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How to chop, divide, and then eat your research elephant
3 Minute Read - A few months ago, I attended a workshop on Project Planning in the Research Context, hosted by Dr. Rob Drennan, who works in the Wits Research Office. I then decided to work on a few blog posts, based on the workshop he designed and presented, and broke these blog posts into the five different sections he covered in his workshop. This blog post is the fourth post in this series, and if you haven’t read the others, I would suggest you…
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Why you should focus on the value of your time this year
6 Minute Read - In today’s society, we are very concerned with the value of money. The problem with this approach is that when we consider money as our most valuable resource, we forget other resources that are sometimes more valuable than what we have saved in the bank. As a mother, an academic, an economist, and a time-use researcher, I am here to remind you of your most valuable resource: your time. We generally start the year off by discussing various planning principles, goals,…
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How to plan ahead and avoid getting caught off guard by risks during the research process
3 Minute Read - If you’re new here, it might be useful to know I introduced a series of posts that deal with project planning in the research context over the last two months. This post thus forms part of a larger set of blog posts and should ideally be read in conjunction with them. This is the third post in the series. The first post dealt with pinning down the vision and objectives of your research project, while the second post provided guidelines to…
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Research project planning with the right resources
4 Minute Read - In the last blog post, I introduced a series of posts that deal with project planning in the research context. This post thus forms part of a larger set of posts and should ideally be read in conjunction with them. This is the second post of the series, and in the first post, I wrote about the vision and objectives of your research project. It is important that this conceptual step is not skipped in a research project, otherwise, you will…
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Pinning down the vision & objectives of your research project
4 Minute Read - I recently attended a project planning workshop for research. The reason why this workshop was primarily aimed at research projects is because things hardly go according to plan in a research project. A number of planning tools were presented in this workshop and I thought it might be useful to discuss some of them in a series of blog posts over the next few months. In this blog post, I will be focussing on the vision and objectives of the project.…
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How to stay motivated as a research student
5 Minute Read - Research can be lonely, especially if you are doing a coursework degree and you are a social sciences student, where group and lab work is typically not the norm. You may have been forced into group work and frustrated by having to work with people who do not seem like they are as committed as you and now you have a chance to do it yourself, but it’s not all it’s been made out to be. The benefit of doing coursework…
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How to read when time is limited
3 Minute Read - So we’ve all been there. The lecturer asks specific questions related to the prescribed reading and everyone in the class looks down. The bow of shame. The bow of a student who hasn’t done their readings in advance. Let’s be honest, we’re all busy! There’s work, family, friends, side hustles, and on top of that trying to finish off this degree. One way of dealing with this is to spend the next few weeks averting attention from yourself in class (to…
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Getting it right with sustainable planning in 2022
5 Minute Read - It’s that time of the year. People are jotting down new year’s resolutions, setting out the professional and personal achievements they want to have reached by the end of the year, and overall everything just feels new, fertile, and ripe to be undertaking this exercise. But how many are setting the same goal they set for themselves last year, the year before, or even 5 to 10 years ago? The key that many are missing is the ability to set sustainable…
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How to get the most out of your time as a graduate student
4 Minute Read - Think about it. Your entire childhood consisted of you getting used to some form of structure. From bedtime routines instilled by your caregivers and waking up at a set time every morning for primary school, to the timetable you were handed in secondary school and your seemingly flexible, but jam-packed university timetable. After having completed a four-year undergraduate degree or an honours degree, many students go on to register for their master’s degree. If you are lucky and you have the…
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How to make the most of your ‘proposal stage’
6 Minute Read - The proposal stage is arguably the most difficult part of a research journey. It takes many people outside their comfort zones and can be an incredibly stressful time, especially if you are not sure what topic you want to pursue. But the purpose of the proposal stage is designed to help you gain clarity as you move towards the research stage. Despite this, many students want to avoid the discomfort of the proposal stage. Based on my experience as a student…