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An expansive framework to go from idea to abstract to introduction to table of contents to full paper/dissertation/thesis/book

Because I’ve been thinking about research all the time over the past few years (the mechanics and strategies of doing research, different methods to frame, design and answer a research question, how to effectively design a research project, etc.) I’ve also been wondering how can I craft a single, unified framework that can help writers develop their papers, book chapters, dissertations, theses, books. After a lot of thinking, I think the model I’m presenting here should be helpful.

Writing while in Berlin

I have the firm belief that every larger document you write can emerge from an abstract. That’s the sequence I use to write my own documents:

  1. Develop an idea
  2. Write an abstract (4-7 sentences’ model)
  3. Based on the abstract, develop an introduction.
  4. From the introduction, craft a table of contents
  5. Using the table of contents, write individual chapters/components of the paper

This sequence is expansive because with each step, you expand each component of the previous element. For example, an introduction can come from expanding an abstract. The introduction can serve as a template for outlining a table of contents as well, expanding each component of the introductory section, which may often take the format of a 5-7 sentences’ paragraph. In this Twitter thread, I explain my process in more detail.

I call this an expansive framework because I think about the process of writing a paper, a book chapter, or a book manuscript, or a journal article, or a thesis, as an expansive process.

1) Have an idea
2) Write first the abstract based on this idea (hence the Tiny Text)
3) Based on what you wrote in the Abstract, EXPAND it into a full-fledged Introduction (to a paper, or a chapter)
4) Based on what you wrote in the introduction, develop a Table of Contents.
5) Expand the Table of Contents into separate documents (chapters)
6) Repeat expansions.

Even the empirical or theoretical chapters can follow the same model (with adaptations). IMRAD-type journal articles can also follow a similarly expansive strategy. For the dissertation chapters, you can follow a similar strategy – each chapter has introduction, content (theoretical/empirical chapters, literature review), conclusion.

Hopefully, this blog post and my expansive framework will help folks develop their papers, book chapters, books and theses/dissertations more easily.

Posted in academia, research, writing.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 7, 2020

Creating tables and diagrams to describe theoretical, conceptual, and analytical frameworks

Doctoral supervisors (and often, editors!) will ask you to create a conceptual, theoretical and/or analytical framework for your book, dissertation, chapter, or journal article. This is a good idea. I used to get confused by all the “framework”-associated terms, so I wrote

Like I have done in other blog posts of mine, I am going to show you several graphic and table-based depictions of frameworks that may help you think through how you can visually explain the concepts you are using to analyze what you are analyzing.

Here is the 411:

I find it incredibly useful to draw diagrams (often times, mind maps or conceptual diagrams, or even fish-bone diagrams) to show how variables are linked with each other and how these factors help explain a phenomenon. You can (and I often do) use tables for this purpose. Like with the frameworks, we often link the words “theoretical”, “conceptual” and “analytical” with the word “diagram”.

Around 2015-ish, I published a framework that helps scholars and analysts think about environmental non-governmental organizations…

To be perfectly honest, I always looked up to Lin and Vincent Ostrom for how to write good tables and diagrams that depicted theoretical, conceptual and analytical frameworks. There are many other frameworks developed by the Ostroms, and pretty much all of them have tables/diagrams.

In sum, your development of theoretical, conceptual and analytical frameworks is well served by depicting these in table form or in graphic, diagrammatic form. What I usually do is – I read A METRIC TONNE of books and articles to see how other authors develop theirs.

And then, I think through how I want to write my own.

I do hope this blog post is useful to anyone who is trying to develop “a theoretical figure” or a “conceptual table”.

Posted in academia, writing.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – August 6, 2020

Preparing a research statement for an academic job application

This is not my first blog post on research statements (this one on research statements and research trajectories and this other on research pipelines, research trajectories and research programmes are quite related), but this is perhaps the first time I write about and address the Research Statement as a key component of job applications for tenure-track or post-doctoral positions. We all know how angry and upset I feel about the dismal state of the academic job market(s). However, let us assume that you still want to apply for tenure-track (TT) jobs. I do have some experience applying for (and landing) TT jobs, as well as chairing search committees for these positions. I have also sat on search committees, and have read hundreds of applications. These are thus a few pointers that I think might help potential applicants write their statements.

