And KSR's Red Mars... is long, but I wouldn't say tedious, but haven't read it in about 10 years. But the trilogy as a whole is a must read. So hopefully his US/Soviet era bias doesn't put you off too much... Red Moon by KSR works nicely too... on a similar 'space' scale, just starting out. And that isn't a messy bookshelf, used but hardly messy... but don't be shy...
Oh no, I'm reading Red Mars because you've recommended it so many times and now you're saying I have to commit to the whole series?! One day, one day. But after Red Mars I think I need a break from KSR for a bit :P
Congratulations on embarking on the final leg of your PhD journey, Morgan! It's inspiring to see your commitment to accountability and your detailed note-taking process. Your approach to structuring and organizing your thoughts from 'Reassembling The Social' in Obsidian is insightful. Best of luck with meeting your goals and the upcoming defense! Looking forward to more weekly-ish vlogs to see your progress. Also, congrats on being accepted to the conference! 🎉 Keep up the great work! +1👍
I'm really looking forward to following your vlogs in the future! I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you that your videos were one of the major reasons I finally managed to finish my PhD while working part time in a museum. I'm currently in the process of making the final changes to my text based on my supervisors' comments, before I can submit it :) (I did what you did and announced publicly that I was going to finish my PhD, so that I was obliged to do it, which was very effective!) I'm looking forward to seeing what you read next, because I've followed several of your recommendations and they've all been favourites (Vita Nostra, A Minor Chorus, among others). Good luck and enjoy the process!
Wow! What an honor to have motivated you in this way 🥹 Congratulations! This is so inspiring, and so cool that you work in a museum. I worked as a tour guide/historical interpreter at a living history museum for much of my high school and undergrad days! I'm so glad you liked Vita Nostra, and especially A Minor Chorus! Are you Canadian? What is your PhD in?
@@morganeua So cool that you worked as a guide :) Nope, not Canadian, but Swiss. My PhD is in medieval art history, I work on medieval painting in a small city here in Switzerland. Thanks again for your content!
Thanks for doing these, Morgan! They're really motivational. I've been struggling to write my master's thesis (so not nearly a dissertation, but it has to be 45k and is still no easy project) for way too long and my chapter planning (and lack of success with sticking to it) is eerily similar to yours. We can do this!
I have sort of been embarrassed about my process/progress on the dissertation at times, but honestly, I feel like so many of us go through the exact same things without realizing it. So, I figured I might as well share my chaotic process so that others can see that it is normal. I hope it's normal, anyway. I feel like many of us go through this confusion?!
I'm glad you're enjoying it! It's weird publicizing a part of my life, but I do find it quite motivational to be sharing the PhD process, because talking about it keeps my mind engaged with it!
@@morganeua I get a lot of motivation from it too because my dream is to get a Ph.D.. Though I haven't even received my master's yet I feel like I can live vicariously through you. 🤪
LOVE this series it’s fun to follow along and hear about not only your processes but your day to day life. Ps- “The Holdovers” was really good. Highly recommend
I'll be so happy to watch your future vlogs! I hope they help boost your productivity and keep you excited about your project. It'd be cool to hear more about the things you've enjoyed studying the most for your Ph.D. and things you're excited to work on with it in the following months. I'm sure it's fascinating stuff based on the texts you read on this channel. Thanks for making this video :)
Ooh, okay, I'll think about it! I'm sure I'll share bits throughout the vlogs. Although, I'll keep a lot of the content of the diss secret until after it's published since it's ever-changing. But once it's done, I'm sure I'll make a big "My Dissertation" video!
Interesting to hear your thoughts on Hanna Bervoets! (you pretty much got her name right!) I haven't read this particular book, but generally feel the same about her books that I've read: great idea, alright read, disappointing ending. Interested to hear what you'll think about Less! I read it with friends, but it wasn't my cup of tea.
I'm about 100 pages in now and I'm liking it! It's not my personal favorite either, but I do sort of understand why it won the Pulitzer. Which I'm just realizing now is so funny since Robert in the book won a Pulitzer 😝
I’m in the write up year too! British PhD student (ethnographer) in Education here lecturing at the Sorbonne university in Abu Dhabi. Juggling with full time teaching so your company is great for me- good luck Morganeua 😊 we got this !!! 🏃♀️
@@morganeua thank you! I’m an English literature teacher so mad about the classics, I think I should vlog about my books too- I’m seriously mad about the classics, Dickens is my go to but I’m also teaching it which makes it come alive even more. I liked your books too that you picked out, happy reading x
Hallo ! You sound slightly unsure about your timeline (that’s my read from the comments😅) - just remember that work expands to fill the time allotted to it, so keeping the tight deadline is important - I also give myself arbitrary deadlines for my thesis and am also in the final stretch - but these deadlines help me just push through and avoid perfectionism - done is better than perfect 🙌🏼 best of luck !
