when it happens make sure you've got a beer on hand cause you're going to want to ride the high...seriously. Victories can be short lived so make them count.

So if you’re considering research in the field of psychology, particularly cognitive psychology, it can be extremely beneficial if you have some programming ability. Possessing even just basic programming skills affords you the freedom to tweak and optimise your experimental parameters and conditions such that you maximise your chances of finding the effects you're after. And we all know how fickle some of our effects can be sometimes.

Going into honours I'd had zero experience programming and my supervisor told me I'd have to learn a programming language in order to program my experiment. Suffice to say I felt like I was up sh*t creek without paddle. It was hard work and a lot of hours at the computer for not much immediate reward. It certainly paid off in the long run though and I'm very thankful I was forced to learn it. So my advice for any prospective honours or post-grad students, if you get the opportunity to dabble in some programming, jump at it. Being able to program has certainly opened up a lot of opportunities in research for me.

Happy programming

James

How to write a middling to fair amount

It’s the bane of every PhD student’s existence: writing. You’ve conducted the research, analysed the data, made sense of it all…and then you have to put metaphorical pen to paper. What was so clear in your head all of a sudden seems clunky and rambling when it’s written down. That witty title you thought of a week ago is trite when you’ve read it fifteen times in a row. So you agonize over sending the draft to your supervisor and end up missing the deadline. Again.

Unfortunately, this is a normal experience for a lot of students. People often have angst over writing – is it good enough, does it make sense, if they read it will people finally recognise me for the fraud I am? The natural response when people feel like this is to avoid writing all together. This is not a functional response.

So the trick to reducing angst about writing is to do it. A lot. In his book How to Write a Lot, Paul Silvia offers this advice: write every day. Not only should you write everyday, you should jealously guard your writing time and lock yourself away like a hermit to do it. This might seem a bit excessive and impractical for those of us who share an office with other postgrads. So what is another option?

Peer pressure, pure and simple. Have other people pressure you into writing when all you want to go is put it off and collect more data. Silvia recommends starting a writing group for people who need social support (or pressure) to meet their writing goals. In a writing group, you publicly announce your writing goals then own up the following week if you haven’t achieved them.

I can speak as someone who is a member of a postgraduate writing group that this system doesn’t always work so well. Being friends with the people who are supposed to berate you for not meeting your goals can make it hard to get critical feedback on your progress. We have recently found a way around this problem, however: money.

We each put $20 into the pot at the start of semester. Then we commit to a group goal – we will each write at least 500 words a week every week. That includes weeks that we are testing, marking, and on holiday. If at the end of semester we have made the target number of words, we have a rocking party with pizza and beer. If we don’t make the target, we donate the money to something we all agree is heinous and should never be funded, like the Society for Drowning Kittens for Fun.

I’ll keep you guys updated on our progress. For now, think about starting your own writing group and get creative with ways to stay on track with your writing. Silvia’s philosophy is that it doesn’t matter what you write about, so long as you are writing every day. Try writing a blog entry for the UQ Psyc Blog. This one is 513 words – that’s my target met for the week!

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Lums and posters

As part of University-wide centenary celebrations, our school recently held an open day to catch up with our psych alumni (or ‘lums’, as termed by our head of school).

Head of School, Prof. Bill von Hippel welcomes our 'lums'.

The day started with a few short presentations about cutting edge research in the school. Prof. Kim Halford showed us evidence for the efficacy of his couples-based intervention, used to help deal with stressful events. Next, Prof. Jason Mattingley spoke about the emergence of cognitive neuroscience as a discipline and how neuropsychological conditions, such as synaesthesia, can inform us about how the brain works. Prof. Virginia Slaughter told us about her work on theory of mind and how it helps us understand autism. Finally Prof. Jolanda Jetten told us that having multiple social identities, as opposed to one, increases our quality of life in many ways.

Each of the profs giving their presentation.

There was also a poster session where a bunch of students, including Will, Matt, Wen, and I, got to show off our research to the lums (James could have presented his EPC poster but he lost it somewhere). Since I hadn't made a poster before, I saw this as a golden opportunity to get in some poster practice prior to the conference in October.

A bunch of ladies engrossed by my poster.

Here you can see Will digressing from his poster and educating the crowd with an impromptu lesson in eye-poking.



