Maintaining Emotional Wellbeing for Doctoral Students: Indonesian Students’ Mechanism of Thinking Out Loud

Abstract

This study explores thinking out loud, a mechanism used by Indonesian doctoral students to maintain their emotional wellbeing while coping with PhD hurdles in Australian universities. An open-ended questionnaire was sent to 13 PhD students. Eight of these students shared their views and experiences about (1) the challenges they face as international doctoral students that impact their productivity in thesis writing, (2) their strategies to maintain their emotional wellbeing, and (3) the mechanism of thinking out loud that assists them in their writing. Thinking out loud was done independently by verbalising or symbolising their thinking in the form of a mind map, popular articles, and creative works such as fiction stories, poems, and doodling. The mind map was kept for private use, while articles and some of the creative works were shared publicly in newspapers and on social media. In this chapter I, therefore, demonstrate that thinking out loud can be an effective strategy for doctoral students to maintain their emotional wellbeing during their studies.