I'm so keen to find time to make a video of my notes, if only for a comparison of approaches. Yours are more concise and more elegant, I think, but maybe there is something in value in my approach too, comparatively. I'm aiming to 'finish reading' (not really) in the next 3-4 weeks, so when I'm done with that, maybe I'll make a sample video of my note process. I'm definitely a 'highlight everything' person. I think that comes from decades of having no guidance on how to take notes (and ADHD making me not want to write them anyway) but, if nothing else, it's meaning that notes for my PhD are currently sitting at almost double the word count of the dissertation itself, and probably will be 3 times the word count by the time i'm done (again, not really) writing notes. There is something comforting to the abundance, particularly when part of my neurodivergence sometimes exhibits in a bad short term memory. I was recently parsing some old notes for clarity and found so much that i had forgotten even writing.
I find there is comfort in the abundance until I actually go to write something and then it's just overwhelming :P But I guess the compromise is ORGANISED abundance. I would love to watch a video on your note-taking!! Share it to RUclips, it's clearly a hot topic on here since my videos have done so well!
@@morganeua I'm hoping that my way out of that conundrum is a massive folder of empty notes (well, empty except for aliases) which are just keywords, and linking all occurrences of those keywords back to those notes. Essentially, those empty notes are waiting to be filled with definitions and become like little maps of content, but for now they just help for a way into the massive list of notes. (Ostensibly, they SHOULD also bring those notes closer together on the graph, which with the 'graph analysis' plugin should increase their similarity). I started out by hashtagging keyterms, but it wasn't as precise to have a whole note labelled that way. Now my hashtags are academic disciplines/subdisciplines and my key words are in a 'Keyword Notes' folder.
Thanks for this! I’m interested in that study time that you do online with another person. It seems a good way to help myself have some discipline / accountability (getting ready to start my Master’s thesis soon). Could you maybe say a bit more about it, how it works, and how it helps?
Sure! This is someone I met through my RUclips channel because they found me for my book content and we had similar reading tastes. And they had posted a RUclips video about their research, so I could kind of see what they were like before reaching out. And now, Monday-Friday we meet at the same Google Meet link for the same 2-2.5 hours (we started with just 1 hour and worked our way up). We get into the video call, chat and catch up, tell each other what we're working on and then mute ourselves and work while on call for 25 minutes. Then we unmute and give an update before doing it again. That's it! We just work at the same time over video call!
Thanks for the detail. It’s the kind of example I want to look out for as I get into my (lowly!) Master’s thesis, to find ways to be encouraged and encourage someone else…
God I spent years driving up to Toronto over the border in Buffalo. Been awhile. I will be back up there when it's warm😂...I have a few food spots to hit like Burger Priest and Tim Hortons
Oooh, Burger Priest is nice. But Timmies? I almost never go 🤣 I'm a starbucks girl. Tim's is still a Canadian staple, although I think it is American-owned now?
@@morganeua .oh is it? Maybe..i Used to go in there for their breakfast wraps LOL..Hands down like that city has great food.My favorite area being in kensington market when its warm out.Looking forward to coming back
Hey Morgan, curious question. Since the beginning of your PhD journey, do you have an estimation how many published papers you have read that are relevant to your research area? In general, how many papers your colleagues on average read?
That's a great question... I'm sure it depends on your field and your research topic and your research METHODS, buuut... Let's see. In my PhD/MA courses, we had to read about 2-3 papers per week and I was in about 2 classes at a time. So, in a year, I'd read about 90+ papers/chapters. And then in my comprehensive exams I was supposed to read (emphasis on 'supposed to'....) 90 books in a year. So, If what the institution requires of me in preparation is indication then ~90 articles/year, or ~360 articles/degree. But, personally, I've found that I read less after finishing classes, but the reading is more focused. So, now it's hard to say because maybe I read one article for every five abstracts I read, but reading the abstracts was still useful information to know what's out there... Sorry that that's not a straightforward answer :P I don't keep track!
The electronic music earlier in the video brings to mind Satie: music.ruclips.net/p/OLAK5uy_kWz9GwCbaIwrDiLu19CnVxOY3tm5rCuXI I've found this music helpful for focusing while writing and reading.
