Zombi Chronicles Volume 1 Isue 8

Zombi Chronicles, Volume 1 Issue 7

Differentiating between the chiken and the egg brings no joy

This is one of those questions that may require a couple of years, generous funding and an ethics clearance to answer: Are PhD scholars more susceptible to depression than the rest of the population? Although I could not find any answer to this question, I can speculate that the answer is yes and I can venture to propose a couple of mechanisms that could explain this scenario.

WARNING: this post contains a great deal of speculation

There are many issues to consider such as what is the student's motivation to complete the PhD, what is the student's personality type, and the occurrence of other factors influencing the student's life that can enhance well-being or increase stress.

In relation to the movitation to conduct doctoral studies I would predict that people wanting a career change, enhance skills to increase employability or to get a promotion would be at higher risk of depression than those who are interested in self-improvement or complete their studies as a hobby. This is because there is less as stake for the second group where the PhD is an end on itself while the first group may hope to get a promotion or a better paying job after the time and money invested on the PhD. This would be particularly true for people wanting an academic career, which may depend on their performance during their candidature.

Although I could not find any evidence suggesting that personality types affect academic performance, it would be a fair assumption to expect that a significant proportion of graduate students are high achievers and perfectionists, particulalrly since getting a full scholarship is a competitive processes. Some personality types (sensu MBTI) have been found to have higher susceptibility to depression than others, as discussed in the apallinglly entitled article "Depression is a choice". Further, perfectionists are more susceptible to experience health problems than people with other personality types.

Finally, with the ever decreasing candidature and scholarship duration, the pressure to complete the PhD study "whithin the duration of the scholarship" can lead to a decrease of protective activities such as exercise, regular meals and social interaction. This is exemplified by the plight of Masters students who who were found to experience higher levels of fatigue and associated problems than Doctoral candidates by a study completed at the National Taiwan University. These students would be more likely to juggle study and work, have bigger study loads and shorter deadlines than Doctoral candidates, particulalrly since Masters scholarships, which will allow full-time study, are rarer than their Doctoral counterpats.

In conclussion, if you have the time, the money and access to all those personality and depression questionaires be my guest and tell me if I was way off the mark.

More sings...

How to know someone is trying to write and doesn't want to be disturbed... look for the signs.

What is that smell in the lab?!

Look for the signs...

Want to know what you colleagues are studying? just look for the subtle signs...

Desk entropy

I would like to use this opportunity to provide evidence for Jorge Cham's hypothesis of desk entropy:

Ho: Desk entropy increases as the length of PhD candidature increase.


To support this theory, I present my evidence:

Subject 1
Name: Michael
Length of candidature: 1 week.

Subject 2

Name: Carola
Length of candidature: don't even ask

Concussion: Desk entropy exist!

Other considerations: Some scholars argue that desk entropy is not a characteristic of PhD students only, but that it manifest itself on all people working in an academic environment. To test this hypothesis I was going to take a picture of the office of a new academic such as Bruce Doran and compared it with a picture of the office of someone who has been working in academia for many years. However, I was afraid to enter John Field's office just in case I was killed by a falling forlder containing a student assignment from 1983.

Reducing pen loss hazards...

After discussing this with other students, I arrived to the conclusion that academic supervisors, and academics in general, tend to absent-mindedly "misplace" the pen that you just lent them in the front pocket of their shirts. Particularly if this is your last pen and

i) you are very busy and can't afford the time to walk to the union,
ii) don't have cash on you to buy a new one, or
iii) you are somewhere where you can't get another pen (like the last writing workshop that I attended where my neighbouring fellow workshop participant took my pen placed it in his bag. To his credit, he returned it at the end of the workshop two days later).

But never despair. I have deviced a system to prevent this from happening ever again. Just use one of these selected pens:

The classic: Even the most absent minded supervisor will
realised that there is a big feather sticking out of his pocket.
If this fails, use:

The Giant: It will not fit on his/her pocket. But, if
for some fashion accident it does, try:

The fluffy: The selection of bright colours will draw
attention to the fact that a foreign pen is sitting
in the supervisors pocket.

The big bird: If even the bright colours fail this will
draw the attention of the 2 year old son/daughter.

The embarrassing: Your supervisor is guaranteed to notice that
no one takes him/her seriously at the next academic meeting
because there is a teddy bear picking out of his/her pocket.

The Black-Mailer: If everything else fails let your supervisor know what
will happen to him/her if she/he insists on pocketing your pens
(after the final drafts of your work are corrected with your pen
of course).

AND FINALLY A WORD OF CAUTION:
Never, ever use the pen below as you will never
see it again...

Being Virtuous

Do you feel rather virtuous when you are the first in the morning and have to open the lab door? What about when you are the last one to leave for home and you are closing the lab? Or during those long and lonely weekends when you have the entire office just for yourself…

This never happens to me. I am never virtuous no matter how hard I try.

If I come early in the morning Adam or Ian have already opened the door, and since Adam left, Lyndsey have succumbed to the early bird bug that must have been left contaminating her new desk. Working late Karen always beat me by at least half an hour. Glorious Saturdays became crowded with Adam and Amy working all day long, while the quiet Sundays are usually interrupted by Ian walking in and out to set models to run.

So no, I can’t be virtuous unless I revert to Bolivian time and became a researching vampire. I am working on the look.