Will demonstrating the ‘two-pronged’ approach on a volunteer audience member.

Afterwards we had a small ceremony to congratulate our lums on their successes since leaving the school. Each had an opportunity to speak about their experiences here at UQ and it was great to hear what the school was like before I was born (did you know that McElwain was a real person and it’s pronounced MAC-Elwain?!) The lums spoke about how some things have changed (everyone used to be clinical, now there’s an even spread across all disciplines) and how some things are still the same (the tearoom still hosts lively lunchtime discussion).

Anyway, it was great to meet some of our lums, especially when we blew their minds with our research!

Thanks to Matt for most of the pictures :)

- Morgan

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Double black semester

Doing a PhD is like any other job where you’re entitled to take about four weeks holiday per year. Unlike fellow blogger Matt who sometimes spends his holiday rubbing shoulders with legends of psychology, I chose to spend my last holiday in beautiful Queenstown, New Zealand. I just got back from nothing but 10 days of snowboarding, hot chocolates, amazing restaurant meals, and wine tours.

Taking a break at Coronet Peak, NZ.

But for it to have been so much fun, this holiday actually took quite a lot of psychological preparation for me - normally when I go on holidays I fill my spare time with bits and pieces of work that I need to catch up on, reading journal articles in my spare time, and replying to emails of students’ questions.

The truth is, three years is not a long time to do a PhD (in the US as a comparison, a PhD program usually takes about seven years), so I had quite a bit of anxiety about losing almost two weeks of time that I could be getting a lot of work done. But what’s the point of going on a holiday if it’s just going to stress you out? That would be ironical.

I decided that I wasn’t going to look at any data, I wasn’t going to write a word of a manuscript, I wasn’t going to program, and I’d only reply to emails if it seemed urgent.

And it almost worked - I didn’t stress out about what I needed to get done, and I didn’t stress out about not doing any work for such a long period of time. I say it “almost” worked because I couldn’t help myself but to think about all the cool experiments that could be done involving snowboarding, but that just made me enjoy myself more.

For example, I’d like to know if beginner snowboarders’ estimates of the angle of a steep slope are less accurate than professionals’ estimates. I think beginners would overestimate the steepness of a slope, especially if they were standing up the top! Hopefully one day I can get funding to test this out.

So I’m back into things this week, madly scrambling to get an eye tracker working at QBI, learning a new programming language and getting an experiment running by next week, and preparing for tutoring for a subject I’ve never tutored before. It’s only week one, and this is already what my calendar looks like:

-Will
www.willjharrison.com

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog?? Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

PhD GOOOOAAALLLLLL!!!

Earlier this year I told my boss that I wanted to start a PhD after I return from a conference in October. It would really be the perfect time to st

art. See, I’ve promised my girlfriend we’ll go to Brazil for the 2014 Soccer World Cup. The 2010 World Cup has just finished, meaning if I start after the conference in October, then it gives me just over 3.5 years to finish a PhD (and learn Portuguese) before holidaying it up in Brazil after I submit my thesis.

James recently began his PhD and it took him about two months, from starting his application to getting the acceptance email, to become an enrolled Ph

D student. Even though there was a hiccup with his application I think the transition from impostor to PhD student was pretty quick and seamless for James. Since his topic and supervisors progressed naturally from his work as a research assistant, James didn’t need to spend time coming up with a new topic or getting chummy with an academic he hardly knew (although you could argue that was what he did throughout his time as an RA).

Unlike James (and others), I don’t have my heart set on a particular topic or supervisor, I just want to do a PhD! By all rights that should make my decision much easier but it hasn’t. People have offered me advice about picking topics or supervisors. Some say to ignore the topic for now and to just think about the supervisor that I want to work with. On the other hand, some have said that the supervisor doesn’t really matter, it’s t

he topic that counts. It’s safe to say I’m still feeling pretty confused...

I get back from the conference in three months. If it took James two months to get accepted, then I’ve got a month to find a supervisor and a topic before I submit my application!! Stay tuned!

If you are a veteran PhD student please feel free to leave advice in the comments section :)

(See you in Brasil!)

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Three months down (and how many to go?)

I started a PhD in March of this year, and I would like to share the experience of my first three months.