Our society needs to have a conversation about wuere in the shelf books are supposed to stand: pushed back or at the front. I have seen so many RUclipsr’s shelves where they are pushed all the way back and I just think it’s the wrong way to do it
Having worked in my college library for 4 years in the early 1990s, the answer is faced to the front of the shelf. I think I spent more time facing shelves than reshelving.
@@ladyflimflam I also work at a college library, and must agree. Also having the books up front lets the air circulate behind it and keeps the dust from settling on the shelf ;)
I have them at the front, but I saw a video from someone who works with antique books who said that lining them up so that the line up at the back rather than the spine is better for the books over the long run (because they are all pushed close equally).
@@RileyEffective interesting! Yeah I guess if you want to keep them for decades then it’s better if the dust settles on the shelf instead of the book 📖
So glad you're doing these. Im also in the home stretch of PhD dissertation writing. We can do it!
YES. WE. CAN! Congrats! What is your research on?
@@morganeua British identity in Welsh and Scottish Gaelic poetry from the eighteenth century :)
Excellent window and yes the 'library of unread books'... just follow Umberto, enjoy the reads.
Good luck...
And happy 'we' can help, as this channel has been helpful to me and so many!
And you have also mentioned "Down to Earth" by Latour, er, so my notes tell me. : ))))))
And KSR's Red Mars... is long, but I wouldn't say tedious, but haven't read it in about 10 years. But the trilogy as a whole is a must read. So hopefully his US/Soviet era bias doesn't put you off too much...
Red Moon by KSR works nicely too... on a similar 'space' scale, just starting out. And that isn't a messy bookshelf, used but hardly messy... but don't be shy...
Oh no, I'm reading Red Mars because you've recommended it so many times and now you're saying I have to commit to the whole series?! One day, one day. But after Red Mars I think I need a break from KSR for a bit :P
@@morganeua Well the trilogy is 'one' mega story... but it is worth it. : )))))
Congratulations on embarking on the final leg of your PhD journey, Morgan! It's inspiring to see your commitment to accountability and your detailed note-taking process. Your approach to structuring and organizing your thoughts from 'Reassembling The Social' in Obsidian is insightful. Best of luck with meeting your goals and the upcoming defense! Looking forward to more weekly-ish vlogs to see your progress. Also, congrats on being accepted to the conference! 🎉 Keep up the great work! +1👍
Thanks so much for this positive and supportive comment! :)
Good luck! I enjoy watching your videos as motivation to turn my masters thesis into a book. Keep up the great work!
Omg, that's so cool! What's the book topic??
Thank you! It's about primary school education through the arts!@@morganeua
@@kathleenaustin8899 Oh my gosh, that is wonderful! So important, I hope publishing goes well!
Thank you so much, that means a lot!
@@morganeua
I'm really looking forward to following your vlogs in the future! I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you that your videos were one of the major reasons I finally managed to finish my PhD while working part time in a museum. I'm currently in the process of making the final changes to my text based on my supervisors' comments, before I can submit it :) (I did what you did and announced publicly that I was going to finish my PhD, so that I was obliged to do it, which was very effective!) I'm looking forward to seeing what you read next, because I've followed several of your recommendations and they've all been favourites (Vita Nostra, A Minor Chorus, among others). Good luck and enjoy the process!
Wow! What an honor to have motivated you in this way 🥹 Congratulations! This is so inspiring, and so cool that you work in a museum. I worked as a tour guide/historical interpreter at a living history museum for much of my high school and undergrad days! I'm so glad you liked Vita Nostra, and especially A Minor Chorus! Are you Canadian? What is your PhD in?
@@morganeua So cool that you worked as a guide :) Nope, not Canadian, but Swiss. My PhD is in medieval art history, I work on medieval painting in a small city here in Switzerland. Thanks again for your content!
Thanks for doing these, Morgan! They're really motivational. I've been struggling to write my master's thesis (so not nearly a dissertation, but it has to be 45k and is still no easy project) for way too long and my chapter planning (and lack of success with sticking to it) is eerily similar to yours. We can do this!
I have sort of been embarrassed about my process/progress on the dissertation at times, but honestly, I feel like so many of us go through the exact same things without realizing it. So, I figured I might as well share my chaotic process so that others can see that it is normal. I hope it's normal, anyway. I feel like many of us go through this confusion?!
Hey, good luck!
I'll be happy to watch your future vlogs! Good look on your PhD!! Great video as always Morgan!
