Search Results for: writing
It occurred to me as I was writing my blog posts on reading strategies that some people may wonder how to find the most relevant information when reading. I had tweeted about it, but I hadn’t actually written about it. So, I thought I’d write about how I work to find the most relevant information […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– January 28, 2017
I was recently asked by one of my current students to write about how to write a literature review. @raulpacheco You should write about Literature Review. It would be so helpful for us! — Manuel Cardona Arias (@ManiArias) January 25, 2017 I have finally written a sequential list of steps for how to do a […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– January 27, 2017
While I took a course in speed reading when I was very, very young (probably 8 or 9 years old, at the most), and I can speed read, there are times when I, too, find myself overwhelmed by the sheer amount of reading I need to do. While I’ve written before on how you can […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– January 19, 2017
While I write about ways in which I have improved my academic writing, or become more systematic and organized in the way I develop my literature reviews, and my own workflow, I am keenly aware that the techniques I use, the hacks I implement and the suggestions I provide can’t be implemented by every single […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– January 7, 2017
I promised myself I wouldn’t ever make New Year’s Resolutions. To me, they seem much more like dreams and wishful thinking than an actual plan to achieve something. HOWEVER, I have realized in the past few weeks that I didn’t really make any resolutions even though I do have a grand plan for the year […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– January 4, 2017
Funny how some ideas have grounding on different disciplines and yet, we all end up learning more or less the same concept across several of them. I first heard of the concept of future studies (aka futurology) and its idea of backcasting during my Masters’ programme. In particular, the strategic planning literature uses the idea […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– December 31, 2016
People have asked me if I could share my yearly planning process and how it relates to the use of the Everything Notebook. I have also been asked if I use other planners and whether they’ve worked for me. I’ll answer both questions in this post. There are many planning and organizational methods out there, […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– December 28, 2016
I originally wrote this blog post as an email response to a request by Dr. Brian Leech from Augustana College on how I do my document processing and filing. This problem happens to all of us: we have a number of things that need processing (committee materials, student files, printouts, etc.) Often times, we are […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– December 26, 2016
One of the hardest things I have struggled with has been the ability to keep up with the sheer amount of reading I need to do, given the broad variety of topics I study. But I do consistently make time to read, particularly because I integrate reading into my academic writing, otherwise I would need […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– December 22, 2016
When people visit my campus office, they often admire the fact that I have a systematically organized library where my books and printed articles/book chapters/reports are all available (and ordered alphabetically, in the case of printouts, and by topic, in the case of books). For me, “processing” articles and books/book chapters is a systematic process […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– December 5, 2016
A few months back, Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom (assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, and someone I consider a dear friend) tweeted she was looking forward to organizing her academic life using the methods I’ve posted on my blog on the topic of Organization and Time Management. She called them “Get Your Life […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– November 16, 2016
While I have pushed for reflection and slow scholarship in my blog, I have to admit that some of the less romantic and glamorous parts of academia don’t particularly excite me. I call that “the grunt work“. This is grunt work: Cleaning up THIRTEEN references I just imported into Mendeley pic.twitter.com/OT3BX4QQge — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– November 6, 2016
An important component of writing is reading and summarizing the literature. This exercise helps the author situate his/her work within the broader set of related works. I maintain a systematic process of reading and writing article summaries, but I normally do so in the form of long-form memoranda. Earlier this year, I had a conversation […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– October 24, 2016
One of the things I’m an expert on is overwhelming myself with the sheer amount of work I have to do. In the past decade, I have slowly become better at simply reducing the size of my To-Do list and breaking down my workload into manageable tasks, at focusing on just one thing at a […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– October 19, 2016
A few people have asked me to blog about where or how they can find new ideas for a paper they want to write. I have to say that the primary ways in which I improve my writing (and generate new ideas) is by reading and then writing. On the plane from New Haven to […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– October 17, 2016
Even though I wake up every morning at 4am to start writing, launching into work sometimes takes me anywhere from 10 minutes to a solid hour. This is not uncommon. There are plenty of articles on the internet on why you should have a morning ritual, how to start your day off right, and the […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– October 14, 2016
Recently, my good friend Dr. Amanda Bittner (Memorial University of Newfoundland) told me that she was suffering from focusing again a lot on teaching and as a result, her research was not progressing as much as she would have wanted to. @raulpacheco do you only lecture-prep Fridays? I'm 1 month back from sabbatical & losing […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– October 9, 2016
When looking at my publication record, many people have told me that they were amazed that I had published so much in such short period of time. While I am positively flattered that they think so, I don’t consider myself a particularly productive academic. Yes, I’ve published a lot in the past few years, the […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– October 8, 2016
This past week, I had anxiety attacks 3 nights in a row. .@caparsons yes, I wallow just the same – this week I had actual, real anxiety attacks. pic.twitter.com/NyBEqtUVZ7 — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) September 24, 2016 This is an extraordinarily rare occurrence, but one that I thought was worth bringing up as the semester […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– October 1, 2016
I can’t claim that I take excellent notes, but I like them, I use them, and I can at least say that, ever since I was in grade school, my classmates wanted to copy my notes. For me, they were, and continue to be, a source of pride. I always wanted to be the one […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– September 15, 2016
Despite the fact that I’ve been teaching public policy since 2006 (yes, a decade already!) I have always loved varying the content and outline of my courses. Primarily, I am interested in teaching my students employable skills, I aim to teach them how to write policy content that can be read by policy makers, and […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– September 8, 2016
One of the most interesting elements of ethnography as a research method is that for many scholars, it’s a technique and a way of living. Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom (Virginia Commonwealth University), a sociologist whom I consider a friend and whom I trust a lot, told me on Twitter something that makes complete sense: being […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– September 6, 2016
I was asked to write about tips for editing a research paper, since my Academic Writing and Literature Review posts seem to be quite popular. I have to confess that I don’t have any particularly insightful piece of advice to give, because here is the kicker: I HATE EDITING MY OWN PAPERS. I do it, […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– September 2, 2016
Many, many people have asked me why I start working at 4am, and how the hell did I change from being a night owl to being a morning person. I had been thinking about writing about this topic for a very long time, and then this Wall Street Journal article started making the rounds (“Why […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– August 28, 2016
It’s been an excellent few months for me, because I have been able to share more of my “tricks and tools of the trade” with people who read my blog, and readers seem to like how my workflow processes help them with their own. As always, I don’t provide “advice”. I simply share my experiences […]
By Raul Pacheco-Vega
– August 25, 2016
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