People react to my new ‘profession’ in academia in difference ways. Some are impressed (“Wow, you’re doing a PhD?!”), some are disdainful (“You’re still at uni?”), some are horrified (“Academia? But they make no money!”), and others, my favourite, are interested (they let me harp on about my research). It appears that people have different ideas about what a PhD involves, and it turns out I didn’t really know either.

I had vague notions of conferences in exotic locations, flexible work days, doing exciting research, and other glamorous activities. Those first three months certainly brought me back to earth.



My 1st week was full of excitement. I was ready to get to that ground breaking research with my new office, new computer, two knowledgeable supervisors and that mysterious flexible timetable. My war hardened friends told me I’d get over it soon enough and they were only too right.

By the 2nd week I was considerably subdued, having difficulty coming up with that perfect topic, and wondering what I was supposed to do with all this free time. The 3rd and 4th weeks are hardly worth mentioning, other than to say I was beginning to wonder what I had got myself into. All that friendly advice that finding a topic takes time wasn’t helping to fill my empty days.

Finally, week 5, and I thought I had found a topic I could get excited about! Unfortunately, through a complicated process involving excessive reading and supervisor meetings, I was shot down. This left me feeling very lost and confused, and over the next few weeks, I seriously began to consider if I should be doing a PhD. Was I really cut out for a life of research, with a constant uphill battle for ideas, grants, positions, time, and failed experiments? All around me were people at various stages of their research careers, excited to be coming in on weekends and so passionate about the research they were doing. What was I doing wrong?

My turning point was when I sat my supervisor (Phil Grove) down and told him all my worries. For any prospective PhD enthusiasts – listen when people say your supervisor is there to help!! He dismissed my feelings of unworthiness and told me that it takes time.

This wasn’t a revelation, but for some reason, this time it sank in. I realised a PhD isn’t supposed to be easy! It may seem silly, but it took me three months to realise that academia is just like any other job, with its good and bad days. You need to be passionate about research, but ultimately the key factor is persistence. It isn’t something to be impressed or horrified by, but if you must – be both! Academia is just a bunch of crazies who are really passionate about research, working really hard and having a lot of fun.

In case you’re wondering, I’m now happily ensconced in my lab, working on an experiment for my very own topic, very happy that I persisted.

Nonie

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Overdue

For the past eight months I’ve been hanging around the School of Psychology pretending to be a PhD student. Last year I worked as a research assistant for one of the academics in the department but since October last year when my role in that position ended I’ve had no official affiliation with university or the school.

Despite this, I continued to show up every day and pretty much perform the activities of the average PhD student. Such activities included conducting my own research, attending weekly lab meetings, attending weekly seminars and reading groups and tutoring. I even attended a conference in Melbourne where I presented research. I have a suspicion that a number of people in the department were under the impression I was doing a PhD. I felt a bit like Frank Abagnale Jr. only without a Hollywood blockbuster based around my life (the analogy is a stretch I admit but I struggled for another and I like the sound if it).

Anyway the Jig is up. After a drawn out application process and a minor hiccup with the processing of my application I am now officially enrolled in a PhD in the School of Psychology. Not a great deal has changed although I’m now being paid to be here which is great and I feel as though I now have a purpose to be here. With financial benefits comes responsibility though and my supervisors were quick to inform me that they now have real authority over me and as Matt points out I’m still just a lowly ‘Provisional PhD Candidate ‘. I’m not an actual PhD Candidate until I have been ‘confirmed’.

So what’s really changed? Well I’m now being paid to be here but apparently I’m still a no body and now people can tell me what to do. I can't help but wonder whether all I've done is sold my freedom :P ?

To be serious for one moment though, its incredibly exciting to be a new member of the UQ and Psychology research community :).

James Retell

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Confirmed!

I'm finally a real person. Last post I told you about the PhD confirmation process and how daunting the prospect was. After I submitted my conf doc I went to work on the conf talk.

It's a 40 minute presentation with 20 minutes for questions where you turn your conf doc into a talk for a broader audience, followed by an interview.

Standing up the front, like any other presentation, I was nervous. But I really started to sweat as I watched psychology academics, phd students, undergrads, researchers from other universities and national security experts trickle through the door!

The talk went well and I took some great (and some difficult) questions from the audience. Everyone then left and I was interviewed by my four readers. These are some of the smartest people I've ever met, so it was great to soak up their advice.

