Finding my PhD life raft

Laura Cook is a first-year distance-learning PGR in the Department of Philosophy. She has found a podcast helpful as she has navigated the challenges of starting her programme, and here she explains why.

I entered my first year of doctoral study knowing a PhD would require my deep, sustained engagement, even if balanced with a full-time job. Therefore, in an attempt to feel well-prepared ahead of starting my studies, I subscribed to nearly every ‘How to do a PhD’ guide, YouTube channel, blog and podcast out there! Within a couple of weeks I had cast all the self-proclaimed PhD gurus aside: they either confused me or confirmed my looming imposter syndrome. Only one of the initial tools in my PhD toolbox survived the first few months of life as a PGR, the ‘PhD Life Raft Podcast’.

Photo by Floris Mulder on Pexels.com

Many PhD resources focus on the process of reading, researching, and writing the PhD. The Life Raft tackles these areas but also the personal peaks and troughs we have to navigate in order to get a PhD over the finish line. Dr Emma Brodzinski’s PhD Life Raft Podcast is a great resource because it humanises doing a PhD covering a wide variety of topics both professional and personal. What I have found even more helpful than the podcast is the other offerings Emma has developed that are affordable (often free!), accessible and geared towards postgraduates in the UK system.

In January, I joined a ‘PhD Planathon’, five focused days in the company of other PhD scholars from around the world where we made plans, took personal action towards our PhD and were supplied with some great tools for self-management. This didn’t mean five days solid of workshops, rather it was an early morning Zoom call with a focus for the day and then activities you could dip in and out of as you found useful. I think it worked especially well for me as a distance student as it forced me to be accountable to others and to commit things to paper. It almost functioned as a ‘Shut up and Work’ week, but with advice, research planning resources and questions, and a specific focus to get us going. The PhD Life Raft offers other events like this throughout the year with different areas of focus, there is one coming up soon with a emphasis on shaking off perfectionism.

We are all more than our thesis or our research papers and, as a recent distance student residential week in Birmingham reminded me, we are all very different in the way we approach things.  Before beginning my PhD I had assumed my development would quickly move on to building discipline-specific knowledge and that the ‘soft stuff’ of cultivating my work/study/life balance would fall into place. I am quickly learning this simply isn’t true!  The PhD Life Raft certainly hasn’t solved all my problems, but I have found it useful so far as a source of wisdom from folks on the PGR journey, and perhaps others in the UoB PGR community might too.

The BEAR Necessities of Research Computing

In this post, Debbie Carter, Research Training and Engagement Officer in IT Services, summarises how the Birmingham Environment for Academic Research (BEAR) can support PGRs at the University of Birmingham.

When I started writing this blog post, I wanted to address the most common questions we are asked by PGRs about BEAR (Birmingham Environment for Academic Research).

Debbie (left) and Aslam at the BEAR drop-in session, Main Library, April 2022

Let’s start with data, as this is the fundamental starting point for any PGR. You’re going to be managing data of some sort, whether you have produced it yourself, or are re-using existing data. Depending on the type of data, you might also need to use software to process it. BEAR services are designed to help researchers with managing these processes, supported by a team of software engineers and data experts.

We often meet PGRs who store data on their laptop, USB stick, or Dropbox-style storage, but this is not recommended by the University, and we definitely don’t want to risk anyone losing their precious resource! See “Where should I store my research data?” or our information on storing sensitive data. Whether you have a large or small amount of working research data to store, the BEAR Research Data Store (RDS) offers secure storage, backed up each night to two data centres on campus, so you can be confident that your data is safe. Ask your supervisor to fill in our project request form to get access. If your research is in Life Sciences, we have dedicated CaStLeS resources available.

When you leave UoB, data will remain in the RDS under the authority of the project PI. If after 5 years the project has ended, the data will be archived for a short period of time before being removed. Make sure you copy any data off that you will need for writing up papers after your thesis is complete, as you will not be able to access data on the RDS once your PhD is marked as complete – this depends on your School/Institute and could be as soon as you hand in your thesis.

Our Linux-based High Performance Computing (HPC)/High-Throughput Computing (HTC) supercomputer, BlueBEAR, can be used to process data faster than on your own computer. There are over 1000 software applications installed, from ABAQUS to zstd (see BEAR Applications), and you can ask us to install other software too. Our website explains how to activate your BEAR Linux account – this is needed to log in to BlueBEAR. We also provide web-based access to selected applications via the BlueBEAR Portal.

Often researchers need to use BEAR systems but are not experts in software and programming. We offer Software Carpentry workshops in Git, MATLAB, Python, R, and Linux courses, starting from the basics to prepare you for using BlueBEAR. Information and dates for courses are on our training webpages.

One of our main methods to assist researchers is via the IT ServiceDesk. Regular drop-in sessions are held both online and in-person to give you access to the BEAR team and ask questions. From tricky software problems to sensitive data, come along and we can help! BEAR Software offers a range of support and advice on the use of research software including how to optimise BlueBEAR jobs to get the most from our facilities, provided by a rapidly expanding team of Research Software Engineers. Or you can email us and we are happy to help!