My desk at work right now. Note the 3 computers :)

We all know the huge role that luck, connections, institutional “pedigree” and other factors play, but for purposes of helping those who want to apply, some ideas that you all may want to consider in crafting your Research Statements. This blog post started as a Twitter thread so I’ve pulled from there too.

Personally, I think that when departments and universities hire you, they want to see how you develop your work through time. In that sense, the Research Statement that you arrive with (at the time of application) is STATIC. You present a SNAPSHOT of what you’ve done so far.

In my personal view (please don’t take my suggestions as dogma or guidelines!), I think that there is value in developing both a Research Statement and a Research Trajectory (this one is worth considering in both ex-ante and ex-post modes)

A Research Trajectory can one (or both) of two things:

1) it can present a narrative in timeline form of how your thinking has evolved.

2) it can present your Research Plan for the next 5-6 years (pandemics and life will obviously derail that plan!)

So what I have done with my own Research Statements is to present how my research interests have evolved through time. In that sense, my Research Statement is a STATIC snapshot at a certain point in time (at the time of writing, of course!) of how my different research strands have evolved through time (that is, of my Research Trajectory). Below is an example of how I have done self-reflection about my own Research Statement.

Last year I was invited to participate in a global workshop of a few selected scholars on the future of environmental policy, which surprised a couple of people. Well, here’s the thing: at the beginning of my career, I *was* a specialist in environmental policy instruments.

Paul also explains very well how his work contributes to theoretical debates and the empirical literature. Paul is an excellent writer and you may consider reading through his website and published work to see how he crafts his narratives.

If people want to learn more about how to craft a Research Statement, I think one strategy would be to poke around and read the “Research” pages of various scholars’ websites to find patterns. That is how I have learned much of what I now write about, by looking at many scholars’ strategies, distilling them and adapting them into something that works FOR ME.

I said I had two pieces of advice. But in reality, I think it’s just that one: for me, a Research Statement of a candidate tells me what they’ve done, if/where it is published or under review, and how those pieces of work fit a coherent, cohesive narrative of their research.

As someone with interdisciplinary training who continues to do interdisciplinary work, I often struggle when people want to categorize me (am I a geographer, a political scientist, a public administration scholar, a sociologist?). Truth be told, the way I have made peace with this challenge of being interdisciplinary when being in disciplinary departments (who say they want interdisciplinarity but judge you by their disciplinary norms) is to show how my work speaks to the debates of their discipline.

Also, my work (though it cuts through different disciplines and methods), is centred around ONE key question that has puzzled me my entire life: what drives agents to cooperate and collaborate??

Studying collaborative behaviour has led me to write on environmental activism and transnational coalitions.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – July 31, 2020

Organizing work/school-related digital files

A professor from the Global South emailed me to ask if I would consider writing a blog post on best practices to maintain an organized set of folders for students. To be perfectly honest with you, I was never taught how to do this. These practices, whether best or not, are the ones I have developed over the course of the years. Hopefully my process and strategies may be of use to scholars and students all over the world.

Diplomado ProDialogoCIDE IMTA MAPP 40 aniversario 203

I store PDFs in Mendeley, too!

Like anybody, I, too, get disorganized every so often. This is something that happens to me when I am overwhelmed and I just say “oh, I’ll dump my files in my main Dropbox folder” and then I have to take an entire day to re-organize my life. I use various cloud-based services. My Twitter thread explains with details and screenshots how I work.

You will notice I have a folder with the title “Vancouver Studies”. I’ve always wanted to write and publish a paper using my hometown as a case study. Sadly, a reviewer asked me to cut it from one of my papers so it’ll have to wait yet another year. I do have a few projects that use Vancouver as a case study and I am working on getting them out.

As anyone who reads my blog and follows me on Twitter will know, I’m a Virgo, an “Upholder”, a Type A and someone who thrives when having a clean and organized environment, both physically and mentally.

