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they brought to their study, from undergraduate education at top-ranked universities in
some cases, at rural technical colleges in others; from no experience to 25 years in the
workplace; from stable family life and a standard school–university–research transi-
tion to teen years spent in blue-collar work (without finishing high school) followed
by workplace experience and graduate certificates; from speaking English as a first
language with long exposure to academic writing to learning English as they did their
research. Another is the extent to which any of these students could succeed regardless
of background; while an ‘easy run’ can be helpful in some respects, a student who has
struggled to have the opportunity of undertaking research has probably learnt skills—
such as a particular kind of persistence—that more than compensate for other disad-
vantages. A third aspect is the way in which their skills tend to converge during their
study, as they make use of their strengths and rectify their weaknesses. Best of all has
been the fact that the majority of them have gone on to do research, either in academia
and industry, and have continued to develop. I’m still in touch with most of them.
Perhaps two or three of these students, but no more, were adequate as academic
communicators before they began their PhD. I’d say that much the same is true
of the research students who have gone through my department; considering the
couple of hundred who I’ve taught in research methods, no more than ten or so
struck me initially as already good at writing and presenting. Yet the great major-
ity of them acquire the skill, and confidence, to write well by the time they submit.
(Acquiring the skill of spoken presentations seems to take longer, but during their
PhD most students certainly improve.) Indeed, to go further, I would say that every
student who makes a serious effort to learn to write largely succeeds in doing so.
There’s no doubt that the task of assembling and finishing a thesis is a transfor-
mative one. At the time of submission of my own thesis, I (Zobel) felt that it was
a success against the odds. I came to research with some years of experience in
the workplace and an over-confident belief in my ability to communicate. Under
the guidance of my supervisor, I was introduced to the challenges and methods
of technical writing, and gradually realized that, in this domain, I was not a good
communicator at all. I had to swallow my pride, go back to basics, and struggle to
develop an effective approach to getting a thesis written. At times I thought I would
not succeed, hence my relief when I finally submitted.
Now, though, with the wisdom of hindsight, I don’t think that my struggle was
so special. Most of the students I’ve worked with seem to go through something
similar. Maybe their insights and paths to success are different to mine—in my case,
it was the experience of feeling uneducated on the topic of communication that led
me to start teaching others about writing and research methods—but the differences
are less obvious than the similarities.
A painful bit of hindsight is that my PhD thesis is—how can I put this nicely?—
not an excellent piece of writing. I developed while creating it, but have developed
far more since then. That is, the process of becoming a better author and researcher
is ongoing, so on the one hand I sometimes cringe when I read older papers of mine
and on the other am grateful for the ease with which, on a good day, I can get some
writing done. Hopefully this book has helped you along a similar path.