It was now my turn to leave the room while the readers asked my supervisor, Jason Tangen, how I'm really going in the PhD program. I returned and Jason left so the readers could ask me if I'm happy with his supervision and how things are going more generally.

After this seemingly endless process my readers decided that I have what it takes to continue, and they confirmed me as a bonafide PhD candidate. Smiley face.

My experience with this first PhD milestone was great. It was stressful, but it forced me to clarify my thinking in a way that would not have happened otherwise. The only problem is that now I actually have to do all the wonderful things I told the audience I would do.

Back to work I guess.

Matt Thompson
PhD Candidate

What do you do all day?

Me and James with the best car I've ever owned (also the only car I've ever owned).

One of the most common questions I get asked by people thinking about doing a PhD is “what do you do all day?” This question is almost impossible to answer, because it’s rare that two days are ever the same. But here’s what I did today:

I got a call from the place where I took my car to get serviced, and they told me my car was ready to be picked up. I really didn’t want to have to catch the bus to get my car because that would end up taking over an hour for what should only be a 30 minute trip. I didn’t want to ride my bike because I didn’t want to be smelly and sweaty in my office for the rest of the day.

So, I asked my good friend and office buddy Felicity if she could drop me there. Unfortunately, Felicity was crazy busy with something or other so she couldn’t drive me to my car. BUT, she did say I could BORROW her car if it helped... which of course it didn’t, because I can’t drive two cars at the same time.

Fortunately, James had finished solving problems and was willing to help me out too and drive one of the cars. So James and I jumped in Felicity’s car and went to the car shop where James drove my car back to my place and then we both came back to uni. Piece of cake (except I forgot to tell Felicity where I parked her car so she apparently spent ages looking for it when she went home later that day)!

What does all of this have to do with my PhD? Absolutely nothing, really. But doing a PhD means that what I do with my time is almost entirely up to me. I set my own deadlines, I organise my own meetings, and I don’t have to ask a boss for permission if I need to leave uni spontaneously to run some personal errands.

It’s also great to work right next to friends who are willing to help me out with pretty much anything! Hmm... I wonder if they’ll help me clean my car now that it’s running so well...

Is that mold on my roof?!?!.

-Will
www.willjharrison.com

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog?? Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

The Student Becomes the Teacher

Looking back over my long (and arduous) life I cannot think of any one second in which I haven’t been a student in some capacity or other. And boy was I some student – cheeky in class, disruptive in discussions, but oh-so engaged. Because I love teachers – they blow my mind and challenge me and make me want to become more than I am.

While in primary school I had a teacher who ran us around the playground, weaving stories that somehow tied in with tree-houses, swing sets and monkey bars. In high school I learned to calculate distance using the speed of light, to imagine imaginary numbers, and think critically about Dorian Gray (which was not too hard to do, let’s face it). On to my year as an exchange student in America, and I met a tiny gnome of a teacher called Mr. Ribbich – he and I argued gun laws and beat poetry and the political landscape that makes up America. Finally in psychology I found a department of mentors. In particular, throughout my PhD and now my post-doc I am (still) learning to think about understanding human behavior and thought empirically in a way that I never knew was possible.

Which brings me to the point of this post. While I have been tutoring and lecturing for a long while now, and am very comfortable with soap-box ranting about statistics and social psychology, this year has brought me my very first honours students. Having honours students (and masters and PhD students) provides a unique opportunity to teach and mentor. In large university classes you have very limited one-on-one contact with students, but as a supervisor you become an integral part of your student’s life and learning experience. All of which has led me to think about the sort of mentor and teacher I want to be to my honours students (and eventually PhD students). Below I review some famous examples of teachers – one that I refuse to be, one that I would like to be (but probably couldn’t pull it off), and finally one that I want to be.

The teacher I refuse to be:

American Mary-Kay Letourneau, at the age of 35, became pregnant to her 13 year old student. She eventually served seven years in prison, and upon release married the student. She now frequently hosts ‘Hot For Teacher’ events in Seattle. Do I even need to comment on why I refuse to be the Mary-Kay Letourneau of the psych department?

