Category: Writing

Anything on the process or results of writing as an activity and a passion

Reading my dissertation, step by step

Step #1: Learn a bit of the context and background to climate change politics

I know throwing a whole PhD thesis at someone gives them a lot to handle, especially if it is written in an unfamiliar academic style. Nonetheless, I took pains all through my PhD process to come up with a product which would be comprehensible and meaningful to the community of climate activists.

Several posts down the line, we will come to the “meta question” which motivates the chapter about the ethics of what ought to be done. As someone new to the document and/or climate change policy, I would start by looking at what I considered important explanatory text but which my committee directed I should remove from an over-long document:

Structural Barriers to Avoiding Catastrophic Climate Change

Basically, why is solving climate change a hard problem? We have governments that do an OK-to-decent job at most things, so why are they uniquely bad at caring for the climate long-term when its integrity is damaged by the use of fossil fuels? This first document explores that question in detail, and elaborates upon why old solutions aren’t working for this problem.

Making print copies of my dissertation

My print publication plans for the dissertation have become derailed.

Back when we made the fossil fuel divestment brief at U of T, we printed paper copies for the members of the committee considering the question and for U of T libraries and archives at the Toronto Reference Library’s Asquith Press.

Years ago, I attended a session on academic publishing led by representatives from some major scholarly presses. They said, among other things, that authors would have to pay about $8,000 out of pocket to have an index made; that authors need to apply for government grants to help pay for publication, and won’t be published if they don’t get them; that the process of getting a dissertation published will take about two years; and that the resulting trade paperback will be so specialized and expensive that only a handful of university library systems would ever buy it.

I wrote my dissertation because I think the contents are important and ought to be widely discussed. As such, it was always my plan to release it for free through whichever distribution channels might reach the most people.

I did plan to make paper copies at the Asquith Press, partly as thank-you gifts for major supporters and partly to donate to libraries and other organizations. Unfortunately, I learned on Saturday that “due to staffing changes within our department” the Asquith Press won’t be printing anything until May, and perhaps not even then. They referred me to some alternative printers, but the first one that got back to me wants $1,361 plus $168 shipping for their minumum order of 50 copies, which is about twice as many as I need even at a stretch.

Perhaps I will make one copy urgently to give to someone who wants it promptly on paper, then review the alternative printers to see if any can make the number of copies I want at a suitable price, and if not wait four months or more for Asquith to be back in service.

After a PhD

I am not depressed, but I definitely feel a lot of what this video from Andy Stapleton discusses:

I have certainly experienced the odd stutter-step ending of the program, which never brings a single day or moment when you are really done. There is such a moment, but it is mundane, private, and undramatic — probably the last time you make a formatting correction for the unknown administrator who reviews your dissertation for conformity to writing standards like which page numbers in the front matter are Roman numerals. That creates an odd sense of the thing being unfinished, even when there is nothing left to do.

The points about needing to prove yourself in the job market after finishing, as well as anxiety about whether a PhD was necessary, are also familiar from my recent thinking.

I wouldn’t say the video provides any useful and non-obvious advice, but reading within the broad category of writing by current and recent PhD students actually has immense psychological value by demonstrating the reality of shared experience and shared struggle, engaging about all the things we didn’t known when we began and (even more juicily and importantly) all the things your university will lie to you about to keep their business model going. A post by Bret Devereaux is a fine example of the genre, and was discussed here before.

Spam calls for papers on Academia.edu

In the last week or so, I have been deluged by “calls for papers” from a variety of similar sounding so-called journals which I don’t think really exist or, if they do, which are exceptionally scammy.

Keep an eye out for:

  • International Journal on Bioinformatics & Biosciences (IJBB)
  • Machine Learning and Applications: An International Journal (MLAIJ)
  • International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology (IJCSIT)
  • International Journal of Microelectronics Engineering (IJME)
  • Advanced Energy: An International Journal (AEIJ)
  • International Journal on Cloud Computing: Services and Architecture (IJCCSA)
  • International Journal of Fuzzy Logic Systems (IJFLS)
  • Civil Engineering and Urban Planning: An International Journal (CiVEJ)
  • International Conference on Computer Networks & Communications (CCNET)
  • International Conference on Bioscience & Engineering

I have reported them all as spam to the platform, but I am not too hopeful about them taking action.

Free dissertation release

Official versions are forthcoming on the University of Toronto’s TSpace thesis hosting platform and on paper from the Asquith Press at the Toronto Reference Library, but I see no reason not to make my PhD dissertation available as a free PDF to anyone who is interested:

Persuasion Strategies: Canadian Campus Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaigns and the Development of Activists, 2012–20

I have been fighting for years to get this out into the world, so it makes no sense to wait for an arbitrary convocation date and then through further administrative delays.