This means that I need to spend some time creating a folder called “Grant Writing Books” and moving it to OneDrive. But I seriously haven’t even had the time to do that (though I may just do that right after writing this blog post).

And, like anybody else, I also have a “To Organize” folder where I dump stuff. I set time aside every weekend to reorganize my files, but because I already have a system, it takes me SUBSTANTIALLY less time to do it nowadays. Some articles I’ve downloaded I want to read are there too.

Personally, I find it easier to work when my work has structure, order and organization. So I hope these suggestions will be useful to those who follow me and read my blog.

Posted in academia, organization, productivity, writing.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – July 5, 2020

On the importance of routine in academic writing

Because of the pandemic, I am now shuttling between Aguascalientes (where I live) and Leon (where my parents live). Any kind of inter-city movement should be stressful enough. What keeps me more or less grounded is that wherever I am (and have been – including Paris, last year), I always have more or less the same routine. For life and for work.

Routines work for me.

They may not work for everyone, but they do work, for me.

Desk at my home office in Aguascalientes

Routines provide regularity and stability.

The idea I quote above is not something I invented or devised – it’s the very foundational concept of institutionalism and institutional theory. It’s also the very basic unit of analysis of evolutionary economic theory (Becker 2004, as per Nelson and Winter 1982)

During this pandemic, having stable routines has kept me relatively sane. Every morning, I wake up, make my coffee, make my bed, wash my face, brush my teeth, and organize my desk to start my day. I also set up my (or my Mom’s) dining table for whenever she wakes up, I can have breakfast set up already for her. My morning routine includes making coffee for my Mom and bringing it to her room when she wakes up, along with a copy of the day’s newspaper.

Routines have a stabilizing role, in the same way that institutions provide stability around human interaction.

I have been writing a lot lately. Out of excitement, on the one hand: I am healthy now, after 2.5 years of struggles with chronic pain, chronic fatigue, eczema/psoriasis/dermatitis. Out of fear, on the other hand: I am 9 months behind on ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, and because I had agreed-upon writing commitments, I’m now cranking up the writing as much as I can.

Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced me to stay at home (either at my house in Aguascalientes or my Mom’s in Leon). I have fully functional home offices in both homes, so I can write at leisure. I’ve got decent internet access, and can log on to my remote university library connection to download articles and books quite easily, for the most part.

Working in the dining table

The COVID-19 has reshaped my personal and collective dynamics

During the pandemic, I’ve joined two online writing groups: Dr Amanda Bittner‘s (Monday through Friday, 9-11 am Eastern Standard Time) and Dr. Mirya Holman‘s (Fridays, 2-5 pm Central Standard Time). What I have noticed by participating in both of these online writing groups is that routinely writing as part of a collective REALLY WORKS FOR ME.

As most of you who follow me on Twitter or read my blog know, my writing practice starts at 4:30am – from 4:30 am to 6:30 am – I know, it’s ridiculously early and well, what can I tell you, that’s how I am used to work – I am a morning person and I am not really functional past 3pm.

calendar

Since joining these two wonderful writing groups, I now have 23 hours worth of writing on my calendar and in my schedule.

This does not mean that I can actually write that much (I would love if I could do it all the time, and when I am not teaching, nor travelling, I can often achieve this goal). But at least I have the time slots (and I can use that time to write, or it can also be runway time or grunt work time).

I have always had a writing routine. But what I have noticed by participating in Amanda’s and Mirya’s writing groups is that repeatedly joining writing groups (on a regular basis, trying not to miss any meetings) actually is very helpful in strenghtening my writing practice.

I wrote a Twitter thread on this very issue a few days ago. Having a structured routine and routinely writing and responding to Revise-And-Resubmits (R&R) or edits from book editors does help me because now I write responses-to-reviewers-and-editors much, much, much faster than before.

I always tell my students and research assistants that it might be helpful for them to develop and maintain a structured daily routine. I know this is hard to do even more so during these pandemic times, but I find that structure makes my life much easier.

Hopefully you’ll find value in routines too.

