The Mindful Researcher

A few weeks ago, an old student of mine emailed to ask for an essay I'd written about failure. He explained that a friend of his was currently struggling with the Masters program and trying to decide whether or not to continue. He said that he remembered finding my reflections on failure helpful and hoped to pass them on. So I thought I would post it here for others interested in the topic. 'Sitting with failure' was originally a plenary address I gave at the NewMac Humanities Postgraduate Symposium in 2015 at Macquarie University, and has since been published in the conference's online journal   Humanity.   This reposting feels timely. The topic of failure seems to be coming up more frequently at the university. My colleague Florence Chiew is currently working on a new podcast called  Failure Allowed,  which will contain interviews with academic staff about their experiences with failure and creativity. More on this to come later in ...

For the past seven years or so, I've kept up a (mostly) daily mindfulness meditation practice. One of the things this practice shows me on a regular basis is how difficult it is to be really open. We are not used to opening to our felt experiences and sensations or to the unknown. Most of our moment to moment experience goes unnoticed in the swirl of life, as we are either too busy to stop and observe, or if space opens up we reach automatically for distractions. Both busyness and distraction are ways of avoiding or staving off the discomfort that simple or empty moments present (e.g. sitting on the bus, waiting for a coffee, eating a meal). Our daily lives are guided mostly by force of habit, and in particular, the habit of moving towards comfort and away from discomfort. Meditation offers training in openness. It challenges us to simply observe and sit with our experiences as they unfold. As a method, it asks us only to watch. In insight meditation (which is the for...

Earlier this month I gave two lectures to the new cohort of Masters research students in the Faculty of Arts. For most of these students, this year will be the first time they've ever attempted a significant research project (20,000 words), and so my talks focused on research planning and management, the student-supervisor relationship and thesis writing groups. I themed these sessions around the transition from coursework to research and discussed the various other shifts this change entails. Some students find it difficult to establish an independent working routine without the external structure provided by regular classes. Some find the openness of thesis writing challenging - having grown used to detailed assignment guidelines and rubrics, the uncertainty of the process and freedom to direct your own project can be initially overwhelming. And many struggle with the shift from receiving graded feedback on polished essays to participating in an ongoing, qualitative and negoti...