Thanks for joining me on the journey!
Good stuff! Thanks. I love it when you share your Ph.D. journey with us. So, I am excited for this series.
I'm glad you're enjoying it! It's weird publicizing a part of my life, but I do find it quite motivational to be sharing the PhD process, because talking about it keeps my mind engaged with it!
@@morganeua I get a lot of motivation from it too because my dream is to get a Ph.D.. Though I haven't even received my master's yet I feel like I can live vicariously through you. 🤪
Last push! Keep going... All the best!
Love your videos! Good luck to your dissertation!
Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. You can do this!!
Thank you!! 💪
LOVE this series it’s fun to follow along and hear about not only your processes but your day to day life. Ps- “The Holdovers” was really good. Highly recommend
I will definitely be watching the Holdovers! Probably this week I'll do Holdovers and Zone of Interest.
I wish you luck and perseverance!
I think I'll need both! Okay, maybe perseverance more than luck... :P
Cheering you on! 🎉
I'll be so happy to watch your future vlogs! I hope they help boost your productivity and keep you excited about your project. It'd be cool to hear more about the things you've enjoyed studying the most for your Ph.D. and things you're excited to work on with it in the following months. I'm sure it's fascinating stuff based on the texts you read on this channel. Thanks for making this video :)
Ooh, okay, I'll think about it! I'm sure I'll share bits throughout the vlogs. Although, I'll keep a lot of the content of the diss secret until after it's published since it's ever-changing. But once it's done, I'm sure I'll make a big "My Dissertation" video!
Interesting to hear your thoughts on Hanna Bervoets! (you pretty much got her name right!) I haven't read this particular book, but generally feel the same about her books that I've read: great idea, alright read, disappointing ending. Interested to hear what you'll think about Less! I read it with friends, but it wasn't my cup of tea.
I'm about 100 pages in now and I'm liking it! It's not my personal favorite either, but I do sort of understand why it won the Pulitzer. Which I'm just realizing now is so funny since Robert in the book won a Pulitzer 😝
I wish you luck! fingers crossed🤞
I’m in the write up year too! British PhD student (ethnographer) in Education here lecturing at the Sorbonne university in Abu Dhabi. Juggling with full time teaching so your company is great for me- good luck Morganeua 😊 we got this !!! 🏃♀️
Ah, I'm teaching too, it's so hard to balance research and teaching! Best of luck!
@@morganeua thank you! I’m an English literature teacher so mad about the classics, I think I should vlog about my books too- I’m seriously mad about the classics, Dickens is my go to but I’m also teaching it which makes it come alive even more. I liked your books too that you picked out, happy reading x
Hallo ! You sound slightly unsure about your timeline (that’s my read from the comments😅) - just remember that work expands to fill the time allotted to it, so keeping the tight deadline is important - I also give myself arbitrary deadlines for my thesis and am also in the final stretch - but these deadlines help me just push through and avoid perfectionism - done is better than perfect 🙌🏼 best of luck !
Done is better than perfect - love it! Yes, this is where I'm at! Just set the deadline and get 'er done!!
I can so relate to this moment! I too want to finish writing my undergraduate thesis this year. Best wishes! ❤
You can do it! What's your thesis on?
@@morganeua Thank you!
I study literature and my thesis is about parodic procedures in a text written in the 17th century.
This is good news. I hope that you keep to the deadlines you have established.
Oh man, me too 😂
I need info on your book stand. 😊
Ooh, the grey metal wire thing that holds my book while I take notes? I can't remember right now the brand, but if I think of it, I'll let you know!
I'm so keen to find time to make a video of my notes, if only for a comparison of approaches. Yours are more concise and more elegant, I think, but maybe there is something in value in my approach too, comparatively. I'm aiming to 'finish reading' (not really) in the next 3-4 weeks, so when I'm done with that, maybe I'll make a sample video of my note process. I'm definitely a 'highlight everything' person. I think that comes from decades of having no guidance on how to take notes (and ADHD making me not want to write them anyway) but, if nothing else, it's meaning that notes for my PhD are currently sitting at almost double the word count of the dissertation itself, and probably will be 3 times the word count by the time i'm done (again, not really) writing notes. There is something comforting to the abundance, particularly when part of my neurodivergence sometimes exhibits in a bad short term memory. I was recently parsing some old notes for clarity and found so much that i had forgotten even writing.
I find there is comfort in the abundance until I actually go to write something and then it's just overwhelming :P But I guess the compromise is ORGANISED abundance. I would love to watch a video on your note-taking!! Share it to RUclips, it's clearly a hot topic on here since my videos have done so well!