Posted in academia, organization, productivity, writing.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – June 7, 2020

Writing the dissertation (thesis) II: Getting started and progress/project planning

As I write this series of blog posts on writing the thesis/dissertation, I get serious flashbacks of the period when I had to write my doctoral dissertation. The funny thing is, I have also had flashbacks from when I wrote my Masters’ and my undergraduate theses. Despite the fact that one was in chemical engineering, one was in economics of technical change and the doctoral dissertation was multidisciplinary (though primarily comparative politics, public policy and human geography), I think I’ve approached writing my theses in the very same way: get all data first, then analyze, then write.

Reading outlining and calendar cross-posting

I am writing this post from the viewpoint of someone who has supervised theses and dissertations, though in the future I think I will write one for advisors. I’ll start from the baseline that you (undergraduate, Masters student/doctoral candidate) have already done everything except the thesis. This implies that you’ve conducted fieldwork, done laboratory experiments, conducted archival work, etc.

In my thread, I also discussed the process I underwent (writing comprehensive exams AND also developing and defending a dissertation proposal). I explain this because the process that helped me develop my dissertation’s theoretical underpinnings and find the gap in the literature I was filling was not the reading and synthesizing I did for my comprehensives (comps) but rather the one I did for my dissertation proposal.

First, I want to list resources written by a few other scholars who discuss this very topic.

Obviously, I recommend that you also read everything I’ve written on topics related to the PhD thesis writing, including my previous post in this series on thesis writing, timing and structure. I also recommend looking at my own set of Reading Notes of books I’ve read on how to do a PhD. On Twitter, I explained why I buy and read books on the PhD process given that I already have my own PhD. Obviously I don’t need any of these books, but I purchased over a dozen volumes with my own money so that I could read them, draw insights from them, and improve my supervisory style therefore becoming a better thesis advisor.

DETERMINING THE SCOPE OF THE THESIS/DISSERTATION

Establishing how much work is necessary to obtain a specific degree (undergraduate, Masters, PhD) is necessarily something students and doctoral candidates should discuss and agree upon with the supervisory committee. I have written before on how I define a doctoral degree and what a PhD entails. I’ve also written on the differences between an undergraduate (honors) thesis, a Masters’ and a PhD dissertation (see link in the tweet below). By the time you want to start the thesis or dissertation, you should have agreed with your committee on the scope, breadth and depth of the thesis and dissertation. I assume in this blog post that you’ve already had this conversation (if you have not, this would be a good time to have it!)

Literature Road Mapping

READING ENOUGH TO FIND THE GAP IN THE LITERATURE, THE CONTRIBUTIONS (THEORETICAL AND/OR EMPIRICAL), AND STARTING THE ACTUAL WRITING PROCESS

In my Twitter thread, I explained that there was an intermediate step between doing comprehensive exams and writing the thesis. I think it’s important to mention that processes vary by degree (undergraduate, Masters and PhD) and by country/region/discipline, etc. I am mostly familiar with social science and humanities theses, but I also understand how STEM theses are written.

Because I did my PhD in Canada and I’ve supervised students there and in Mexico, I am most familiar with the processes that universities in these countries follow. I WAS going to do my PhD in England, though, and I’m aware that many programs in the UK and Australia do not have qualifying/comprehensive exams nor coursework and thus go direct to thesis.

The way I did my PhD was slightly complicated. I did comprehensive exams (written questions and oral defense) and THEN I defended a dissertation proposal. The work I did for the latter (review of the literature, mostly, and preliminary fieldwork) basically set the stage for my PhD dissertation. The reading (and systematizing) I did for my comprehensive exams helped me with my dissertation insofar I demonstrated I knew the literature in my fields, but they were much broader. After I passed, I still had to go and delve into different sets of literature because I cross disciplinary boundaries to prepare my dissertation proposal.

WHEN IS THE RIGHT TIME TO GET STARTED WRITING THE THESIS/DISSERTATION?

I started writing my PhD dissertation in earnest when I returned from my fieldwork. My PhD students started writing as soon as they returned from the field. This was because most of them have done their dissertation as a set of 3 papers. The only one of my PhD students who did a book manuscript ALSO started writing AFTER he had done fieldwork.

