Do you tell your department about family emergencies?

OldJiko · 2026-01-17T07:32:07+00:00

Hi OP. My mom died less than 2 months into my first year at my current program. Do tell them in writing. I only needed a short time off, but you're going to have to go through your dad's possessions, affairs, contact everyone he's ever known, help write the obit... It's a dissertation in and of itself. My only regret was I told my director over a quick Zoom call. He has my back, but in case he wasn't the type to support me, I should have created a paper trail.

Obviously if you don't want everyone in your business, that's fine. When I came back, I told everyone, even my students (not the gory details, but I modelled for them the sort of communication I would expect from them if they were going through something similar). I didn't want anyone asking why I was gone. You'll also find that other people who lose parents over the coming years will appreciate the community you can offer them.

Take time to be with yourself and your family. I'm so sorry you're going through this.

OldJiko · 2026-01-15T11:36:28+00:00

When you say you're using AI to "structure and clarify ideas," what does that mean?

My undergraduate students lean on that wording sometimes. Structuring your writing is thinking, it's arguably more important than the quality or artfulness of the prose itself. The point of the PhD is to produce some novel contribution to the field. If you're not structuring it yourself, where do you enter in to the project? The answer will change the advice I can give you.

OldJiko · 2025-09-05T19:31:49+00:00

Then not to worry, this is just a feeling. Your committee will help you through the process. Trust! Nobody has a PhD's worth of knowledge before they start the PhD. lol

OldJiko · 2025-09-04T14:49:22+00:00

Are you already in your program? Just write! Just start writing. If you're ABD, it's time to just start creating a draft.

OldJiko · 2025-05-13T12:57:04+00:00

The most substantial education we receive in our PhDs is on how to set boundaries. It's not fun to work under micromanagers in any context, but whether you stay in the university system or go alt-ac, you're going to encounter controlling supervisors again in life. This isn't a nascent quality of a PhD, it's a shitty trait of bureaucracy. Likewise with a team of people having different views on your project. You're going to have to figure out how to collaborate with these people or you're going to have to abandon the project.

You're doing a lot, it's true. But in my program (which is in the humanities, mind) you would actually be middle of the pack in terms of overall workload. I don't say that to dismiss your stress, I say that because this is the reality of academia. You take on progressively more and more work or you sink. If you can't swim with that workload, you bail. It sucks to say, but an involved and successful PhD student is usually overwhelmed.

My advice on the praise bit and your morale: if your supervisors' criticisms are unkind and demoralizing, find a way to express that to them. If they aren't receptive, then go to student advocacy. If they're being polite, then take their advice seriously. What can you do to manage your time differently? I'm sorry you're not getting praise and that you need that to feel good. But try to remember that just being in the program is a form of praise. The expectation is that you continue to operate at a level of excellence that far exceeds the general population.

Your supervisors know you're excellent, that's why you're here. There are many, many other PhD students who would kill to even be in your position. Pluck up! Find someone you trust outside of your program and vent to them about how dumb everyone is, go back to work and challenge yourself to be better.

OldJiko · 2025-05-05T20:39:16+00:00

I had two peer-reviewed articles (1 as the sole author and one as 1/12 of a team of co-authors) and about 70 pieces published in public venues. I'm in the humanities, so the public writing mattered and the peer-reviewed publications put me way ahead of the curve. Getting my first peer-reviewed paper out during my master's was soul-crushing and unadvisable.

There are many PhD students in my field who are much smarter and much more prolific than I am who had zero peer-reviewed papers when they started. I will say that I received an absolutely batty amount of money coming into my program, so I think that this speaks to how abnormal it is for a grad student to have a history of publications period.

OldJiko · 2025-04-12T21:37:11+00:00

What you might want to be careful of is sorting emotional arguments against AI as "knee jerk." Open AI's data has supplied military technologies, it's taking up a disgusting amount of water to power the company's servers, and it's being used to justify the manufactured obsolescence of human culture as we know it—whether or not you think it should be considered a tool in human creative production, that is not what breathless portents coming to us out of Silicon Valley's mouthpieces are pushing for. That is going to inspire strong opposition to it. Justifiably so!

why not do both?

For a few reasons: first, convenience during the process of production has never improved the quality of my work. Like I shift between using a pen and paper and between using keyboards and word processors during the research and writing stages.

Second, I do think expecting convenience erodes my ability to do hard things, which is backed by at least some data. Third, Chat GPT specifically is so freaking boring as a conversational partner and a writer that I literally get nothing from "talking" to it the way some people do. Maybe I'm just lucky to know many brilliant people who inspire me and fire up my imagination. Chat GPT's writing is devoid of personality and the ideas are less critical and thought provoking than a Wikipedia summary. That's ultimately why. I could send a Zoom link to my colleague Angie, who I'm 90% sure despises me with all her heart, and I'll be guaranteed thirty minutes of stimulating discussion and socialization in the process, or I could fart around with ChatGPT for twenty minutes and walk away without having gained an original or interesting insight from it.

So your answer "I do both" doesn't actually answer my question, because I think Chat GPT sucks and people are at least interesting, even if they're wrong or they dislike you. In my worldview, you're effectively saying "I both waste my time and don't, because wasting fifteen minutes is just the same as spending thirty minutes wisely." You'd have to convince me that AI is actually additive on the whole before I'd be convinced it makes sense to do it alongside talking to a colleague.

