The Brilliant Club Update
I’ve written about the Brilliant Club before in a couple of different posts, you can find them here and here, so I thought I would post an update now that the spring placements have arrived. My first placement with the Brilliant Club, working with Yr12 students last summer, was daunting but massively rewarding, and I knew that I was […]
Jobs for life
Dear Royal Society, I recently read the THE article covering your report that discusses how we PhD students believe we’re walking into “a job for life” by gaining a PhD. I can only personally speak for my discipline, biological sciences, however judging by comments on Twitter and on the article itself I think I’m being […]
While the Undergrads are away…
So today is the last day of term for the undergrads but University life goes on for the rest of us, admittedly much more quietly, but still we’re here working away. I’ll be here for another week and then I’ve booked off 2 weeks for Christmas. I’m only actually using 2 days of annual leave (of the 24/year […]
Training courses
We all have our demons, and one of mine is stats. Stat’s is not my strong point and I was criticised for the lack of statitical analysis included in my probation report at the end of my first year. I actually think this is quite a good thing, I wasn’t criticised for any of the fundamental […]
My first student
We often get undergraduate students coming into the lab to complete their final year projects. These students are assigned to an academic supervisor who then in turn will assign one of their PhD students or post-docs to be the students supervisor in the lab. Now that I’m in my second year I’ve been assigned my […]
Improving the probation process
I think it’s important for everyone to know that the Graduate School are constantly re-evaluating things with the aim of improving the PhD process. How do I know? I know because I recently went to a meeting with Brett from the Graduate School and about 10 other PhD students who have just completed the first […]
Standing up for Science Media Workshop
Last Friday I attended the Sense about Science (@SenseaboutSci) and Voice of Young Science (@Voiceofyoungsci) media workshop. Sense about Science is a charity that promotes good science and VoYS is their branch designed for people like you and I – Young Scientists, they want to teach us how to stand up and have a voice, […]
Germany
So after last weeks post about not working weekends I actually flew off on Saturday evening to Germany for a 2 day, Sunday-Monday, conference in Göttingen. I think this is a little different to the kind of work I discussed in my last post though, this is a exception not the rule. I think my boyfriend […]
Working 9-5
What a way to make a living … a lot of the time PhD’s and also academic jobs are portrayed as having very long hours, essentially we are worked to the bone for not a lot of money, but is this really true? Do we have to work long hours or risk not achieving our goals? […]
The Probation Review
This post comes to you from the deep dark depths of the first year report. OK that’s mildly dramatic, the process isn’t actually too bad at all. I’m >5,000 words down (of ~8,000) and I’ve finished my methods, results and discussion and have made a dent on the introduction. I was originally planning quite an […]
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