Because my doctoral students writing 3 papers did fieldwork in 3 different places, what I recommended to them was to start writing the results sections of all three papers (and the methods and data sections). THEN I asked them to write each paper separately.

To summarize: I believe the best moment to start writing the thesis/dissertation is when you are entirely sure you’ve collected enough data/archival material and thus you can write then the full manuscript in earnest.

Literature Road Mapping

DEVELOPING A TIMELINE FOR THE DISSERTATION/THESIS PROGRESS

Now, if you’re going to write an entire thesis, you need to have a plan. I have written before about the importance of planning your thesis/semester/year (you can read all my posts on organization and time management here and on planning here). While I started writing the Twitter thread assuming that the student had already done the work of planning their progress, as I wrote the thread, I realized that it was important to outline the steps necessary to plan, particularly under conditions of uncertainty (like our current COVID-19 pandemic)

Several institutions have automatically added one year of funding for graduate students given the pandemic, but this concession isn’t universal. So I think that we ought to be realistic and consider the worst case scenario (potential derailing, no additional funding) and plan for this. I’m always a worrier.

I always tell my students to plan for “When Shit Hits The Fan”. Because shit will ALWAYS hit the fan (trust me on this one: I broke up with my former partner as I was about to defend). For me, the best planning technique is the Gantt Chart. I also recommend that all your Overview Devices (Dissertation Two Pager, Dissertation Analytical Table, Global Dissertation Narrative, and Thesis Project Gantt Chart are all consistent with each other).

The one thing that I don’t think we say frequently enough in our conversations with students is that EVERYTHING EVOLVES. I have changed my priors around many things. Fieldwork, new reading, delving into other literatures changes the way I think. My writing evolves, my thinking does too. An example:

Paris (March 2017)

I’ve done fieldwork in Paris many times over the years, but it wasn’t until last year that I lived there for a semester that I realized a lot of things that reading the literature didn’t reveal. Conducting interviews in French, reading French scholarship really changed how I think.

I say this because, if you are thinking that you’ve collected all the literature, data, etc. and now you’re just going to sit down and write the thesis and it’s going to feel like a linear process, you’re deluding yourself.

THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS.

As you write, you’re going to realize new insights, develop new ideas. Refine your argument. Redraft text. Revise it. And then you’re going to find out that the final abstract, introduction and conclusion of your dissertation aren’t going to be exactly the ones you first thought they would.

Now, on to the other key question that another PhD student asked me:

HOW DO I ACTUALLY START WRITING MY THESIS?

The previous paragraphs showed the pre-requisite conditions to start writing. Now, on to the actual process of “starting to write the thesis/dissertation”. Here’s how I think of the process, how I wrote my theses, and how I tell my students to write their theses.

1) Write a suggested table of contents.

In my Twitter thread I said that I did not remember if I had written a blog post on how to develop suggested tables of contents for theses or books. As a matter of fact, I did! Here is the first post of this series, which focuses on structure, content and timing of the thesis..

Suggested table of contents for a thesis/dissertation off the top of my head, and based on my Dissertation Analytical Table (DAT) and on my Dissertation Two Pager (DTP) devices

1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
3. Paper 1.
4. Paper 2.
5. Paper 3.
6. Concluding chapter

Maximum 2-3 items.

Studying for a degree is overwhelming enough, so you don’t need to add more stress to your life (we’re in the midst of a global pandemic, living at home, there is social unrest and worry, there’s more than enough worry in our lives). I always recommend that my students develop a structured working routine. Obviously, current conditions require a lot of flexibility and transitioning and that’s where the conversation with professors and supervisors is important (and the empathy and kindness of those advisors is FUNDAMENTAL).

TO RECAP: How to start writing a thesis (I assume you have been in conversations with your supervisory committee):

1) Write a draft of your thesis outline/table of contents.
2) Apply backcasting techniques from the date you need to submit the thesis and plan backwards.
3) Build a Gantt Chart with enough buffers to account for everything that is going on right now (potential factors that may derail your progress)
4) From your Gantt Chart, break down the tasks that you need to do and realistically can do, and schedule those throughout weeks/days.