The teacher I could try and fail to be:

In ‘Dead Poet’s Society’ Robin Williams plays an inspirational teacher at a conservative boys’ school. He teaches the boys to appreciate poetry, stands on tables whilst doing so, and instructs them (a la Walt Whitman) to call him ‘O Captain, my Captain’. I want to be this teacher, and I want it bad – stirring students into a frenzied revolution of learning sounds like fun. Teachers who aim to emulate Robin Williams’ example, however, typically tend to fail spectacularly. They are met with rolling eyes, heaving sighs and general mockery. I do not necessarily abandon my hopes of being referred to as ‘Captain, my Captain’ someday, but will perhaps try for it when I become a little more eccentric in later life.

The teacher I want to be:

Finally, an example of the sort of mentor that I would like to be – that definitive teacher, Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore (like all people) is flawed, but his influence on Harry is ultimately extremely positive. When Harry worries that his nature is inherently bad, Dumbledore says to him “It is choices Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” This quote has struck with me, perhaps more than any other uttered by Dumbledore (yes, I know he is imaginary). Dumbledore is profound, kind, and teaches Harry while allowing him to also grow and learn on his own. Yes, in conclusion I think that I am going to model my honours supervisory style on Dumbledore.

So… what sort of mentor are you going to be?

Alcatraz

I just had a friend come and visit me in my office for the first time. He made a joke about how much the office hallways made it feel like we were in the famous prison Alcatraz. Is doing a PhD really any different from being in prison?

My office hallway, actually.

I guess superficially there are a lot of similarities between being a PhD student and an inmate serving a 3 - 5 year sentence: we are put in small rooms with limited daylight, we spend long hours with nothing to do but read, we have to share basic bathroom facilities, we often eat the same food day in and day out, we might not see our families for long periods of time, we have to go through several review processes before we can “get out”, the building gets locked down after 9pm, and when you’re ready to scream you can’t out of fear that the anxious guy sitting next to you will shank you in your eye ball.

Obviously being a student is nothing like being a prisoner - I got given a brand new computer when I started, the people I share my office with are awesome, I get flown to really fun conferences at no expense of my own, and, of course, I can leave whenever I want.

The freedom and perks of being a PhD student don’t stop some people from feeling trapped, though. Even after being a PhD student for less than a year, I certainly have felt at times that I can’t leave my office when I want to, even though I’m the one who holds the key to my door.

Fortunately for me, feelings of being a PhD-prisoner are few and far between and 99% of the time I love my time at uni. I attribute a lot of the joy I have during my PhD to the fact that I took a lot of time, a whole 6 months actually, working out whether or not I wanted to do it in the first place because it is a big commitment. I also took this time to think about who I could be happy with as supervisors for years on end, because they're the closest thing to the "prison wardens".

I wasn’t planning on being preachy in this blog post, but I do feel like I have to end with this final point. If you are considering doing postgraduate research, and I highly encourage it, take the time to think about it and plan it carefully and you’ll never feel like you’re in prison!

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog?? Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

and the winner is...Science!

Last week I posted one of my favorite statistics puzzles on the blog and promised to reveal the answer this week. While writing this post it became apparent that the real trick is not solving the problem but adequately explaining the solution. Here goes...

The scenario is the following: You are on a game show and you are faced with three doors. Behind one of the doors is your dream prize (my very own lightsaber) while behind the other two doors are dud prizes (a homeopathic contraceptive). You are given the opportunity to select one of the doors and attempt to win your dream prize. After you select a door but before revealing the location of the prize, the host reveals to you one of the doors that did NOT contain the prize, leaving the door you selected and one other. The host then asks you whether you wish to stick with the door you originally selected or change your decision and choose the other remaining door.

This problem is referred to as the 'Monty Hall' problem and the question is whether a) you should stick with your original decision, b) change your decision and selected the other remaining door or c) it does not make a difference either way.

So the answer is that if you wish to increase your chances of winning your dream prize you proceed with option b). That is you should abandon the door you originally chose and select the other door. By doing this you increase your chances of winning from 33% to 66%.

There are a number of places where people can go wrong with this puzzle, however in my experience the most common response is c). That it makes no difference whether you switch or stay. This response suggests that there is an equal probability of the prize being behind each door or that you have a 50% chance of winning regardless of the door you choose. This is in fact incorrect for reasons I'll now attempt to explain.

Hopefully you can all see that to begin with, the probability of guessing the door which contains the prizes is 33% or 1 in 3. This also means that there is a 66% chance that the door you chose does not contain the prize. That is, there is a 66% chance that the prize resides behind one of the other two doors.

