Who are you, anyway?
My name is Dr. Sally Makin, and I’m the Director of SOS Writing Ltd. I graduated with my Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Kent (Canterbury, England) in 2019. If you’d like to read any of my work for yourself, you can find my publications on Google Scholar. You can also read my Ph.D. thesis which is free to download directly from the University of Kent’s academic respository.
I worked in a few different industries and ended up with 10 years’ worth of professional work experience before going to University. At the age of 26 (technically a “mature student”, although by no means the eldest in my cohort) I finally decided what I wanted to study. Despite a rocky start – having all the wrong A-levels and no study skills – I got a First class Msc (with hons) in Astronomy with Space Science and Astrophysics.
Why did you set up this website?
Two reasons. Firstly, because writing is something that I enjoy, and I’m good at it. That wasn’t always the case, though. I struggled hard to get to this point, and I hope that by sharing what I’ve learned I can help others who are in the same position as I was. Secondly, because although I’ve spent a lot of time helping out friends and colleagues with their writing, helping one person at a time is not very efficient. If there’s one thing scientists love, it’s efficiency! With extra time on my hands thanks to the pandemic, I decided now was the time to write down the things I wish I’d known sooner.
It struck me during my Ph.D. just how overlooked Ph.D. students and postdocs are in terms of general support and training. Graduate training – especially in writing and editing – is usually geared specifically toward the more numerous humanities and social sciences students. This seems to be a universal problem for STEM students, judging by what I see on social media.
I’ve proofread dozens of manuscripts for journal articles, dissertations, and theses. I’ve marked more undergraduate assignments than I’ve had hot dinners. I’ve attended even more talks and poster presentations, conferences and seminars, giving feedback and asking questions. So many times, people make the exact same mistakes, over and over again. I couldn’t help but think how great it would be if there was a place that people could go to find out “the rules” of how things should be done, instead of always being constantly corrected after the fact. Or even which rules are rules, and which are more guidelines than actual rules. Since I couldn’t find a resource like that when I was a student, I decided to create it myself.
What’s your goal?
At the start of my Ph.D., I was so lucky to be sharing office space with some wonderful people who were generous with their time, experience and expertise. Ever since then, I’ve tried to pay their kindness forward; to be for other students what they were for me. Now, in this little corner of the internet, I hope I can do the same thing but on a larger scale. To do my own small part to make academia a more supportive, positive place. Somewhere that the imposter phenomenon can be cut off before it takes root.
When you want your work to be as perfect as it can be, it’s easy to dwell on tiny mistakes. I’m here to say: “don’t”. No one is born a writer. You see the picture on the right? The little forest of coloured tabs decorating the top of my thesis? Those mark all the pages where I found miniscule spelling errors and grammatical boo-boos when I was doing my pre-viva preparation. No matter how obsessively you proofread, some errors will stay stubbornly hidden until the nanosecond after you hit the “submit” button. Then they can’t wait to jump out at you. Becoming a writer is a lifelong journey, and you can always get better no matter where you start from. It takes honest effort and practice. Writing is one of the hardest parts of science, so I will consider this endeavour to be successful if my work helps to lessen the load of even one person who is struggling.