54. Top 6 ‘How to’ episodes: How to get your thesis written

Let's Talk SciComm

It’s the end of another season of Let’s Talk SciComm and it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. It’s the end of our countdown of our most popular how-to episodes and coming in at number one is…… How to get your thesis written.

Writing a thesis is hard! It’s probably the longest document you’ve ever had to write, and the experience is often accompanied by a tendency to procrastinate and feelings of overwhelm and imposterism.

This episode will help! Jen and Michael briefly talk about their thesis writing experiences and share their top tips. But most of the episode is filled with advice and tips from eight of our UniMelb SciComm alumni who have recently written theses. They’ve been right where you are now and have so much wisdom to share!

We’re thrilled that our most popular episode ever is one which comprises mostly of advice from members of our fabulous alumni. If you’re currently writing or are soon to write a thesis (or know someone who is), please listen and share!

In this episode you’ll hear from Nancy Rivers Tran, Owen Missen, Samantha Ward, Xavier Busuttil-Crellin, Kade Huckstep, Adam Hagg, Emily McColl-Gausden and Lachlan Tegart.

Plus here are a couple of resources to help you:

How to write a Better Thesis by David Evans, Justin Zobel and Paul Gruba.

Explorations of Style - A brilliant blog about academic writing. Start by checking out their "How to use this blog" page to get an idea of what articles they have to offer.

The Thesis Whisperer - Another fantastic blog worth following - full of honest, upfront advice about so many different aspects of being a researcher.

Patter - Another great blog about academic writing.

DoctoralWriting SIG - Very useful blog covering lots of interesting and relevant topics, with an entire category dedicated to thesis writing.

We’re going to take a little break now while Michael has the joy of welcoming a new baby to the family.

But we’ll be back with Season 8 in July and have some fabulous episodes coming your way, including interviews with Zoos Victoria CEO Jenny Gray and science communicator extraordinaire Rachel Nowak. We’ll also be talking about how to network effectively (and enjoy it!), how to write online science stories, how to get kids excited about science, how to find a great PHD supervisor and to work well with them, how to write a great CV and job application and how to present science concisely.

Thanks so much for listening, Jen and Michael