My PhD Journey - Musing #4 - Things I do that 'get in the way' of my study

It is still Tuesday somewhere in the world - so here I go - another PhD Journey blog post. I have 15 minutes before my next online meeting......

BTW - my husband is continuing to refine his bird pictures - now he has found the Canon lens he bought 6 years ago - and worked out how to use it.

Blue-face Honey Eater

Butcher Bird

I was just thinking about all of the things I do besides my PhD work and how fragmented my days are sometimes......oh and on top of that our upstairs bathroom is being renovated (just above my study) so there has been noise, tradies coming in and out, and dust/dirt! I have given up on housework for now - but it is hard when you work at home and have to look at it all the time.

In the past week I have created two online newsletters:

• Flat Connections
• QLT@CSU

Finished marking and grading work from 39 students at the Masters degree level, run a student Tweetchat, and 2 other online meetings in the evening. I have created and delivered 5 presentations online:

• Twitter and hashtags (CSU)
• The Voice - Voicethread for interactive learning (CSU)
• Global Collaboration - Let's talk tools, let's talk learning design (for Global Collaboration Day Sept. 21)
• Flat Connections Global Projects - Teacher kickoff
• Collaborative teams (CSU)

So....some of this is on top of my day-to-day work with Charles Sturt University where I support online learning across the Faculty of Arts and Education and work with the uImagine team on innovation and the new initiative 'Transforming Online Learning'.

Why am I doing a PhD....did I hear you ask that? I tried to justify this in a previous blog post - and recently after discussion with family it has become clearer - I am an over-achiver! That's it! Now I know - I do a lot, I do too much, most of it is important to me....but the reality is there are not 48 hours in a day.

How many of you out there completing a PhD are also over-achievers? I bet statistically most are?

Heading into a Qualitative Reasearch workshop with Kathy Charmaz end of this week - so will have LOTS to talk about next week. Hang in there with me..... 

Julie Lindsay
PhD student - is it over-achieving or not?