WHAT ABOUT UNDERGRADUATE AND MASTERS STUDENTS?

I am sure many of you who read this blog post will be asking yourselves, but what about us, who are not doing a PhD dissertation, and instead are doing an undergraduate or Masters’ thesis?. The answer is simple: this process works for EVERY SINGLE LEVEL OF STUDY (undergraduate, Masters, PhD). What you need to adjust, obviously, is the SCOPE, DEPTH AND BREADTH of the thesis. This adjustment comes from a series of conversations between the supervisory committee and the student. How much fieldwork, how many experiments, how many journal articles are expected from the thesis, or what kind of analyses are expected from the undergraduate honors thesis, are all questions that need to be answered through dialogues between the supervisor, all committee members and the student.

The process is the same across all degrees: collect all data, backcast from your desired date for defense/submission, develop a daily work routine, work on bits and pieces of the thesis, assemble towards the end, review and revise and ensure consistency across all thesis chapters.

I hope this post is useful to you all (supervisors and students). Though it’s written to help a student/doctoral candidate, I hope supervisors might find it useful to provide guidance.

Read my other blog posts on this topic:

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – May 31, 2020

How to write the introductory chapter to a thesis or doctoral dissertation

This 2020 is weird in many ways. Several of my students are finishing up their degrees within the context of a global pandemic (COVID-19). But because the world was set up for degree and thesis completion before we knew our world would be changed forever, my students’ degrees have continuex and time passes inexorably. Therefore, I have continued to supervise theses normally.

One of my PhD students is on the road to finishing up her doctoral dissertation. When we sat down to discuss her progress, I realized I did not have a handy resource for her to consult how to write her introductory chapter. So I wrote a Twitter thread from where this blog post derives.

Reading writing working

Over the course of the years I’ve developed resources for graduate and undergraduate students to help them prepare for their dissertation proposal stage and the final defense. These posts are linked in the tweets below.

Based on these posts, I wrote (off-the-cuff, quickly) a draft table of contents for the introductory chapter of a thesis or doctoral dissertation (you can see these below). I want to note that in the case of doctoral candidates, I believe that it is FUNDAMENTAL to emphasize the ORIGINAL theoretical and empirical contributions of the dissertation. Whereas Masters and undergraduate theses aren’t as focused on contributions, for the PhD these are fundamental.

Desk in my room (Malakoff, France)

You can find my templates on Google Drive and Dropbox (click on the hyperlinks) or click on the Twitter links below.

Hopefully this template will help students across the board (undergraduate, Masters and PhD, obviously adjusting for specific degrees).

Posted in academia, writing.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – May 26, 2020

A typology of academic (daily) work: “runway work”, “grunt work” and “writing/research” work

The other day, on Twitter I wrote a thread trying to think through my own ideas about a potential classification or typology of work. Like I normally do with anything that is scholarly, I write about it because I’m trying to clarify my thoughts in my own head. This typology of work should be generalizable enough to apply, obviously, to life before, during and AFTER the COVID-19 pandemic.

I think sometimes, in our institutionally-induced anxiety to “produce more, more, more” we devalue other kinds of work we do. In another thread, I distinguished 3 types of work:

  • “runway” work (hat tips to Dr. Meredith Clark who coined this “runway work” term) – this is work we need to get done even before we start “producing” (creating slides requires runway work that involves researching/reading).

Annotating reading Everything Notebook etc

  • “grunt” work – this is work that does not “appear” like it leads to getting the “most valued” work, “writing/teaching/researching”, but that we need to do. Transcribing interviews and field notes (though this could be considered “runway” work). Cleaning Mendeley/Zotero fields.

Dropping and cleaning references in Mendeley

  • “writing/researching work” – the one where we sit down and produce words on the page, edit them, produce/insert graphs, run models, etc.

#AcWriMo

As I said on Twitter, I’m trying to clarify this typology in my own head too. But basically, the point I’m trying to make is that there’s a lot of invisible work involved in getting even 10 minutes of writing done.