When the host reveals one of the doors that does not contain the prize the chance of your door containing the prize does not change, it remains at 33%. Importantly though we know that the probability that the prize is behind one of the doors is 100%. So given there are two doors remaining and the probability of your door containing the prize is 33%, the probability of the other door containing the prize must be 66%. There was a 66% chance that one of the other two doors contained the prize. Now however we know that one of those doors does not contain the prize, therefore the other door must account for the remaining 66%.

If you're not yet convinced by my solution or you're having trouble getting your head around it, imagine the exact same scenario only instead of 3 doors to guess from there are now 100 doors. Your chance of guessing the correct door is now 1% or 1 in 100. So you guess a door and then I take away 98 of the doors that did not contain the prize leaving just 2 doors. The one you chose and one other. I now ask you whether you'd like to stick with your original choice or switch doors, what do you do? You switch obviously because you know that the chance of getting it right the first time was 1 in 100 (1%). The probability in this case that the other door has the prize is 99%.

No one emailed me the correct answer which means I hold onto the used handkerchief. The good news though is that this means the prize pool doubles for the next time I post a problem. So check back in if you're eager to win the handkerchief plus an additional prize of equal or lesser value.

James

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Surviving the Second Year Blues

Have you ever had one of those dreams in which you are trying get somewhere and you can’t? I am having these dreams with increasing frequency; I think it’s my subconscious mind’s not-so-subtle hint that I’m hitting a lull in my PhD progress. Something I rather naively hadn’t realized until now is that the demands of a PhD increase as you go along. Studies start piling up; rejected manuscripts need to be rewritten and sent to another journal; resubmitted manuscripts need to be thoroughly vetted to maximize their chances of getting accepted. This may not be the case for everyone, but I have certainly found myself to be under more pressure in my second year than in my first. I’m sure also that the pressure will only increase in my final year.

Pressure can be motivating or it can cause people to freeze. I believe that the trick to dealing with the pressure of the later stages of a PhD is to do with passive and active responding. Passive responding to pressure involves withdrawing and freezing which, although dysfunctional, at least has the benefit of keeping you out of contact with the thing that is causing you anxiety. Unfortunately I think that a lot of people use this strategy (you know the ones – they’ve been here forever and their catch-cry is “I just need to run one more study before I write up…”). Active responding is harder than passive responding. It involves forward planning and strict adherence to the deadlines that you (and other people) set for yourself.

My advice to anyone who, like me, is experiencing the second year (or third year, or fourth year) blues is just to get on with it. Confront the issue head on and try to make headway on small tasks by writing up a results section here, a general introduction there. Have a serious chat with your supervisor about the direction you’re heading in and the timeline you need to meet in order to finish. And above all, don’t let it get you down. Most people feel like this at one time or another in their postgraduate degree so don’t sweat it.

First prize is a used handkerchief

I’m not going to lie, my past few weeks have been largely unproductive and uneventful. The majority, if not all off my time has quite literally been taken up marking student essays and reports. It is an incredibly boring, tedious and painful exercise and I do not wish to reminisce on the experience here. Instead I thought I’d present a statistics puzzle that I just gave to my first year statistics class and that I find very cool.

Suppose you’re on a game show and you’re given the choice to pick one of three doors. Behind each door is the prize that you’ll win. Behind one door is an infinitely cool prize (insert an infinitely cool prize of your choice), behind the other two doors are foils or dud prizes, lets say someone’s used handkerchief (not much fun). It is important to know that the host of the game show knows what is behind each door.

So lets say you pick door number 1. Before they tell you what you've won, the host then opens door number 3 and reveals a used handkerchief. The host then says to you, “Would you like to change your choice to door number 2 or stick with your original choice of door number 1?”

The question is, given the new information provided to you that door number 3 did not contain the infinitely cool prize, should you change your decision and pick door number 2, stick with your original choice of door number 1 or does it make no difference either way?

Anyway have a think about it and I'll post the answer this time next week. If you know the answer please resist from posting it in the comments section. First person to email me the correct answer though will win one of my very own used handkerchiefs. Get to it!

James

jdretell@gmail.com

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog?? Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Conf Doc!

