Academic Writing Accountability is an initiative inspired by Tanya's Want to become a prolific scholar? Try Daily Writing. Tanya's blog has always been inspiring with her constant writing advice especially the called for daily writing. Her mentioned of the results from Boice's study on Daily Writing and Accountability Work further reaffirms my belief in writing accountability:

• Abstinent writers produced an average of 0.2 pages per day, and only one idea per week.
• Spontaneous writers produced an average of 0.9 pages per day, and one creative idea every two days.
• Forced writers produced an average of 3.2 pages and one creative idea each day.

Reading for literature review is both time consuming and a tedious process. As you find and collect more journal articles for reference purpose over the time, you need the right tool to help you get organized and hopefully simplified the literature review process. The tool I talk about is reference manager such as EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero, and etc.

I believe many have difficulties in writing merely because they have no goal in mind. Without a destination, direction is not obvious, hence you won't reach your destination. Similarly with writing, you have to have a writing goal in mind in order to achieve your ultimate goal.

Setting a goal doesn't have to be a big thing. Start setting smaller goal that can be easily achieved on daily basis. Or you can also have a big goal in mind that you want to achieve in a few months or a year or more. Just break it down to smaller one that you can achieve immediately. Let say you want to write a paper of 8000 words in 1 month. To achieve that goal, you have to write around 300 words a day. 8000 words in 1 month seems hard to achieve but 300 words a day is less intimidating. By creating a good daily writing habit, any number of words can be achieved without feeling too overwhelming. 

Writing itself is as important as the writing preparation. You can read a lot and probably get the right environment for writing but can you actually write something is totally a different story. Many would say writing is very hard especially all you have is a blank page as a start. Some experts would recommend a blank page but most of us (novices) would not. A blank page probably gives you pressure to start, hence (self-made) writer's block. Too afraid to start or do not know where to start. That's especially true when you have read a lot and ideas are swimming around in the head but the right sentence or even words just couldn't come up on the page. Intimidating! Frustration follows. 

Literature review is a large part of our studious life. It's also the most time consuming part of the whole process of writing dissertation or thesis. Literature review is a continuous process of finding, reading and reviewing journal articles so that one can synthesize all the facts of the research topics to support their research argument. One should beware of the way literature review is being done. It's not about just reading and making summary of each article. It's much more than that and here I provide some reading suggestions on how to conduct literature review.

No one in studious life can avoid writing. Every one of us has to write one thing or another: an assignment, a research proposal, a journal article, a grant application, etc. Being a student has endless opportunity in writing, yet no one can claim to be expert in writing. I have not encountered anyone who claims to be able to write instantly at will or non-stop. To most, such as myself, writing is very difficult task. First, one has to be immersed in reading a lot to grasp the required knowledge to be able to write. Next, one has to be able to sit through with the writing motion itself to get everything down to paper or computer screen. All these take time and effort and not easy to come naturally. However, there are always some good advice out there for sharing.

Do you know that most people feel that their greatest problem in studious life lies with time? Are you feeling the same? Funny enough  that everyone gets the same 24 hours a day, yet everyone has different reasons stating they have not enough of time. If you are doing your research and writing your dissertation, time is something that you feel you have a lot yet still not enough.

Studious Topics share interesting topics for discussion related to your studious life especially if you are doing your research or writing your dissertation or thesis. Feedback is always welcomed. Suggestion on topics for discussion is appreciated too.

Through this post I will attempt to portray an overview of my experiences, rather than focussing on the courses in which I have taken part (I am happy to email people about this but am hesitant to make such discussion publicly).

Firstly
I am a Master of Arts (Art History and Curatorship) student studying online via the ANU. I completed my Bachelor of Arts (Art History and Curatorship) (Honours) on campus at the ANU. I also completed the first year of a Bachelor of Fine Arts at UNCLE when I first left high school (and had yet to find my academic calling).

A journal article worth reading!

Microblogs in Higher Education – A chance to facilitate informal and process-oriented learning? 

Nicely put by Jorge Cham @ PhDComics.com

I was well known as a procrastinator in my studious life since I don't remember when. Most probably since young age. I didn't have the urgency to finish homework early, unlike my best classmate last time. I was always the last person to finish anything. It worked most of the time but not in higher education anymore. Okay, if you wish to just pass with average result, procrastinator will still survive. However, I'm not aiming to just pass. I'm ambitious in grades. I want flying colors. The procrastinator in me must die.