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- by Charlotte King
- In Student Life
Posted Dec. 12, 2014
Set Up a Postgrad Work Gambling Group
It’s the universal cry of the postgrad student: if only there was some way to increase my productivity AND ensure myself some start-up money for that infinite chasm of despair better known as ‘post-postgraduate employment’. You’ve tried a thousand ways to force ourselves to care about your work mid-afternoon on a Friday, read all of our guides to better time management or how to procrastinate productively , and yet your life remains thoroughly unhacked. On top of this, you’re finding it hard to stay positive about your finances when your finances seem so far in the negative. Luckily, today we might have a solution for you. It’s time to embrace your inner East End gangster, and turn to that least likely of inspirations, director Guy Ritchie.
Before you go out on a criminal rampage, jamming your supervisor’s head into a car door until they give you the grade you want, we are not advocating violence here (unless, that is, you relish the prospect of Vinnie Jones hunting you down with an antique rifle). Instead, we are taking a Pelican Brief (leaf) out of the Captain Cook (book) of cockney criminals everywhere and starting a gambling ring. However, this is less ‘goin down the ‘orses’ than focusing on your courses (I promise I’m done with rhyming things now.)
The idea is simple. Get a group of postgrads together and start making bets on your postgraduate work. These can be on anything, from who will be the first to finish their theses to who will get the highest mark to (as a group of Swedish chemists did over 17 years) who can get the most Bob Dylan quotes into their papers. You can bet as much or as little as you want, but it works best if you bet big, or at least enough money so that you won’t want to lose it.
Doing it this way can be a massive productivity incentive. Being the first amongst your group to finish means that firstly you won’t have to spend £25 (cockney translation: a pony) and secondly you could win a few hundred pounds (cockney: a few monkeys, Planet of the Apes, Gorillas in the Mist). You’ll be amazed how much harder you’ll work if it could mean enough cash for a festival or something shiny and electrical at the end of it.
Even if you don’t end up with the money, creating work-based bets is a great way to strengthen your postgraduate community. After all, it forces everyone to take an active interest in everybody else’s work, even if it is just to see how close they are to the final target in relation to you. Uniting over a bet opens up the conversation a bit more, allowing people to discuss their successes without bragging and stopping what can become endless conversations of dissertation moaning.
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Before you go out on a criminal rampage, jamming your supervisor’s head into a car door until they give you the grade you want, we are not advocating violence here (unless, that is, you relish the prospect of Vinnie Jones hunting you down with an antique rifle). Instead, we are taking a Pelican Brief (leaf) out of the Captain Cook (book) of cockney criminals everywhere and starting a gambling ring. However, this is less ‘goin down the ‘orses’ than focusing on your courses (I promise I’m done with rhyming things now.)
The idea is simple. Get a group of postgrads together and start making bets on your postgraduate work. These can be on anything, from who will be the first to finish their theses to who will get the highest mark to (as a group of Swedish chemists did over 17 years) who can get the most Bob Dylan quotes into their papers. You can bet as much or as little as you want, but it works best if you bet big, or at least enough money so that you won’t want to lose it.
Doing it this way can be a massive productivity incentive. Being the first amongst your group to finish means that firstly you won’t have to spend £25 (cockney translation: a pony) and secondly you could win a few hundred pounds (cockney: a few monkeys, Planet of the Apes, Gorillas in the Mist). You’ll be amazed how much harder you’ll work if it could mean enough cash for a festival or something shiny and electrical at the end of it.
Even if you don’t end up with the money, creating work-based bets is a great way to strengthen your postgraduate community. After all, it forces everyone to take an active interest in everybody else’s work, even if it is just to see how close they are to the final target in relation to you. Uniting over a bet opens up the conversation a bit more, allowing people to discuss their successes without bragging and stopping what can become endless conversations of dissertation moaning.
Related articles
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