Last week I submitted my confirmation document, or ‘conf doc’ as we say in the business. It was daunting and I’m glad it’s over. The thing is, you’re not actually a ‘PhD Candidate’ until you have been ‘confirmed’. (Until recently, I assumed the PhD confirmation process was just like the catholic one.)

So I’m still a lowly ‘Provisional PhD Candidate’ until I’m told otherwise. To become a PhD Candidate I need to submit my conf doc to a small group of academics (my readers) who will decide my fate: Am I on track to producing research worthy of the Dr. title? Do I need a few more months and a bit more guidance? Or maybe I’m just not cut out for a PhD.

The conf doc is ten pages with a few sections:

• Proposal (i.e. “What are you gonna do?”)
• Literature Review (i.e. “Surely someone has done it before?”) 
• Feasibility (i.e. “Is this even possible?”)
• Importance (i.e. “Will anyone care?”)
• Funding (i.e. “Don’t ask for more money.”)
• Timeline (i.e. “How long will all this take?”)
• Work Completed (i.e. “What the hell have you been doing for the past 12 months!?”)

So after all this I’ll be confirmed right? Unfortunately not. I now have to turn this document into an hour long seminar for my readers, other academics, PhD students, and guests from other universities. As if that weren’t enough, the audience will then leave the room and I’ll be interviewed.

I present in two weeks on Thursday 3rd June at 12pm 2.30pm (Sir Llew Edwards Bldg 14 Room 115) and you’re welcome to come along. Or you can wait for my next post when I’ll reveal whether or not I’ve been confirmed... 

Matt Thompson

The purpose of a lanyard.

After being harassed about it for about 4 months now, I’ve finally decided to contribute to the Psych blog, to represent the clinical psych student component of the school.

This year I switched to the combined PhD program- clinical masters and PhD. My first year in the clinical program was the most enlightening, testing, rewarding, challenging, busy, enjoyable, and awful year of my life. But, having lived through it, and now being able to take a breather from the fast pace of the clinical program and complete it at a slower pace whilst starting my research, I can look back and see how much I learned and how far I’ve come!

It is nerve-wracking starting the program, organizing registration, college membership, blue cards, text-books, etc. and over coming your anxiety about actually seeing your first REAL client- “what forms do they need to sign?” “Do I tell them about the limits of confidentiality first, or after I’ve made polite chit-chat?”, “what if they tell me they are suicidal?”, “what if my pen runs out?”, “where can I sit so I can see the clock?”, “How do I stop them talking off topic without seeming rude?”, “what if I haven’t ticked all the boxes on my intake form?”, “what if I forget how to speak?”, “Have I asked a double-barrelled question?”, “Is my posture making me look warm and engaged?” “what if they don’t like me?” etc. etc.

Then once that’s all sorted out, you find yourself juggling 5 classes, case presentations, 8 clients, research projects, supervision requirements, MSATs, exams, assignments, board paper-work requirements, client reports, progress notes, and discharge summaries, plus trying to have a life, and make a living somehow. Actually the last 2 tend to not happen very often- you find yourself having a chocolate bar and a diet coke for lunch, and then by the time you get home at 11pm, you’re too tired to make dinner, you have had no time or money to go to the supermarket, and you know you have to be in there at uni again by 7 am anyway so you just collapse into bed (after a shower- although sometimes personal hygiene slips a bit as well) !

Ok, so maybe it’s a little bit of an exaggeration, some weeks are better than others, but this story was true for too high a number of my weeks last year for my liking.

But you do learn a lot about organization, time management, the importance of work-life balance (through learning first hand what happens when it’s absent), psychopathology (again, through first-hand experience with anxiety, mood disorders, stress, and sometimes a little psychosis), and of course a little bit about interpersonal skills, psychological treatments, and about the field in general.



I was asked at lunch today, why I felt I needed a lanyard with all of my keys, swipe cards etc on it. And I would like to clarify this for everyone, so that you don’t think it’s just the clinical psychs being pretentious. When you are in the situation as described above, it is very easy to forget things, leave things places, forget your clients’ names, write the wrong names in reports, be disorganized, lose things, AND lock yourself out of places at 7am or 11pm when there’s no-one around to let you in.

