PhD admin
With the new academic year just around the corner I thought I’d write a little about what’s expected of PhD students as we transition from one year to the next. Obviously for us this is a very different process to Undergraduate students. We don’t sit exams (although we are assessed) and we don’t receive marks […]
The elusive work/life balance
I’ve spoken about work life balance before and how I have to work hard to maintain it. Recently the issue of overworking in research science (and by all researchers, STEM or otherwise) has been brought up due to a recently published article on the Science website called “Getting noticed is half the battle”, it was […]
Cafe Research
Cafe research is an event put on by the graduate school for research students to socialise and informally present their work, there’s also free pizza and wine to help get us in the door! The most recent one was the first I’ve been to and I’ll admit the main reason I went was because I […]
So I’m probably not going to be a journalist
In December an event was organised by the Leicester Learning Institute giving PGR’s the opportunity to have a session with an experienced journalist. Journalism has always intrigued me so I signed up straight away and was lucky enough to get one of the limited spaces. All the spaces were taken very quickly so there’s clearly a demand from […]
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 […]
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