GRASP
Finding my people - How Shut Up and Write and Bootcamps keep me going
October 28th, 2026, by
There’s a particular kind of loneliness that comes with doing a research degree, especially one you’re completing off-campus. Nobody warns you about it in the same way they warn you about your literature review or your ethics application. It’s quieter than that. It’s the feeling of sitting at your desk, thousands of words into a thesis, wondering if anyone else is finding this as hard as you are.
For me, the answer to that loneliness has mostly come down to two things: Shut Up and Write or, as Curtin says, Work (SUAW) sessions and Bootcamps. They sound almost too simple to matter. You log on, you write, sometimes with strangers, sometimes with people who’ve slowly become friends. And yet, over the past year, they’ve become one of the things I look forward to most each week.
It turns out I’m not the only one
When I first started attending SUAW sessions, I assumed they were simply a way to keep me accountable and stop me from scrolling the internet instead of writing my thesis. It turns out there’s a reason these sessions have spread so widely across universities in Australia, the UK, and beyond.
As one doctoral researcher reflected, pursuing a research degree can be genuinely isolating, while structured writing sessions improve not only writing progress but also well-being (Bailey, n.d.). That certainly mirrors my experience, and I’d say it applies whether you’re completing a PhD, a Master’s by Research, or an MPhil like mine. The isolation doesn’t come from the letters after your degree title. It comes from the nature of independent research itself.
The sessions aren’t really about writing. At least, not entirely. They’re about not facing the invisible parts of research alone. There’s also a structural reason these communities have emerged. In an article on the growth of Thesis Bootcamps and Shut Up and Work events, The Conversation observed that doctoral study is often an intensely lonely experience. At the same time, supervisors may lack the time, confidence, or training to adequately support students’ writing processes. The same article argues that the enduring myth of the “lone-ranger researcher” discourages students from admitting that academic writing is difficult (The Conversation, 2018).
Reading that partway through my own MPhil felt strangely reassuring. The struggle wasn’t evidence that I was doing something wrong. It was, in many ways, an expected part of doing original research. Enough people have experienced it that entire international writing movements have grown out of the need to write simply together.
Why just showing up works
There’s something almost deceptively simple about SUAW. You don’t need expert facilitators, complicated programs, or even university approval. As one guide describes them, they’re resource-light, low-cost gatherings centred around one shared purpose: showing up and writing together (Writing, PhD on Track, n.d.).
That simplicity is exactly why they work.
Nobody expects you to produce brilliance every session. Nobody critiques your work unless you ask them to. You simply arrive, announce your goal, mute your microphone, and write. Somehow, knowing that twenty other people are doing the same thing makes it much easier to begin.
Bootcamps follow the same philosophy, only on a larger scale. These intensive writing retreats, now common across Australian and North American HDR programs, give students uninterrupted time dedicated solely to thesis writing (UCL PhD Journeys, n.d.).
Research suggests there’s a good reason this approach is effective. Patria and Laili (2021) found that structured writing groups significantly reduced academic procrastination by encouraging realistic writing goals and providing peer support. Reading that study made me smile because it describes exactly what Bootcamps feel like. They transform the vague thought, “I really should work on my thesis,” into several protected hours when everyone around you is quietly doing exactly that.
More than just productivity
If I’m honest, increased productivity is only part of why these sessions matter to me.
The bigger gift has been the people.
After attending SUAW for over a year, I’ve now started facilitating sessions myself. Somewhere between writing sprints and coffee breaks, acquaintances became friends, and those friendships have become one of the unexpected joys of studying remotely.
Research on doctoral writing groups consistently points to benefits that extend well beyond word counts. Participants report greater confidence, stronger writing practices, increased motivation, and a genuine sense of collegiality (Aitchison & Guerin, 2014). Bailey (n.d.) similarly reflects that writing alongside researchers from entirely different disciplines revealed just how much doctoral students have in common despite studying vastly different topics.
I’ve found the same thing.
Some of my closest connections through this degree have come from people researching subjects I knew nothing about before we met. Our disciplines are different. Our methodologies are different. Even our universities are different. Yet week after week, we sit quietly together, cameras on or off, microphones muted, all trying to wrestle another few hundred words onto the page.
It reminds me a little of a mushroom ecosystem, where the mushrooms themselves are only the visible fruiting bodies of an enormous underground mycelial network quietly connecting life beneath the surface. From the outside, every HDR student can appear wonderfully independent, each working alone at their own desk. But underneath runs something much richer: encouragement, accountability, shared experience, advice, kindness, and the quiet reassurance that someone else understands exactly what today feels like.
Perhaps research communities have been mycelial all along. We just don’t notice the threads until they’ve quietly held us up. I’ve become rather fond of fungi as a metaphor for research life. They have far more to teach us about collaboration, resilience, and community than most people realise, but that story is in another post on this blog.
Virtual hugs
One small tradition that’s grown from these sessions is something a few of us affectionately call the virtual hug.
It’s nothing more than a quick message at the end of a difficult writing session, or someone typing sending hugs after another researcher admits that a chapter has fallen apart. Sometimes it’s an encouraging GIF. Sometimes it’s a row of heart emojis. Sometimes it’s simply someone saying, You’ve got this.
It sounds like a tiny thing, and I suppose it is.
But tiny things have a remarkable habit of growing.
A mushroom would probably call them spores, small enough to overlook, yet somehow capable of creating an entire network. One kind message offered at exactly the right moment has a way of lingering, and before long, you find yourself passing that same kindness on to someone else.
It’s funny how care adapts to its environment. Take away the shared office, the hallway conversations, or the reassuring shoulder squeeze after a difficult supervision meeting, and it simply finds another route. Apparently, compassion has excellent broadband.
A virtual hug can’t replace being there in person. But it fills the gap just enough to remind you that someone on the other side of the screen genuinely cares about how your writing and your week are going.
More than writing together
Looking back, I think that’s ultimately what SUAW and Bootcamps have given me.
Not just structure.
Not just accountability.
People.
In a degree that can otherwise be solitary by design, especially when you’re studying remotely, they’ve reminded me that I’m part of a much larger research community, not simply someone sitting alone in a room hoping a thesis will eventually write itself.
It turns out the antidote to isolation was never going to be more discipline.
It was other people, quietly writing beside me.
Invisible doesn’t mean disconnected. Sometimes the strongest networks are the ones quietly growing beneath our feet.
References
Aitchison, C., & Guerin, C. (Eds.). (2014). Writing groups for doctoral education and beyond: Innovations in practice and theory. Routledge.
Bailey, S. (n.d.). The benefits of writing sessions. Birmingham City University. https://www.bcu.ac.uk/research/our-phds/phd-blogs/the-benefits-of-writing-sessions
Patria, B., & Laili, L. (2021). Writing group program reduces academic procrastination: A quasi-experimental study. BMC Psychology, 9(1), 164. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-021-00665-9
The Conversation. (2018). The rise of writing events gives PhD students the support often lacking in universities.
UCL PhD Journeys. (n.d.). Writing retreats and groups.
Writing, PhD on Track. (n.d.). Writing.
Michelle Vokal is a Master of Philosophy (Media, Culture and Creative Arts) student at Curtin University.
Please make any anonymous comments/ feedback, or suggestions for further posts at this link. If you would like to get in touch or write a post for the Ideas Hub blog, please email karen.miller@curtin.edu.au. Contributions from HDR students are welcome!
Image by Kanyaphat Studio from Adobe Stock Images.