Search Results for: writing
I’ll be the first one to confess that, after having loved Helen Sword’s “Stylish Academic Writing”, I was very much looking forward to reading “Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write“ (also published, like her previous book, by Harvard University Press). And I’ll also be honest in voicing (like with Paul […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– August 26, 2017
So, since I had already read Paul Silvia’s first book (How To Write A Lot) and devoured it within like an hour, and spent said hour basically yelling “YES, YES, YES, AGREED!”, I was very eager to read Paul Silvia’s second book (Write It Up!). Given that I’m leading a mega research project now, it’s […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– August 26, 2017
As I’ve said repeatedly in my other blog posts with reading notes of academic writing books, it’s only been since early this year that I started reading books about academic writing. Not even during my PhD did I read a book that would help me write more or less, or better (or worse, as the […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– August 26, 2017
When I was in graduate school, right about after my comprehensives, people told me that they were working 100 hours a week. Heck, I was told I needed to work 100 hours a week! There is no way in hell I can put in that much work, to be perfectly honest. While I know many […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– August 10, 2017
I often get asked about how did I prepare for my comprehensive exams. This is the process I used, but of course, your mileage may vary. The usual disclaimers apply. I read everything on my list (Comparative Politics) doing AIC https://t.co/nVzDQtYocy – I also wrote synthetic notes on each piece — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– August 8, 2017
Earlier today I was asked about whether my memorandums play a role in how I approach my research, and what my overall strategy is. you seem to have a pretty precise strategy, but is it summarised somewhere? what role does memos play in the overall etc? — Nicolai B. Hansen (@nbhansen) July 25, 2017 I […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– July 25, 2017
On occasion, I write about specific discussions on research methods I am pondering, or books I am reading. I decided to create a page specific for those blog posts. On the importance of teaching robust work using qualitative methods in the social sciences. I am often frustrated by how some people seem to think qualitative […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– July 22, 2017
There is some advice that is useful for both undergraduate and graduate students, but I find that these posts fit more the needs of Masters’ and Doctoral candidates. Obviously, if you’re looking for advice on Academic Writing, Literature Reviews, Reading Strategies, Organization and Time Management, all of these can be found in their own sub-pages. […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– July 21, 2017
As I was leaving my office to head to the airport to fly to Mexico City for a workshop on conflicts in extractive industries, I saw the completed printout of Rafael’s dissertation sitting on my desk. Rafael is my soon-to-graduate PhD student. I felt an extreme amount of pride, while also realizing what an enormous […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– July 15, 2017
One of the reasons people with whom I talk to gets frustrated is because they can’t find the time to write, and they ask me how I can write for 2 hours every morning. Well, turns out, some days (luckily not EVERY day), I am so busy with administrative and busywork that I just have […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– July 14, 2017
I did a poll on what the topic of my next blog post should be, and by and large, job market advice has been the most sought after. I’ve been on both sides of the search committee table: I’ve applied to lots of academic jobs, and I’ve participated in and chaired search committees. Thus, I […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– July 8, 2017
Even though I write a lot about Academic Writing, I rarely read books now on #AcWri. Not because I don’t want to, but because I have so much stuff that I need to write myself that I end up shunning any other type of reading other than my scholarly work. HOWEVER, I had heard so […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– July 8, 2017
The first question I posed in the title of my blog post is one that all of my students (undergraduate and graduate) and most of my research assistants ask me: how do I know when I’ve read enough for a literature review? The answer is never clear cut, unfortunately. I am someone who loves reading, […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– June 17, 2017
I know I’m privileged in that my own institution and my colleagues are very respectful of my time. They’re also extraordinarily considerate of my schedules. I am very vocal about my routines, so anybody who either follows me on Twitter or interacts with me on a regular basis know a few things about my schedule. […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– June 16, 2017
For my research on the politics of bottled water, I have been doing a lot of reading across different disciplines, from public health to environmental engineering, but I always come back to the excellent work of anthropologist Martha Kaplan. Professor Kaplan is at Vassar College and has done extensive work on bottled water, the local-global […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– June 4, 2017
With the generous funding of CONACYT, Mexico’s research agency, I recently launched a project on water conflicts in Mexico. I hired a number of research assistants to my lab a couple of months ago. I am a lead PI with my co-PI being an expert in social network analysis from CentroGEO, Dr. Adriana Aguilar. One […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– May 10, 2017
I have been asked a few times for a blog post on how to conduct a proper literature review. This is hard to do sometimes because a lot of people have different methods to do their reviews of the literature (see examples here, here, here and here). I tweeted a few of the steps I […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– April 28, 2017
Almost three years ago, Dr. Steve Shaw (McGill University), Dr. Mireya Marquez (Universidad Iberoamericana Santa Fe) and I founded the hashtag #GetYourManuscriptOut. I was frustrated that I had SEVERAL papers whose conversion-rate-from-conference-paper-to-journal-article had been basically ZERO. So, I decided to look at my dormant papers and JUST GET THE MANUSCRIPT OUT. Throughout the years, since […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– April 13, 2017
Given my field of research (the governance of non-traditional common pool resources), it’s often easy to write about the negative effects of lack of access to water and sanitation can have on women. For previous International Women’s Days, I’ve written about the disproportionately negative impact that open defecation and lack of menstrual hygiene management strategies […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– March 8, 2017
I’ve written before about reading strategies: how to extract relevant information from a journal article or a book chapter (the AIC method); I’ve also discussed how I engage when I can only skim a paper, and a meso-level type of engagement when I have *some* time to read (or I’m doing a preliminary survey of […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– February 21, 2017
The short answer: NO, you shouldn’t. Well, let me adjust that answer – no, you shouldn’t if you are planning on buying more books and adding weight to your backpack. I did, and it was PAINFUL. But I’ve also taken my Everything Notebook everywhere without any problems (I just need to control my desire to […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– February 11, 2017
For many years, I have advocated the Move Every Paper Forward Every Day (MEPFED) model of working. The MEPFED model basically says “every day, insert something related to each one of your research projects/papers on your To-Do list, so that collectively, every week you’ve moved most/all of your work forward“. MEPFED has worked for me […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– February 4, 2017
I am very analog in everything I do, and research activity and workflow planning isn’t the exception. I don’t carry around many planners, nor do I dump everything in a cloud-based service like Evernote: I have a trusty Everything Notebook, where I schedule tasks I have to carry out for my research and teaching and […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– February 2, 2017
This set of blog posts is intended to help undergraduate students, graduate students, and academics of all stripes find the best approach for them to read the ever-growing heaps of material. I’ve also collated here a couple of posts on time management. On skimming reading material and the importance of The Second Round of in-depth […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– February 1, 2017
In my most recent Twitter poll, I asked what I could write about that would be most helpful to my readers (many of which are undergraduate and graduate students). I was asked to continue writing about reading strategies. The previous post I wrote on was what I think is the fastest technique you can use […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– January 31, 2017
Recent Comments