PhD_the other half

Today I went to the finals of 3 Minute Thesis Competition. Presenting one's 3 or more years' PhD in only 3 minutes using one slide without any animation or props is a really difficult job. I was really eager to see the contestants who have gone through this journey. I was interested to learn how they squeezed their thesis in three minutes, what are the judges' responses to that and how the audience is reacting. Last year I was a runner up in the school heat (ECA heat). I started the journey which I could not finish but later on I overcame my lacking in the Falling Walls Lab Edinburgh. The only difference between three minute thesis competition and falling walls lab is you can use more than one slide in falling walls lab, you can also use some props. But both the competitions are very strict to the 3 minutes boundary and its safer to prepare your presentation for less than 3 minutes. You can present whatever you are doing in your PhD in the three minutes thesis but fallin...

Patha Bhavana   ( Bengali :   পাঠ ভবন ) is an institution of primary and secondary education in   Santiniketan ,   West Bengal ,   India . It was founded by   Nobel laureate Poet   Rabindranath Tagore   in 1901 with only five students which later grew into   Visva-Bharati University . The school is established based on the philosophy of learning being in nature with close connection to it without any superficial barriers between teachers and students. It was opposed to the mainstream classroom learning system based on the books only. It’s often referred to as an   ashram   system where the teacher is guru and teaches his or her disciples sitting in the shade of a tree. It is one of the two primary and secondary school affiliated with the Visva-Bharati University; the other being   Shiksha Satra . Patha Bbhavana is established for children from class I to class XII. Generally in the schools in Indian subcontinent chi...

When we first came in this deserted heaven, we were really fortunate to meet  Fancy  and Dikens to be our host for the first few days. Mohit and Toma were there to help us with until we found a suitable home for us. It was September 2013 and all the student accommodation were already booked... Searching for flats in a place you dont know is always the most difficult job, sometimes we came up viewing flats in really dodgy area but the interior was spacious..We  were confused... Then  Reyhaneh  gave her hands and sent the link of the house where we lived for the next one year... To us it was no less than a resort facing the hills from the living room window. We used to say that we are having our extended honeymoon in the most beautiful city of the world...Oh! Appin terrace! Now after long eight months, the scenario started repeating. We are again at Mohit's place waiting for a flat close to my office. Having the fringe festival ahead the rent is higher a...

This morning I met Sarah, my supervisor from the Moray House School of Education and talked about on what I got from my field survey. We began our chat with the analysis of quantitative data which eventually took turn into the analysis of ethnographic data. I have executed an ethnographic research quite unconsciously as I used to go to the school before everybody came and left it after everybody had left. I spent the whole day there observing how the children are interacting with the changed environment, how the teachers are taking classes in the outdoors and above all how the days are spent in the school. I have still quite fresh memories of the day to day life of children in the school which are needed to be transcribed into any media as soon as possible. The best way might be write it down what comes to my mind. But sometimes writing can take you to completely different direction. What I can do is to talk to myself or some other person (my husband may be) and record it. The most ...

As I said in the earlier post that I have just come back after my data collection. My research is an experimental one which includes an intervention in a primary school in Bangladesh. Therefore it means I have double data compared to any other research methods- pre and post intervention data. These pile of things have put me on a 'denial' mood and I was trying to spend my times on every other thing except going back to data. Then I have got this part of a book 'Planning and Preparing the Analysis", Chapter 2 of the book 'Applied Thematic Analysis' published by SAGE. I will just try to write in bullet points the key things I have learnt from this chapter- 1. The first and foremost thing is to establish your Analysis Objectives - what you are trying to achieve with the data and how you are going to achieve it. This requires going back to your research design. Your analysis objectives will always relate to your research questions. 2. When jotting down t...

Literally, the other half of my PhD life has begun in Edinburgh as I am back here on the 31st of May. I have just finished my data collection in Bangladesh and have been preparing myself for the toughest job (to my eyes)- data analysis. But according to my supervisor, I have done the most difficult job- making change to a school ground in real and I have completed it in due time. I have got the confidence from her that if I can do that I can easily do the rest of the jobs of here. I have many plans for this second half of my PhD. What I wanted to do the most after coming back here is to walk, yes to walk at least half an hour everyday. So before I go to bed I want to make sure that I have done these three things- 1) have done some sort of exercise- walking/cardio 2) have done some write-up for at least 10 minutes 3) writing something in my blog, PhD journal I have passed my first week arranging my new work space. I got the key from graduate office, arrange stuffs on my desk. wo...