Talk on what examiners want

Excellent talk this morning from Prof Philip Jones, who has been on PhD awards subcommittee for a long time.. Emphasised the importance of strong conceptualisation, writing early and often, and attention to detail in finishing. The talk was really well-attended and some good questions were asked. His talk was really a good summary of the literature that I'm reading.

Maybe the sense of powerlessness that is often manifest in the PhD process by students really comes to the crunch around examination. This is when you let your work go, send it out into the world to be judged by unknown forces. When I was teaching writing in Palmerston North, Karen Rhodes used to say how Freudian writing was: like a baby's shit, it comes from an unknown place within the self, is extruded to the outside - sometimes in pain and with some difficulty, and is then instinctively clung to - its removal seems to cause resentment and even fear as it symbolises a lack of control over the product. It does feel about right...