WE SHOULD VALUE IT ALL.

And don’t even get me started on care work. Writing while homeschooling 3 kids? Impossible or next to impossible (I salute you, academic parents).

In academia, contrary to this view from outside, we work A LOT and do a lot of stuff “behind the scenes”. Stuff that is not visible to a lot of people. Work that those who have systematically devalued higher education and academia are not seeing.

We should make this work visible.

Posted in academia, productivity, writing.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – May 17, 2020

Time spent “on the runway” is time well spent

A week or so ago, I discussed how much time I spent every morning just “getting warmed up”. I love how Dr. Meredith Clark put it “3 hours of runway”.

There is A LOT of preparation work that goes into doing stuff. For example: earlier last week, I was part of a panel. We met at my 4:30am (11:30am Paris time), via Zoom, but I had to wake up at 3:30 am to shower, read again the questions we would be discussing, write up a few notes about what I wanted to say, etc.

I finished a paper last week, yes. BUT I spent hours creating the dataset. I also spent hours cleaning up the references of everything I downloaded and read. I uploaded hundreds of articles on to Mendeley and cleaned the fields so citations would turn out ok. I also invested a lot of time coding the articles I read. HOURS reading and re-reading.

Yes, I am a proponent of the “write every day” mantra. But if the “runway” time is way more than the time we actually have to write, then it’s obvious we’re not going to get any work done. I did not realize how much runway time *I* needed until I had to do dishes, cook, wash, much more regularly.

Posvar Hall (University of Pittsburgh) desks

Under normal circumstances (when I am able to pay a house cleaner, laundry, buy food, etc.) OBVIOUSLY I get more work done. Right now I spend a lot of time in the “runway”. I always knew I was privileged, but right now it’s sinking in even more.

As I have written before, sad as this sounds, we DO have to do The Grunt Work.

Posted in academia, productivity.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – May 2, 2020

Writing to understand: A personal tale of my journey to become an academic writer and overcome impostor syndrome

I really love writing. I absolutely do. But hasn’t always been like this.

Writing on campus

As a child, I actually did not like writing very much. Two factors influenced my enjoyment for the actual process. First, my Dad used to have a column in the local newspaper. Because his child was a book worm, he thought to himself, “why not develop Raul’s writing abilities?”. So he asked me to write columns about stuff I was curious about, and he would ask the newspaper editor to publish my op-eds.

Ironically, I ALWAYS felt impostor syndrome.

My older brother (Juan) had a natural talent for writing, specifically for novels, short stories, and fiction. I was jealous of the fact that he had filled notebook after notebook with his amazing short stories. He was, and remains, an excellent fiction writer.

At the time, at about the tender age of 10 years old, I felt like an impostor. As absurd as this may sound. I never saw myself as a writer despite having published many newspaper op-eds, whereas I felt that Juan was an accomplished one because he wrote fascinating, captivating, riveting stories.

Writing laptop at home

Until I realized I had a talent not for writing fiction and stories, but for reading, analyzing, and understanding. What I wrote was different from what my brother wrote. I was, and remain interested in writing TO UNDERSTAND and make sense of the world.

Library Cubicles at El Colegio de Mexico

To this day, that’s why I write. And now I actually enjoy the process of researching, analyzing data, synthesizing the literature and writing up what I find. I love writing, AND I love MY writing.

This “enjoying academia and writing” facet of mine is most prevalent when I’m writing about something I deeply care about. Obviously, I also feel…

That’s why you see me writing bits and pieces every day, and then three weeks in a row, WHAM BAM THANK YOU SIR and there you go, three journal articles out for review and a book chapter back to the editor.

Anyway, I think that the best piece of advice I can give my students and anybody who follows me on Twitter, or reads my blog, is to just relax. The big break, the “a-ha” moment, the “eureka” instant will come.

In the mean time, we need to keep the gears grinding. And under these circumstances, with great care, compassion and without stressing out. Work is and will always be there. Let’s just survive.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – May 2, 2020