If you are studying the fossil fuel divestment movement at universities or climate change activism generally in Canada, the US, and UK you may find the extended bibliography useful.

AI that writes

Several recent articles have described text-generating AIs like GPT3 and ChatGPT:

I have been hearing for a while that the best/only way to deal with the enormous problem of plagiarism in university essays is to have more in-class exam essays and fewer take-home essays.

With huge classes and so many people admitted without strong English skills, it is already virtually impossible to tell the difference between students struggling to write anything cogent and some kind of automatic translation or re-working of someone else’s work. It’s already impossible to tell when students have bought essays, except maybe in the unlikely case that they only cheat on one and the person grading notices how it compares to the others. Even then, U of T only punishes people when they confess and I have never seen a serious penalty. If we continue as we are now, I expect that a decent fraction of papers will be AI-written within a few years. (Sooner and worse if the university adopts AI grading!)

Pastiche research

One of my side diversions during the PhD has been developing a Sherlock Holmes pastiche where he crosses paths with Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

In my experience, Lyndsay Faye is the best modern writer of Holmes stories. I have listened to her Dust and Shadow three times on Audible, and I enjoyed The Whole Art of Detection: Lost Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes. I’m presently reading the copy of Observations by Gaslight which I found at Seeker’s Books, and I found the chapters by Irene Adler and Wiggins superb.

I have assembled quite a collection of things which I ought to read before finalizing my pastiche. That would need to include William Baring-Gould’s 3-volume annotated edition of the canon, as well as Leslie Klinger’s Sherlock Holmes Reference Library. I should also read Ronald De Waal’s The Universal Sherlock Holmes; Jack Tracy’s Encyclopaedia Sherlockiana; Steve Clarkson’s Canonical Compedium; Edgar Allen Poe’s three Dupin stories; and Francois Eugene Vidocq’s memoirs.

I also have reading to do on subject matter specific to my story, notably the Pop society at Eton and more about Brunel himself.

Of course this is all a back-burner project for amusement and creative relaxation. I expect that I will have either a week or a month’s worth of revisions to make to my PhD dissertation after my defence on December 2nd, and I have substantial work to do in deciding how to sustain myself and make a difference on climate change post-PhD. I’m fine with the Holmes/Brunel project living on similarly to my space shuttle screenplay: something to motivate a bit of background research and creative thinking, but with no definite plan for completion at any time.

Considering student coaching

To further develop the student coaching idea:

It would be student-driven, not curriculum-driven. The starting point would be who they are, why they’re at university, and what they aspire to do in the medium- and long-term. That’s the basis for helping them find worthwhile extracurriculars and networks, as well as thinking about course planning and major selection from a holistic perspective.

I would work for the student, not the university. As a TA I have spent many hours with students one-on-one reviewing their written work either before or after submission and grading. This has all been essentially unpaid, as I didn’t have so many hours of student contact in my TA contract. I enjoyed doing it though because it felt like the only time when I was really teaching. Up in front of a tutorial I am doing am improv act, trying to weave together my prepared material with the organic discussion of the students willing to talk. One-on-one we can take our time and establish that the student is really following along. It becomes possible to see if they can repeat back the salient idea to you.

As a TA, I was chiefly paid for grading and administrative hours like keeping track of attendance. Neither is an activity that much serves to educate. They are part of the university’s sorting function rather than its residual educational capabilities. Switching sides to serve rather than sort the students is appealing.

All the student support they get at U of T is a bit like going to an emergency room doctor. Their only priority is to deal with the narrow issue in front of them, because they have no long-term relationship to any patient’s health and need to triage patients by degree of need. This student coaching service would be like a family doctor, reminding you of things it will be important to to before you’ve missed a deadline and it’s not possible, and when to get started in researching each batch of papers.

Personally, rather than pedagogically, I see great appeal in employment where I need to maintain clients but not to report to any bosses.

Writing advice for undergraduates (2014)

Fortunately, the conditions under which a TA will read your essay are much like those in which everything else you ever write will be read, from reports written for your future employer to love letters written to your future spouse. This means the skills required to write these papers are generally applicable in life. Especially with dealing with an inattentive reader who isn’t especially interested in your thoughts, a special effort must be made to put forward an argument that will lead the reader along while rewarding their attention. In every case, the reader will have other demands on their time and other things on their mind. Your purpose is to convey something convincing and scholarly under those conditions. Your two real tasks are to develop an argument and then to convey it in as clear a way as possible.

Essay writing tips for undergraduates (2013)