Merge branch 'main' of https://learn.kultwiki.net/thomas/TOS

ledger.md

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-Democratic deficit in a surprisingly hierarchical organization. In an "outside" world that is increasingly concerned with co-creation and participation 
+I often find the life as a ph.d.-student to be a very lonely one, compared to being a regular student and compared to other kinds of jobs.
 
-I find the time limit of a PhD difficult to plan for. I never know whether I am doing enough each day.
+I often feel inadequate, like Bilbo Baggins says: “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” But then again, this is common in many types of jobs. 
 
-Knowing where the limit of what is too much data and/or relevant literature. Overthinking and over-complicating whether it is good enough or do I need more.
+I find it difficult that people often perceive me as an expert on my field, even though I feel as if I haven't really started yet. 
 
-Time pressure is real in a 3-year PhD program. The limitation of working hours during "summer time" to balance work/life does not work in practice. 
+I find it difficult to work with such a hard economic deadline. Deadlines are fine, but it seems kind of brutal that you at some point won't get paid, even if you have been working hard. 
 
-s long as the expectations stay the same, majority of PhD candidates have to work much longer than what's said on paper. Work always spills over. These contracts are not very realistic. 
+You have to publish throughout, but you know most at the end. There is relatively short time in the PhD if you don't know exactly what you're going to research. 
 
-The dominating story about phd-life is very negative: its hard and stressfull and it is the university's fault. Ex: "Shut up and cry"-gatherings or in Khrono. Ofc phd-life can be hard, but phd's complain to much. 
+Duty work: It takes longer time to teach / prepare for teaching than officially allocated hours. It is also sometimes hard to balance between PhD work and duty work. 
 
-Treatment as both student and employee at the same time makes it sometimes very difficult to understand your role and expectations in the academic field.
+Feedback discrepancies between supervisor and co-supervisor: I often receive opposite feedback from my two supervisors which makes me confused about which path I want to follow. 
+
+Supervisor: I find that my (main) supervisor has expectations from me which I find hard to say no to. I find the expectations and the inability to say no stems from both our cultural backgrounds as well as power relations between a supervisor and PhD candidate. 
+
+Uncertainty: As a PhD candidate, I am constantly uncertain about the task I am doing and the path I am taking. Having two supervisors with differing opinions makes this doubly challenging. 
+
+As a PhD student, often times the lecturers tend to say "is this too complicated?" "I know this is tough...", "I'm sorry this is a lot" -- we are PhD students! It should be a lot! I feel that when we are told things are complicated, often they are not so complicated. Often it's quite a general description of the concept and we should be reading and discussing these things. 
+
+Bureaucratic steps and processes concerning managing the research funds (budget). Time management/time pressure. 
+
+it's so difficult to come up with a coherent idea for a paper! i have to make so many wrong movements before finally approaching the "right" one, and i dislike making mistakes! my supervisors don't understand what i wrote! the data is so messy and confusing! so many audio recordings are not transcribed! how time flies before i can write anything! i don't understand Latour! Do i have to understand him? it takes so much energy even to take good care of myself, especially in winter! i don't know what my research question is! i feel i need to read so much but i have so little time! isn't work-life balance a joke when we need to publish 3-4 articles in three years to get a degree? 
+
+I feel like I have too much work to do in too little time. I sometimes feel inadequate and not good enough. 
+
+Taking courses diverts attention from my actual job. The pressure to be careerist disgusts my scholarly sensibilities. Stupid amounts of paperwork is a significant stress factor. Objectivity is still an ideal in my field despite its impossibility. Postcolonial, feminist etc. critique has not yet changed the fundamental approach to research. Limited project funds leads to a stressful need to prioritize. 
+
+There is not enough time in a 3-year PhD for everything that is supposed to be done. The courses takes a lot of time, both reading and writing. There is not enough time during working hours to do everything that is expected of us in the courses and in the work with the PhD = the feeling of "I am stupid, because I don't have the abilities to find the balance". The balance between work and having a life is impossible. I sleep, eat and work 
+
+Teaching load/variety: I think our situation here in Norway, or in the Nordic countries in general, is better than in other places when it comes to this BUT my experience is that my department seizes the opportunity to exploit PhD students as cheap teaching labour. We have to teach more than other employees for the same teaching percentage, and even though the department is to some extent obligated to allow us to teach different courses, including courses relevant to our research, most of us end up teaching the same, very basic course on repeat for 2 or 3 years. 
+
+Academic freedom of speech: I have experienced being censored/sanctioned, when writing an email to all employees at the department about a interest group organized by academic staff across all departments at NTNU. I was told that the topics I address are too "controversial and potentially hurtful" to be addressed in an email going to the entire department. Although my mail was not aggressive in any sense, just informative (on my view, and on the view of many others). 
+
+Dependency on people with authority: I disagree with the way our department is being led/organised, and I have concrete, substantial issues I would like to address. At the same time, I'm dependent on the leadership to have certain rights (by them construed as "wishes") fulfilled. So bringing my critique forward comes with very concrete risks. This puts me in a strange position, one I imagine I share with most non-permanent staff. 
+
+Establishing a social network at my department, both with PhDs and other staff, has been a slow process, so the first period after I started felt particularly lonely. Onboarding is mostly about practicalities. No one reached out to me to guide me into the social environment specifically. Yes, I have a responsibility to introduce myself and strike up conversations with others to get to know people, of course, but it can be intimidating when you do not know anyone, you don't know the norms of the social environment, you don't know if there are social hierarchies or groupings, and so on. 
+
+High expectations around workload as well as availability. Publication pressure. The notion that “building resume” is sufficient compensation for extra work. Being often viewed as privileged for having the job as if the university is doing us a favour by employing us, rather than acknowledging what we contribute to the university and how they are privileged to have us as workers. A workplace culture of trivialising being overwhelmed and overworked as if it is just an inevitable part of the job to accept rather than change. The overly noticeable and impactful hierarchy in the workplace, wherein we are at the bottom. PhD candidates being deemed unqualified for much of the interesting work that professors give themselves, but somehow always qualified for the tasks that the professors aren’t that fond of doing themselves. 
 
-Will it not be better to organize lectures after every two weeks?