Things just got real

As I accompanied my wife on her conference excursion and to her conference dinner in Queenstown earlier this week, I was introduced to a number of folks.  When the conversation turned to myself and what I did, I explained that I was a PhD student.  At this point, without fail, the next two questions were always "What do you study?" and "How far along are you?"  The question of when I'll finish my thesis always made me smile as this is the typical question of a PhD student and the inspiration for the name of my blog.

Today is the 1st of August and is hopefully the start of the last year of my PhD as I plan to submit my thesis for examination on the morning of 31 July, 2015.  For motivation I've added a timer widget onto the blog to remind me of the precious time remaining.

Now, in no way am I in a rush to complete my thesis; and why would I?  This is a point in my career where I get to ask and answer questions that I want to explore.  Not only do I get to expand my understand of physics, soft matter and magnetic resonance techniques, but I am also free to explore new tools and methodologies to perform my research.

That said, my scholarship will not last forever and at some point I need to move along to a new set of challenges.  Thus my focus on submitting next year.  Time is my most precious resource and I need to keep that fact in mind over the next 12 months as I plan and prioritise my work.

Meetings

As a PhD student, my primary focus is research.  As such, you'd think that my days would be spent working in the lab, analysing data or writing publications.  However, as a junior academic in training I've sought out opportunities to become involved with various parts of the university community.  At times this includes helping with the undergraduate programmes as a demonstrator in the physics teaching labs and at other times, this means acting as a postgraduate representative to various university boards and committees.

For most of my PhD studies I have been involved with the Postgraduate Students' Association (PGSA), first as a representative on the Faculty of Graduate Research Board and more recently as a member of the Association's Executive Board (including my current term as President).  With these positions comes the task of attending meetings around campus and today my afternoon was dedicated to two such gatherings.

During my broken up half day in the lab I split my time between strategic planning of my thesis/research plans and some hardware programming.  More on these in the future!

Preparing a CV with Latex

When I joined my current lab group I experienced a complete shake-up of my computing/software universe.

Back when I moved to Wellington in 2012, I wouldn't have considered myself a computer guru, but I did feel relatively comfortable with a computer.  On my first day in the lab, I was settling into my new desk and setting up my university computer.  Now I can't recall all the details, but I remember asking my supervisor (Petrik) about getting a copy of Endnote (a reference management program) and it was at this point I was taken aside and informed that everyone in the lab used a Linux operating system and ran open source software.

Despite my utter lack of experience with computer programming, I threw myself at the opportunity to learn some new skills.  As I came to learn, instead of using a document publishing programming (e.g. Microsoft Word) my new colleagues coded and compiled text files using Latex.  Latex is a digital typesetting system where the user inputs their desired text and (based on options in the code) all the formatting is performed when the final document is generated.  The key point being that the user doesn't "fiddle" with the look of the document.

I've always wanted to make an updated CV in Latex, but I couldn't find a template I liked and I lacked the time to build one from scratch.  For fun this weekend, I finally sat down and built my academic CV in Latex.

I wanted to share the final document and the code on the blog, but first I had to figure out how to host files for download.  For now, the solution I've come up with is to use a shared Google Drive folder.

Here's the PDF of my current CV and the source code (TEX and BIB).

Here we go...

... let's get started.  My name is Tim Brox and I am a PhD student working on his PhD in physics at Victoria University of Wellington.  As of today, it has been 872 days since I officially began my studies in New Zealand and I plan to submit my thesis within 365 days (± 1 year)*.

This blog is my attempt at monitoring and recording my progress over the next year as I work towards submitting my thesis for examination.  I apologise if at any point you (the reader) feel that my posts do not have a mass appeal, but honestly this blog is primarily a tool for myself.  That said, I welcome you to join me over the next year and share in the ups and downs of the next 365(-ish) days.

For those of you who know me, you are most likely aware of my poor track record when it comes to maintaining a blog.  In the past I've maintained a blog (Words from the Field) while performing field work in Antarctica, but there was only a total of maybe a dozen posts.  Also, when my wife and I moved to New Zealand to undertake our PhD studies, we started a blog (Hither and Yon) to describe our life in a foreign country.  However, I have contributed only a handful of posts while my wife does a fantastic job at documenting our adventures.  Despite these past failures, my goal over the next year is to reliably post every day.

To reach my post per day quota, my updates will mostly be quick and simple. Keeping to that plan, let's pause the writing here. To be continued...

* As a physical scientist I like to include an estimate of uncertainty in values I report