What They Forgot to Teach You

Issu

👋 Welcome

I often recommend that students try and write for their mum. That is, try and imagine a reader who is smart and interested and wants you to do well, but happens to know nothing at all about your thesis topic.

When you picture your mum as your write, you stop writing to impress and start writing to be understood. You get rid of the jargon, you define your terms really clearly, and you explain why the study matters instead of assuming your reader already cares. Writing for your mum is how your writing gets clear.

In terms of useful feedback, however, your mum is not helpful. She loves you far too much to tell you that the third paragraph made no sense.

So where does the best feedback come from, if not from your mum?

📖 Last week I re-read

Writing Empirical Articles: Transparency, Reproducibility, Clarity, and Memorability — Morton Ann Gernsbacher (2018), Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science

​https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2515245918754485​

This was our lab meeting paper last week and it is one I will keep recommending. Gernsbacher is a cognitive psychologist who has done a lot of research looking at language and neurodiversity. Her writing advice is all about putting the reader front of mind. Short sentences. Short paragraphs. A hook. Tell it like a story. And don’t play Mad Libs with your reader (not sure what that means, check out this video).

But my favourite piece of advice in this paper was about feedback. Get a naive reader, that is someone who knows nothing at all about your topic, and let them tell you where they got lost. If a naive reader says your writing is unclear, then it is unclear. Their confusion is important information that you should do something about.

You need a reader who knows nothing about your thesis and reads it the way your marker will: looking for the hiccups, noticing every place they have to work too hard, and telling you the truth about what isn't working.

That is the person I try to be when I do a Writing Review. In my academic career, I supervised 30+ thesis projects and marked close to 100 theses. I have the mindset of a tired marker who has zero background knowledge of your project; when I get lost, you get to find out why while you can still do something about it, instead of in your examiner’s report.

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📣 Prebook your September Writing Review (EARLYBIRD)

Still some slots available on this EARLYBIRD sale. Writing Review is detailed audio feedback. I read your work outloud, letting your know what is working, what is not, and what you can do about it. Check out what that looks like here.

My standard rate is $100 per 1000 words. Book now and use the code EARLYBIRD at checkout for 15% off and a guaranteed slot, so a full 8,000-word thesis is $680 instead of $800. The code expires August 12, or when the 10 slots fill, whichever comes first.

What students have said about my audio feedback:

• It was a bit jarring to hear someone else read my writing out loud, but in a good way. It made it much easier to hear where things were clear and where I was assuming too much from the reader.
• I appreciated the audio format, this helped personalise the whole process and made it easier to receive feedback too (because it's definitely not AI!)
• The suggestion to structure my discussion by hypotheses felt like my mind went from clouded to clear.
• Your review was a game changer for me. I think my rewrite has improved A LOT! (Thank you Jenny!).

Book your Writing Review at https://www.revealresearch.org/store/p/writing-review​

💡 What I’m into

As census night looms, I thought this blog post by Danielle Navarro about the unintended consequences of separating questions about birth sex and gender was really interesting. Definitely worth a read.

📅 Join me

It is officially thesis writing season, so I have scheduled lots of events over the next few weeks, come and hang out.

Free workshops — one hour, online, bring your thesis and leave with something you can use.

• How to write a lot when you have no time — Friday August 28, 12pm AEST. You are waiting for a clear week but your deadline is looming. Your thesis will not wait for a chunk of time, it will get done in the small pockets you carve out and protect. In this session, we build a writing system in three parts (schedule, sprint, social), with a live “Shut Up and Write” so you leave having actually made some progress.
• How to polish your way to a High Distinction — Friday September 4, 12pm AEST. Your ideas are good but High Distinction is all about how easily your tired marker can grasp them. Join us to learn how you can polish your work so that your marker gets the structure, synthesis and support they need.
• How to set yourself up for research success — Friday September 18, 12pm AEST. Just getting started? Put a few project-management systems in place now and save yourself hours later.

Small-group coaching: — two hours, online masterclass, hands on and interactive, get personalised advice about your work.

Keep Calm and Write Your General Discussion

Fridays 12pm AEST N = 5, 2 hours, A$49.

• August 21,
• September 11 or
• September 25

You have your results, but you just don't know where to start. In this hands on masterclass, we work through the six discussion moves together, and you leave with an outline for your own general discussion. NOTE: this one works best when you are finished your analysis and ready to start your discussion.

Register for the workshops and the clinic at www.revealresearch.org/events​

🛠️ For your toolkit

A spreadsheet checklist for your data

This one-page checklist is inspired by the recommendations in Broman and Woo's paper. Super useful questions to ask yourself about your data setup before you get too far in. Grab it here.

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👋 thanks!!

BTW I found the pegs! Although it has been very rainy so I'm still drying washing in the drier.

Until next time, Jen

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​P.S. If a friend is about to hand their draft to someone who loves them too much to be useful, forward this. It’s free, and it might be exactly what they need.​
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P.P.S. If this is the first What They Forgot to Teach You to actually reach you, issues 1 through 5 are almost certainly sulking in your spam folder. Go and rescue them.

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I'm Jen, a developmental psychologist and former UNSW A/Prof. I help new researchers go from feeling like they've missed something everyone else knows, to feeling like they genuinely belong in research, so they can get through their research degree and into the career they actually want. Learn more