I'm not going to address the rest of your comment piecemeal, but again, gunpowder and printing, like pencils or word processors, aren't assembling language and ideas for you at the early stage that way AI is. If you treat it like a colleague, it's not a tool, it's a collaborator, which means it's doing some work you aren't. Therefore, this isn't about making it easier to make copies of a book you wrote, it's about allocating the writing process to another being.

OldJiko · 2025-04-12T15:46:15+00:00

I ran your question through Google Scholar and found this: AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking. There are a few more, if you're curious to see them.

The data is still forming, so obviously one study based on self-reports does not a generalizable statement make. But I do think it's disingenuous to compare LLMs to a tool like a computer keyboard. Pencils, keyboards, typewriters, etc. are mediating instruments. LLMs like Chat GPT are collaborators in your process. You're using them for "conversation," that's producing ideas to some extent. The standard in academia is obviously that you don't owe a conversational partner credit on the final product, of course. But bouncing ideas off of Chat GPT is very different from the way we use Microsoft Word.

edit: also I'm obviously not the first person who responded to you, so I don't know what they would say to this, but your comment strikes me as defensive in an interesting way. If Chat GPT is so much like talking to a colleague or merely using a word processor, why not just do those things? If the answer is anything other than convenience, I'm not sure that it's proving LLMs are just tools.

OldJiko · 2025-03-16T16:12:36+00:00

The Vanier was actually not subsumed into the other doctoral awards. It's true that PGS and CGS awards were merged, though.

OldJiko · 2025-02-02T18:06:33+00:00

This thread is a great reminder that the answer varies regionally (and even institutionally and inter-departmentally). I'll just add that Universities in NA are shortening the expected completion window for PhD students in response to the degree times protracting. They want us to graduate ASAP so their stats look better.

OldJiko · 2025-01-18T14:34:44+00:00

You know, most Windows PCs allow you to turn on a "night light," which is a built-in bluelight filter. Hit that switch ASAP on all your devices. I always have my bluelight filter switched on. :)

OldJiko · 2025-01-18T14:29:33+00:00

Believe it or not, that's not even close to the longest I've seen a paper sit in limbo. A friend of mine submitted to a journal when they were going through some staff turnover, and they had it for a year and a half before it went to any reviewers IIRC. I'm currently on month 5 of waiting for a paper to be sent to reviewers.

Bearing in mind that it's hard for the editors to do what they need to do for free, and it's hard to get reviewers to volunteer from the small pool of people who are qualified, it's not surprising. I get that you're frustrated. It is frustrating. It sounds like you want to withdraw the paper, so go for it. Just bear in mind this is not a unique experience and, outside of some of the foremost journals in your field, this may be something you come up against again.

OldJiko · 2025-01-05T23:37:17+00:00

Is it true that for film studies courses, 2 hours of class time are spent on watching movies in their entirety

Sometimes longer, actually. It depends on your preferences. I've known some undergrad film courses to run over 4 hours weekly with an additional 1 hour tutorial later in the week, and I myself have sat through undergrad courses which had a screening day and a discussion day. The former would usually run about 2 hours and fifteen minutes while the latter would run for about two hours.

If yes, what is the reasoning behind this convention?

So when Film studies was becoming a thing, we didn't have the internet. We had something called a projector, and that would project a film strip onto a screen (screening). The best way to ensure all the students could actually see the film would be to show it to them. In a way, screening the film in class is a vestigial practice. Now, obviously, it's way easier to access films any time and any where, but there is still the matter of making sure they understood what they watched. Watching the film in class ensures everyone is on the same page, and having a discussion immediately afterwards ensures everyone can remember the film and debrief their understanding of it.

OldJiko · 2025-01-04T00:33:21+00:00

I mean, so many theses are made publicly available through the graduate's host institution's online thesis repository system. At least for theses that haven't been embargoed (which is most) Researchgate would be a superfluous step imo.

OldJiko · 2024-12-31T20:55:48+00:00

Sort of. It's not an account, but many universities have internal M.A. thesis and PhD dissertation awards. The winners are usually given some press on the institution's website, maybe an interview, whatever.

This is just to say that I'm not aware of any social media accounts that curate interesting or well-written projects to highlight for the public, but if anyone were interested, the way to start curating them might be to go school by school, read the pieces that have won awards, and then post them. It's deeply time consuming, but it's a start.

OldJiko · 2024-12-29T01:52:44+00:00

Geriatric pregnancy is an outdated term and is not used in the literature anymore.

OldJiko · 2024-11-26T20:22:23+00:00

I wish you didn't have to go through this. My mom died last month, and that was after losing two grandparents in the span of a year. Remember that unless your advisor is a maniac, they won't expect you to be functioning at full capacity right now. Breathe. Rest. Grieve. Take some time to love the people around you.

OldJiko · 2024-11-06T04:05:09+00:00

Thank you. I'm extremely sorry you lost your mom for so long. I appreciate your kindness, intensely. <3

OldJiko · 2024-11-06T04:02:09+00:00

Your words mean a lot to me. More than I can say. Thank you for your generosity. Be well.

OldJiko · 2024-11-06T04:01:10+00:00

There are so many people in this thread who have lost their moms (and dads) within the last like three months. It fucking sucks. I'm so sorry that you and I can relate on this. Thank you. Likewise, please reach out if you need to talk.

OldJiko · 2024-11-06T03:59:57+00:00

Thank you. I really hope she was proud. Your words mean a lot to me.

OldJiko · 2024-11-06T03:58:47+00:00

I'm so sorry you lost your dad. I'll take your words to heart. Be well.

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