Blog Posts


  • Having Imposter Syndrome in Research? I feel You

    Today at the Grant Writing course, the trainer said, and I quote, “Imposter syndrome is something people develop during PhD, and it never stops. Academia is a place that continuously exposes you to the breadth of knowledge of several other people, making you realise how little you know.” In the first year of my PhD,…

    Continue reading

  • 4 – Group Two: What a Time to be Alive

    Chapter Four details the average lives and events that occurred during the lives of Group Two women, spanning the early 20th  century. The members of this group witnessed the Industrial Revolution in the USA, the Great Depression and WWII. As one would expect, these events drastically influenced the lives of the women born between 1898…

    Continue reading

  • 3 – Group One: A Fork in the Road

    Chapter Three of Career and Family explores the career and family lives of the women in Group One. Through non-marriage and childbirth statistics, we learn that college-educated women born between 1878 and 1897 had a non-marriage rate of 30% and a birth rate of 50%. These numbers were even more striking among those who pursued…

    Continue reading

  • 2 – Five Groups of Women, Different Career and Family

    The second chapter of Career and Family introduces the five groups of women whose lives we follow throughout the book. These women were born between 1878 and 1978, offering a century-long view of the evolution of women’s career and family paths in the United States. As the table below illustrates, career and family were seen…

    Continue reading

  • 1 – Introduction to the book

    Career and Family is one of Goldin’s books, and in it, she provides insight into the trajectory of how women have navigated employment and family since the late 1800s. This first chapter, which I summarize here, introduces the book and interesting terms such as “The new problem with no name” and “greedy work,” which will…

    Continue reading

  • What Do You Know About This University or Program?

    Dear prospective student, When I receive an email from someone interested in my university or program, I feel a rush of excitement. Sometimes, I even recognize the name as one from my home country, which brings some sense of connection. But, too often, that excitement fades as I read vague questions, leaving me struggling to…

    Continue reading

  • Energy and Expectations Management

    One thing I have realized I do not enjoy as a researcher is having to leave my chamber of curious exploration to document what I have discovered when I am yet to be convinced of these discoveries. Many researchers struggle with getting started with writing completed research, and it is even more difficult to report…

    Continue reading

  • Deciding the Type and Structure of a Literature Review

    A literature review is a knowledge collection and accumulation process that returns valuable gains for involved researchers but can be laborious if this activity is not the kind you do every day e.g., your research requires more of data processing and analysis or some real-life experiments. In many fields, one cannot completely avoid this literature…

    Continue reading