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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
When in … Siena
So I wrote in my last post about the opportunities you get as a PhD student and how your life is unlikely to ever be so flexible again, so I thought I would use this post to tell you all about one of the opportunities I’m currently making the most of. Right now I’m in […]
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 Student Commuter: Episode 2
It’s been a long time since I wrote anything about my commuting life, in fact it was my first ever post on the student blogs site. So how does commuting to Leicester every day feel now, nearly one year on? Mostly it’s fine and definitely my preferred option for travel into Leicester, for anyone about to […]
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 […]
“No I don’t have a Masters”
It’s pretty normal to be asked as a PhD student where you did your Masters degree. I however didn’t do one, and this seems to come as a shock to most people (probably because a lot of the people asking are Master’s students), but no I didn’t do one. So how am I here in […]
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