SO, the purpose of a lanyard is to decrease the chance of this happening, or even just to decrease the chance of having to walk back to where you came from to get your photocopy card because you forgot it (these things tend to be enough to tip you over the edge when you’re in this situation). You only have to remember one thing and you have instant access to your St Lucia clinic key, Herston clinic key, computer lab swipe card, photocopy card, locker key, and USB. The importance of this was demonstrated one morning last year when I didn’t have my lanyard for whatever reason. It was 7am and I had a presentation on “Theory of Mind and the Frontal Lobes” for neuroanatomy class at 9am (Which was barely started), I arrived at the computer labs, put my stuff down and went to make a cup of tea. Without my swipe card. I had to wait about 40 minutes for someone to arrive and let me in and my presentation suffered greatly!

This year, although I am finding myself with a much better work-life balance ( I actually get weekends and the occasional evening off!), I am still juggling clients, coursework, therapy research projects, supervision, board requirements, reports, paperwork, a folio, and that little thing called a PhD. So my lanyard now has:
Photocopy card
Swipe card for UQ
Swipe card for Royal Children’s where I have a desk
Key for office at UQ
UQ clinic key
Herston clinic key
Locker key
Filing cabinet key
And USB.

It is not because I like to look important- it is because my brain is so scattered and in about 10 thousand places at once, so my lanyard is my safety blanket that keeps me slightly sane and with everything in the right spot.

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

I bet you can't stop your eyes from moving.

I’m fascinated by the control we have over our eye movements, because we first use our eyes to explore the world around us. Our control over what our eyes do largely commands how we complete complex behaviours like driving a car.

Some of our eye movements are automatic and made reflexively in response to some visual event. Imagine, for example, standing on a train platform and looking across the tracks to a friend on a platform opposite you. If a train flies past between you and your friend, your eyes can’t help but to flick back and forth, following parts of the carriages. This is an eye reflex called optokinetic nystagmus, or OKN for short.

To induce OKN in the lab, I get people to sit in a pitch black room and stare at the centre of a computer monitor while I track their eyes with the eye tracker. I tell participants that their goal is to stare directly at the centre of the monitor. But then I display 800 little white dots on the screen, all moving at the same speed from left to right at a rate of a few centimetres per second. Because there is nothing in the centre of the monitor for participants to keep their eyes fixed on, their OKN kicks in. My participants end up following a single dot smoothly for a short period of time until their eyes flick in the opposite direction to start following a new dot - this pattern repeats over and over regardless of how much the participants try to keep their eyes still.

Testing OKN in the eye tracker (the ghostly face at the far right is Morgan).

Below, I’ve graphed examples of what the data end up looking like, but let me quickly explain the graph before you click on the picture to see it in full size! Along the x-axis is time, and the y-axis plots how much the eyes move left and right. If someone kept their eyes perfectly still, the graph would be a straight line along the value “640”. Values higher than 640 represent eye movements to the right, and lower values are movements to the left. Each coloured plot represents about 2 seconds of OKN from a different participant in a different condition.

Eye data showing less and less OKN for different conditions -- click the image to make it bigger and see the paragraph above the photo for more detail about the graph.

You can see that, over time, participants eyes smoothly move right, and then really quickly flick back to left, making a saw-tooth like pattern. This pattern is most obvious for the red plot, and becomes less for the purple, and even less for the blue plots. The decrease in OKN over these examples is because of an experimental manipulation I employed to help people keep their eyes still - even from this small amount of data it’s obvious that it worked!

The results from my experiments will hopefully inform our knowledge about how motion and eye movements affect our perceptual organisation of the world.

-Will
www.willjharrison.com

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog?? Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au

Hands-on research.

I may be just an RA (research assistant) but I get to do some pretty cool stuff. Take fingerprinting, for example. Part of my job is to collect fingerprints from people so we can use those prints in experiments where we look at how people process complex visual stimuli.

Believe it or not, taking someone’s fingerprints is actually pretty difficult. You have to (gently) twist a person’s arm in really awkward ways to roll their fingers evenly across a 10-print card. At the moment I’m pretty crap. Here are some examples of crap print rolling:

A twitch during the roll (the vertical smudges in the centre), and too much pressure (the smudging along the top)

Not enough ink covering the finger

Too much ink (coupled with too much pressure)

Sigh. Looks like I've lots of practice ahead of me...

- Morgan

Are you studying Psychology@UQ and want to contribute to theuqpsycblog??Send Will an email to find out how: will.harrison@uqconnect.edu.au