@@morganeua I'm hoping that my way out of that conundrum is a massive folder of empty notes (well, empty except for aliases) which are just keywords, and linking all occurrences of those keywords back to those notes.
Essentially, those empty notes are waiting to be filled with definitions and become like little maps of content, but for now they just help for a way into the massive list of notes. (Ostensibly, they SHOULD also bring those notes closer together on the graph, which with the 'graph analysis' plugin should increase their similarity).
I started out by hashtagging keyterms, but it wasn't as precise to have a whole note labelled that way. Now my hashtags are academic disciplines/subdisciplines and my key words are in a 'Keyword Notes' folder.
good luck
It's happening !!!!
I sure hope so!! 😝
Thanks for this! I’m interested in that study time that you do online with another person. It seems a good way to help myself have some discipline / accountability (getting ready to start my Master’s thesis soon). Could you maybe say a bit more about it, how it works, and how it helps?
Sure! This is someone I met through my RUclips channel because they found me for my book content and we had similar reading tastes. And they had posted a RUclips video about their research, so I could kind of see what they were like before reaching out. And now, Monday-Friday we meet at the same Google Meet link for the same 2-2.5 hours (we started with just 1 hour and worked our way up). We get into the video call, chat and catch up, tell each other what we're working on and then mute ourselves and work while on call for 25 minutes. Then we unmute and give an update before doing it again. That's it! We just work at the same time over video call!
Thanks for the detail. It’s the kind of example I want to look out for as I get into my (lowly!) Master’s thesis, to find ways to be encouraged and encourage someone else…
God I spent years driving up to Toronto over the border in Buffalo. Been awhile. I will be back up there when it's warm😂...I have a few food spots to hit like Burger Priest and Tim Hortons
Oooh, Burger Priest is nice. But Timmies? I almost never go 🤣 I'm a starbucks girl. Tim's is still a Canadian staple, although I think it is American-owned now?
@@morganeua .oh is it? Maybe..i Used to go in there for their breakfast wraps LOL..Hands down like that city has great food.My favorite area being in kensington market when its warm out.Looking forward to coming back
@@mrd6869 Kensington is awesome!
Threw this on to hype myself to finish coursework (so god i hope that one day i can actually write my diss). I will finish greek translation today!
Wow, so impressive, congrats!!! So excited for you to get to your dissertation research and writing!
Hey Morgan, curious question. Since the beginning of your PhD journey, do you have an estimation how many published papers you have read that are relevant to your research area?
In general, how many papers your colleagues on average read?
That's a great question... I'm sure it depends on your field and your research topic and your research METHODS, buuut... Let's see. In my PhD/MA courses, we had to read about 2-3 papers per week and I was in about 2 classes at a time. So, in a year, I'd read about 90+ papers/chapters. And then in my comprehensive exams I was supposed to read (emphasis on 'supposed to'....) 90 books in a year. So, If what the institution requires of me in preparation is indication then ~90 articles/year, or ~360 articles/degree.
But, personally, I've found that I read less after finishing classes, but the reading is more focused. So, now it's hard to say because maybe I read one article for every five abstracts I read, but reading the abstracts was still useful information to know what's out there...
Sorry that that's not a straightforward answer :P I don't keep track!
The electronic music earlier in the video brings to mind Satie: music.ruclips.net/p/OLAK5uy_kWz9GwCbaIwrDiLu19CnVxOY3tm5rCuXI
I've found this music helpful for focusing while writing and reading.
Ooh, thanks for the recommendation!
Our society needs to have a conversation about wuere in the shelf books are supposed to stand: pushed back or at the front. I have seen so many RUclipsr’s shelves where they are pushed all the way back and I just think it’s the wrong way to do it
😮 But how do you make sure they stay put at the front and don't get pushed backwards? And where would you put knick knacks??
Having worked in my college library for 4 years in the early 1990s, the answer is faced to the front of the shelf. I think I spent more time facing shelves than reshelving.
@@ladyflimflam I also work at a college library, and must agree. Also having the books up front lets the air circulate behind it and keeps the dust from settling on the shelf ;)
I have them at the front, but I saw a video from someone who works with antique books who said that lining them up so that the line up at the back rather than the spine is better for the books over the long run (because they are all pushed close equally).
@@RileyEffective interesting! Yeah I guess if you want to keep them for decades then it’s better if the dust settles on the shelf instead of the book 📖
'Promo SM' 😉
Good luck :)