So it’s the end of another year already… that one went fast didn’t it?

In July 2025, my blog will be 15 years old. Does this mean I am now a bratty teenager instead of a menopausal woman?! I feel there’s life in the old girl yet, so I’ll still fire up the blog monthly, never fear.

As is tradition, the end of year post should contain some reflections on the year and promises for the year ahead. In that spirit, here’s a reader survey. I’d really appreciate your response – it should be short.

It’s always my aim to make my posts useful. Now the comments are off it can be hard to know what resonates with you. I’m really keen to hear what you want more and less of in terms of topics. I reviewed my posts for the year and realised most of them are AI focussed – this is your chance to tell me you are sick of that topic (or not!).

Overall it’s been a better year for me, despite certain challenges. I’ve noticed that many countries are experiencing Higher Ed ‘shrinkage’ – I hope it’s not affecting you as well. Like the rest of the sector, the Australian National University, where I work, is currently experiencing financial difficulties and has announced redundancies. My team at work has shrunk, which makes work life harder. But I have committed to finding the joy, which means that I will always make time for writing

I’ve formalised a business partnership with Dr Jason Downs, based around our podcast ‘On The Reg’. On The Reg Team provides training on all things writing and productivity. Jason is doing the lion’s share of the work of course, as I continue to be full time at ANU. Luckily, ANU has a generous outside work policy, so I can still do some workshops. If you are interested, you can find our (pretty terrible) On The Reg Team website here.

I was thrilled to be invited by Writing Partners, the wonderful people behind Shut up and Write!, to give the keynote address at the first Shut up and Write! symposium at Cambridge University in November this year. Thanks to Aaron and Malaika, and to Tyler from ThinkLab who made it happen.

Extra special thanks and a bit shout out to Rennie Saunders, the guy who started it all in San Francisco in the early 2000s. He’s just a great guy and someone I am proud and happy to now call my friend, here’s proof

Rennie invented something special. I did my first ever Shut up and Write! with my friend and fellow blogger, Dr Jonathan O’Donnell from the Research Whisperer and wrote about it here. This blog post is one of the most visited on this site, and I know it inspired many other groups to follow. I wrote a book chapter about Shut up and Write and went on to adapt it for the ANU Bootcamp Program. The Shut up and Write! principle has had such a positive impact on my career, in so many ways. Writing the symposium keynote made me reflect on what makes it so effective – you can read my script here.

If you’ve not tried it and keen to have a go, you don’t have to start your own group. There might be an existing Shut up and Write! group near you which has a meeting schedule and a venue. Writing Parters have started providing help to find others on their website, here. Check it out!

Deep thank you to everyone who expressed interest in my neurodivergence in the PhD research! I’m pleased to report we’ve had over 1400 responses to the survey we launched in June, many of them from neurodivergent folks (it’s open to the end of the year, if you want to participate). My statistician colleagues tell me there’s enough responses to the survey to give us sufficient ‘power’ to create some statistical models. We’re seeing interesting things in these models and a couple of papers are being prepared. I will be sending these to the mailing list when they are in draft form (the mailing list sign up is here if you are interested).

I’m also pleased to report that Katherine Firth and I have signed up to do the second edition of ‘How to Fix your Academic Writing Trouble’ with Open University press. We’ll be incorporating advice on using AI / Large Language models in your writing practice. I’m excited about this project – one rarely gets a chance to improve on a published book. If you’re interested in updates on release of this book, you can join our mailing list for the book here.

Finally, social media.

Sigh.

A lot of people look to me for advice on this, and I haven’t had much to offer in the last two years. I even gave up teaching it altogether. As I noted in my post on the Enshittification of Academic Social media, these platforms are no longer built for sharing and the algorithms decide what you see, making it all a bit pointless for both networking and sharing. The trolling can make it more of a place of despair for many academics, not connection.

I got off Twitter (I refuse to call it X) in July last year. I wish more academics would just leave – we give Musk more power by giving him our eyeballs.

I have been actively searching for a replacement to Twitter ever since Musk walked in with his stupid kitchen sink. Mastodon has promise, but every time I post I get mansplained – I got sick of it. In desperation, I invested a bit of time in Linkedin, but that will never be a place of joy. I hung out a lot on Threads over the last year, but it’s ultimately been disappointing. The algorithm encourages passive consumption, not connection.

I’ve switched to BlueSky last week and it definitely shows promise. If you want to talk to me in real time, that’s the best place for now – as usual, you can find me there as @thesiswhisperer.bsky.social. .. until, of course, the enshittification catches up with us again!

Thanks for considering my reader survey and I will see you back here in January