Thursday, February 19, 2015
Sick day
Today I wasn't feeling well and didn't make it out of the house. With some rest at home today, I hope to get back to work tomorrow.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Pastoral care
So today's post title comes directly from my supervisor. No he's not becoming a contributor to the blog, but this was his description of a talk we had this afternoon. I am 6 months away from submitting my thesis and I have moments where I seriously question the value of my work. I won't call this interaction with my supervisor a "pep talk," because that's not what I was looking for, it was more of a "logic and reality talk". It's his opinion that all (most?) students have similar feelings and that these feelings arise in particular when the thesis is in an early stage. Following one of my prime reasons for writing this blog (i.e. helping other students), I want to make very clear that it's normal (and typical) to question your work. Now I suppose there's always a chance that these feelings are warranted and in these cases it's important to take inventory of research, in particular why you did what you have done and what do you take from your work. With proper supervision, I would be very surprised if 6 months before submitting your thesis, you realise there was no rational reason for your work or that after a few years you have absolutely no results to discuss (remember even a null result is a result!). Speaking with my supervisor didn't make my apprehension go away entirely, but it was extremely help to talk about my concerns.
Before having the aforementioned crisis of confidence, I was able to write uninterrupted for two hours and drafted a couple sections for my thesis. For the rest of the day I worked in the lab setting up for future experiments and took a couple trips to the mechanical workshop to troubleshoot some issues with the hardware that will go overseas with me in April.
Before having the aforementioned crisis of confidence, I was able to write uninterrupted for two hours and drafted a couple sections for my thesis. For the rest of the day I worked in the lab setting up for future experiments and took a couple trips to the mechanical workshop to troubleshoot some issues with the hardware that will go overseas with me in April.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Bits
Today I worked on small jobs, including updating my thesis references (this was my writing task for the day), searching literature, reading, and trying to get a parcel through customs. While all these tasks needed to be done, my schedule was a little erratic. I didn't block off specific hours for either writing or reading and as a result I drifted between jobs.
Monday, February 16, 2015
A place to start
During my morning at work I focused on outlining my thesis. Not only does this exercise help my thesis take form, but gets me thinking about all the background literature I need to pull together and all the experiments I have run or need to run.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Week in advance: 15-21 February
... and a few words from last week's conference.
Before jumping into my plans for this week, I had just a couple thoughts from my conference last week in sunny Nelson (although I spent most of the week in conference rooms). First off I gave a talk and while I have a number of personal rules for how to prepare a conference presentation I have decided not to go into detail. The strategy I use to layout slides and time my speaking may not work for others and rather than claim to have perfected the art of conference speaking, I'll leave it to the reader to form an approach that works for them. However, I will say that practicing your talk is an absolute must. There is no leeway here, it is essential that you rehearse your presentation well in advance. And remember this takes time... a 15 minute time slot (about a 12 minute talk leaving room for questions) will take over an hour just for 4-5 dry runs. Be prepared to commit serious blocks of time to practicing. Personally I memorise my entire presentation. I am of the mind that a presenter needs to know what their next slide says, before they click to it; it's easy to waste a minute plus if you have to "review" the contents of each slide as it goes up, not to mention how disjointed your talk becomes. Practice. It's not an option.
Another quick thought from the conference, and this is really just to throw it out there, I typically walk away from a day's worth of talks with my head spinning. While I enjoy hearing about other research, most talks go over my head. As a PhD student you are an extremely early career researcher and you focus much of your energy into one or two topics. With that background, you can expect to keep up with every talk at a conference (at least I don't think so). Try to take as much from the sessions as possible, but don't feel as if you are the only one not following the speaker's talk.
Now moving on to this week...
I plan to keep up my two hour a day writing strategy, this seems to have worked in weeks past. Additionally, this week I plan to sequester myself in the library (or similar isolated zone) to spent some serious time reading. Ideally the reading, processing and writing will become a closed loop where one leads into the next. Finally each day I'll spend time in the lab working on experiments, coding and design (ultimately just keeping projects moving forward); the key here will be prioritising my work so that this time does eat into my reading/writing sessions.
Before jumping into my plans for this week, I had just a couple thoughts from my conference last week in sunny Nelson (although I spent most of the week in conference rooms). First off I gave a talk and while I have a number of personal rules for how to prepare a conference presentation I have decided not to go into detail. The strategy I use to layout slides and time my speaking may not work for others and rather than claim to have perfected the art of conference speaking, I'll leave it to the reader to form an approach that works for them. However, I will say that practicing your talk is an absolute must. There is no leeway here, it is essential that you rehearse your presentation well in advance. And remember this takes time... a 15 minute time slot (about a 12 minute talk leaving room for questions) will take over an hour just for 4-5 dry runs. Be prepared to commit serious blocks of time to practicing. Personally I memorise my entire presentation. I am of the mind that a presenter needs to know what their next slide says, before they click to it; it's easy to waste a minute plus if you have to "review" the contents of each slide as it goes up, not to mention how disjointed your talk becomes. Practice. It's not an option.
Another quick thought from the conference, and this is really just to throw it out there, I typically walk away from a day's worth of talks with my head spinning. While I enjoy hearing about other research, most talks go over my head. As a PhD student you are an extremely early career researcher and you focus much of your energy into one or two topics. With that background, you can expect to keep up with every talk at a conference (at least I don't think so). Try to take as much from the sessions as possible, but don't feel as if you are the only one not following the speaker's talk.
Now moving on to this week...
I plan to keep up my two hour a day writing strategy, this seems to have worked in weeks past. Additionally, this week I plan to sequester myself in the library (or similar isolated zone) to spent some serious time reading. Ideally the reading, processing and writing will become a closed loop where one leads into the next. Finally each day I'll spend time in the lab working on experiments, coding and design (ultimately just keeping projects moving forward); the key here will be prioritising my work so that this time does eat into my reading/writing sessions.
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Week in advance: 8-14 February
This week I am in Nelson to attend the AMN-7 conference. I will be giving a talk at the end of the week and in the meantime there are a number of folks I wish to catch-up with and numerous talks to take in. Being on the road and away from school (and my "regular" routine) I do not plan to make regular posts. I will return at the end of the week with comments from my experience.
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Week in review: 1-7 February
With a public holiday and half day on Monday, this past week went by rather quickly. I was able to submit my prints to the machine shop and sort out materials/follow questions. The rest of my time was dedicated to analysing data, writing software for said analysis and placing the results in slides for a conference next week.
I was able to start a dedicated writing time and I followed through each morning. It only took two days before my supervisor was apologising for interrupting me during this time. My other hope this week was to review a paper a day in preparation of adding references to my thesis, however, I didn't follow through with this plan.
Even though I have a few jobs queued up in the lab, I spent most (all) of my time this week at the computer somewhere between a Python script, my thesis, a grant proposal and a slide presentation. I would assume this will become more of the trend as I move full swing into my thesis preparation. However, there still are experiments to run in the lab and I'll need to carefully plan my time and prioritise to make sure I am working on the most crucial job.
I was able to start a dedicated writing time and I followed through each morning. It only took two days before my supervisor was apologising for interrupting me during this time. My other hope this week was to review a paper a day in preparation of adding references to my thesis, however, I didn't follow through with this plan.
Even though I have a few jobs queued up in the lab, I spent most (all) of my time this week at the computer somewhere between a Python script, my thesis, a grant proposal and a slide presentation. I would assume this will become more of the trend as I move full swing into my thesis preparation. However, there still are experiments to run in the lab and I'll need to carefully plan my time and prioritise to make sure I am working on the most crucial job.
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