On the reg

University bullshit and working out when to shut up

Thesiswhisperer Season 2 Episode 15

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Inger and Jason have both been dealing with challenges.

For Inger it's finding time to work on her romance novels when doing a 37.5 hour week entirely on Zoom. She did, however, manage to get on Etsy and buy angry uterus stickers for her bullet journal.

Jason is in Covid lockdown - again! But at least he got to take the tinny (that's a small, metal boat for non-Australian listeners) out with Shainal. The maiden voyage taught Shainal Jnr the importance of going to the bathroom before heading out in Port Phillip bay shipping lanes in 20 knot winds... Jason also answers the question: 'Can you get pulled over by the authorities when you are in a boat?' As it turns out, yes. Twice.

Inger does a deep dive on University Bullshit, thanks to a great paper by Ian McCarthy, David Hannaha, Leyland Pitt and Jane M. McCarthy called "Confronting indifference toward truth: Dealing with workplace bullshit”. The paper is a brilliant explanation of bullshit and offers a framework to recognise and offers the 'CRAP' framework for dealing with it. The duo agree that managing to do a serious academic paper with the words 'crap' and 'bullshit' in it is a next level academic practice. Jason then follows up with a paper on whether or not speaking a lot in meetings is a good idea.

In our 2 minute tip section, Jason shares a top tip for using your bullet journal to give you a more realistic sense of your accomplishments and Inger gloats (just a little bit) about how many bookshelves there are in her new office.

We went long on this one and, honestly, Inger enjoyed it so much she did barely any snippety-doo-dah. Cue this one up for a long drive, a big gardening clean up session or epic list of house hold chores!

Links to stuff we mentioned in this episode:

The Bullet Journal website

Paper: "Confronting indifference toward truth: Dealing with workplace bullshit” (paywalled)

Ian McCarty Jnr's video explainer of the bullshit paper

Physicists getting it SO wrong about Covid spread: https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-hard-lessons-of-modeling-the-coronavirus-pandemic-20210128/

Inger's papers on PhD progress reporting:

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Jason is having a break from the Socials, but you can still find Inger as @thesiswhisperer pretty much everywhere. You can read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

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