18 December 2006
Dear research students,
If you are feeling desperate like I did when I was at your stage, I hope that this little note will encourage you to complete your programme of study as best as you can.
My PhD research (1969 - 1972) was sponsored by a Commonwealth Scholarship and was supervised Dr Roy C Ward at the University of Hull. I am very grateful to Roy for making me realise that it was up to me to sink or swim. Despite my anxieties and self doubt, I learnt to swim and to teach myself subjects which my fellow research students seemed to have covered in their undergraduate courses - like Hydrology, Statistics, Computer Programming etc - never mind the Methodology of Science, paradigms and other fancy stuff. I felt really inadequate to the task but I could not let everyone down by just packing it in. So, I decided that I would plod on and do what I could.
Jeff Tandy and I did our fieldwork together - he carried the neutron probe and I tagged behind carrying the battery; I could just about manage that. So, without Jeff my fate would have been very different. I did not know at the time that he had a heart murmur and that he would have a premature death in his 20s. Carrying the neutron probe and all the other kit, including augers and very many heavy tubes, and all the heavy work involved in driving those tubes into heavy boulder clay, must have taken their toll. He was always joyful and we discussed our literature search while doing the menial tasks. Jeff left after nearly 2 years with a flushed face leaving me still ignorant of his medical condition. But, we had reached a stage from which I could complete my fieldwork on my own. When I was not out on fieldwork or learning new techniques - I was often ill and feeling that it was all beyond me. I started to avoid my supervisor, who must have thought that I had drowned.
It was only in my final third year did a thesis start to come together for me. It came as a surprise to me that I was quite good at computer programming. Programming the statistical techniques I had swotted up and applying them to my own data and writing programs to plot my data and results in graphical form became addictive, fun and productive.
When it came to writing up and submitting, I became aware that many research students were not completing their writing up and submitting for fear of failing. They seemed to think that if you had not been examined, you could not be deemed a failure. After you have been through several revisions of your chapters, the research findings seem stale and no longer sound novel or interesting . I noticed that most of the students who picked up the courage to submit, were encouraged to leave with honourable outcomes even if not PhDs. I too was haunted by the fear of failure but decided that I had to do justice to myself. There had been periods of inactivity due to depression, two-months per year of hay fever, exhaustion and illness - but I had also invested a lot of time on my studies and research and had next to no holidays. My work had to count for something - even if only for an MSc. I could not fail myself by not submitting. So, submit I did and to my surprise was awarded a PhD - a PhD which I did not believe I deserved. Jeff & I had already published a review paper jointly - and to convince myself (more than others) that I did deserve the PhD, I wrote up two more papers for publication - they too were published with minor revisions.
|
Dedicated to my parents and Jeff Tandy, with thanks and fond memories |
|
| 1972 | Visvalingam, M An application of statistical hydrology to an evaluation of some methods of measuring the water table. PhD thesis, University of Hull. |
| 1972 | Visvalingam, M and Tandy, J D "The neutron method for measuring soil moisture content - a review", J Soil Sc 23 (4), 499 - 511. |
| 1974 | Visvalingam, M "Well-point techniques and the shallow water table in clay", J Soil Sc 25 (4) 505 - 516. |
| 1975 | Visvalingam, M "The water table and the neutron moisture meter", J Hydrol 27, 331 - 337. |
I have run out of the 25 free reprints I received. Fortunately, we did not sign our copyright away to publishers in those days and I am able to scan and post them on the web in case they are still relevant.
Good luck with your research.
Mahes
Please feel free to leave your comments at: http://rani.aeshost.net/cs/blogs/phd_research_hydrology/archive/2006/12/26/109.aspx