Week in review: 24-30 August

It's strange the calm I've experienced this week.  With my work in the lab ramping up, a presentation in Auckland next week, numerous upcoming PGSA events and a thesis deadline that inches closer each day, this past week I've found myself cruising along comfortably.

Surprisingly, I've easily woken up and arrived at work as early, if not earlier, than my experiment from a couple weeks ago when I tried to add a couple hours to the start of my day.

Despite knowing how much work I have to do, everyday this week I left work at a reasonable hour, without having to be persuaded or pulled away from my desk.

This all seems bizarre as I have plenty of reasons to panic and should probably be manically working every hour of the day... but I am not.

Even with last minute changes to my schedule, like judging science fair on Thursday, I've kept my course.

All I can conclude is that pressure keeps me on track.  On reflection now, the concept does not seem that ridiculous, but I am curious to understand this seemingly delicate balance between productivity and stress.

Satisfied exhaustion

Today I focused on preparing my slides for next Monday's MacDiarmid Institute meeting.  In the afternoon our research group got together to run through everyone's presentations.  As I've been having too much fun this week with experiments and business outside the lab, my talk was not complete.  I ran through my presentation (for the first time) with a number of images missing, but overall I received some great advice from my supervisor and fellow students.  Unfortunately this means tomorrow (my Saturday) will be spent fixing up (and finishing) the document.

Hot seat!

Today was a flurry of action and I think I only logged a total of 60 minutes or so in the lab.  As soon as I arrived at work I helped to judge science fair projects at the Wellington Regional competition.  As I was only available in the morning, I spoke with year 7 students and I was very impressed with the quality of all the entries I saw.  I excused myself from the science fair just before noon to head off and prepare for a PGSA BBQ.  We had beautiful weather today, a perfect setting for a BBQ lunch.  Once the last sausage was served and the final veggie burger was eaten we had fed well over 100 postgraduate students.  After cleaning up I met with a few members of the PGSA to discuss plans for our upcoming 3MT competition, before returning to my office.  I only had a couple minutes at my desk because this afternoon our school hosted a "Dangling Bonds" session which offered non-chemists and non-physicists (from within and outside of the University) the opportunity to learn about the specialities and capabilities of the labs at Victoria, in the hopes of sparking collaborations.

Overall it was a thrilling day with numerous opportunities to meet new people.  Although I was kept from my work, in a way it was nice to have all these events on one day instead of each event carving up time throughout my week.

Plugging along

Today was another great day in the lab.  I am getting to spend heaps of time on my work; slowly, but surely making progress.  Although I haven't started my slides for next week's presentation.

This afternoon I met with another member of the PGSA Executive Board to discuss plans for transitioning to a new leadership after our AGM in October.

Much improved

After yesterday's doldrums, I headed into school ready to attack my work.  I got off to a slow start spending the first half of my morning writing an editorial for this month's PGSA newsletter.  Before lunch I also had a quick sit down with my supervisor regarding our talks for the workshop in Germany and spent some time working on my latest homebuilt instrument (I know I speak in vague terms, but yes this is the same device I've been working on for the past couple months).  I made great, but slow, progress in commissioning my new machine; making some tweaks to code and electrical connections along the way.  Later in the afternoon I helped staff a PGSA table at a PhD orientation session. After the successes of today, my attitude and outlook has much improved from yesterday.

Helpless feeling

I know I am constantly mentioning how difficult Mondays are due to my commitments around Wellington and today was no exception.  Today was typical in the sense I ran to one meeting and afterwards had an hour or so before I had to leave campus. I did get my user interface to a usable point (hopefully tomorrow I put it into practice), I took some measurements on an instrument outside our lab and I managed to order some materials.

Despite the busy schedule and my attempt at making some progress, overall I felt (and still feel) overwhelmed by the amount of work I currently have queued.  What makes it worse is because there's little, if any, time on Monday to get things done it feels as if I am at a standstill.  It's one thing to worry about your workload, but it's far worse to worry about your workload and watch a whole day pass when you make no progress.

Week in advance: 24-30 August

A week from tomorrow, 1 September, I will be in Auckland for a MacDiarmid Institute theme meeting (for those of you interested, our research group is part of the "Bionano/Nanobio and Soft Matter" theme) where I'll be giving a talk on my work to date.  Also, it looks like in October I will be headed to a one day workshop in Germany where again I'll give a talk on our group's recent progress.

In preparation of these engagements, my goal this week is to do as much work as possible.  Hummm, that sounds like what you say every week Tim!?  I guess that's true, but the point is this week no gimmicks.  This week truely needs to be all about productivity.

Pour on the fact that the PGSA is hosting a BBQ this week and gearing up for out annual 3MT competition (which is looking to be the biggest ever!).  Also I am helping (briefly) with a new PhD student orientation and will have my day to day email/meeting obligations. Between a group meeting tomorrow morning and volunteering in the afternoon, my Monday is pretty much a wash for lab work.  And on Friday I am scheduled to give a talk to the group, which will partially be a practise for my Auckland talk.

This is a great opportunity to try and put the lessons learned in previous weeks to work.  An experiment where the stakes are high.  Excellent!