The Big 1000!

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Sarah Quinnell

Woo hoo, a short blog to celebrate a twitter milestone I have just reached 1000 followers (and I think *most* of mine are actual humans). I am currently being ribbed on twitter for being a qualitative researcher and at the same time celebrating how many followers I have. Rather than thinking about this in terms of numbers I see this as a growing community of friends, colleagues and people who think I am interesting. That’s where I struggle as I don’t think I am that interesting. As I have always said my philosophy for blogging and tweeting has always been ‘I throw my thoughts out there and see what sticks’. It is my sounding board, some ideas are popular, some drop like a stone. I view all my followers (note at time of writing there are now 1010 of you – yes a 1% increase in 24 hours very exciting) as an extension of my ‘family’ (please don’t all come round to visit at once). Continue reading →

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Goodbye 2011 Hello 2012 …

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Sarah Quinnell

I thought I would add my blogsworth into the collection of end of the year review / reflection pieces. On New Year’s Eve 2010 I was at home, no different to today, considering how to go about making the ‘minor corrections’ required by my examiners in order for me to finally be awarded my PhD. I was also unemployed and spending a great deal of time writing fruitless job applications and being either a ‘close second’ or not even getting an interview. It was extremely frustrating. Then I met Charlotte Frost on twitter who invited me to be the Managing Editor of PhD2Published. At the time I saw it as an exciting opportunity to develop my social media skills but didn’t realise how significant it would be. I dont know whether I have really said ‘thank you’ Properly to Charlotte and if I haven’t I do now. Continue reading →

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Christmas with Ted

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Sarah Quinnell

Prior to Christmas I had been considering how weird it would be as the first Christmas just me, Mum and Dad with no other relatives to visit. However, in the end it wasn’t just us as we have had the pleasure of Ted and Bobble to share Christmas and New Year with us. This is the first blog detailing their Christmas activities: Continue reading →

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Have a Read, Help a Hen – Thank You

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Sarah Quinnell

The post below was originally written by my friend Jo Barlow (@CornwallJo) on her blog on December 29 2011. Have a read, help a hen thank you … Continue reading →

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Wicked Wizards or What I and @notaphdthesis (Pravin) learnt from Oz

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Sarah Quinnell

I love The Wizard of Oz and anything related to it, books, film, musicals, I say musicals plural because I consider ‘Oz’ to embrace both the originals books, film and current West End show as well as the books and Musical depiction of Wicked. On Boxing day afternoon I settled down to watch The Wizard of Oz for the first time in years. Whenever I have watched this film I’ve always been left asking numerous questions such as: why, considering the advances in digital technology, is Judy Garland still so unnaturally pink on screen, where does the red road in Munchkin Land go, why are the ‘ruby’ slippers ruby when in the original book they were silver. Most of these questions are easily answered by the fact that this is musical world and thus the normal laws of reality are suspended (by the laws of Hollywood or the stage). Continue reading →

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