Well Hello There

In a possibly ill-advised move, I have decided to re-activate this blog in the middle of what may well be the busiest period of my life (also known as the third year of my PhD). We shall see how long this good intention lasts. In the meantime, look forward to more dispatches from the life of a PhD student.

Warning: May include occasional desperation-fuelled late-night ramblings.

On Learning When To Shut Up

You know what phrase I'm beginning to dread? It's "Oh, so you're saying that...". Nine times out of ten, I'm not actually saying that. Or if I was saying that, I was merely speculating.

Example:

Me: This is not giving the result I expected. I observed effect Y, so maybe it's due to Z.
Person X: Oh, so you're saying that [slight rephrasing of Z] is causing the problem.

No, I'm not stating an absolute, as indicated by my use of the word "maybe". I'm putting forward a hypothesis, which is what you do in science. But I don't appreciate you nailing me down on that hypothesis before I have even investigated it.

Maybe (just a hypothesis!) the problem is with me. These are (for the most part) busy people I'm talking to, and maybe they can't afford to spend that much time speculating anymore. So when I'm coming up with a hypothesis, they just assume I wouldn't be telling them if I hadn't already thought about it for some time.

In other words, do I need to learn when to shut up?

The View from the Foothills

I'm finally there. Five years of hard work, first as an undergraduate and then as a Masters student, have paid off. Last Monday, I was granted my rightful place in academia... on the lowest rung of the ladder.

Yes, PhD students are a dime a dozen, even in my small institute, and despite the excitement of starting research in earnest, I can't help but feel slightly apprehensive. This may just be the result of reading too many PhD comics, but a tinge of anxiety is setting in. What if my advisor turns out to be a workaholic? What if I can't finish in the required 3 1/2 years before my funding runs out? What if my office mates are insane (they're not, I think) or my experiments all fail?

Then I remember that a million students have survived their PhD just fine before me and a million will again. I may not have the prettiest office (in fact, drab is not an inaccurate description), but at least I'm not sharing with 14 other people like my flatmate. My supervisor has only been nice to me, despite the bollocking that he gave his other PhD student last week. And my project, even though it looks daunting from here, will rest on the foundations of my Masters project, meaning that I have a reasonable idea of where to start.

So, the base camp has been established in the foothills of Mt. PhD. Only the future will show if I scale the summit triumphantly, or freeze to death in a crevice somewhere. Boy, that metaphor took a bleak turn, didn't it?

Some Reading for your Easter Weekend

I can't seem to find any interesting science stories today. (Maybe everybody's taking an extended weekend off?) So instead, I decided that it was time to round up some of the blogs that I read, but don't cite here so often.

FemaleScienceProfessor

Reading FSP makes me wish that I'd had somebody like her as a lecturer in my undergraduate years, rather than a series of boring white guys. (Not you Dr. S! Nor you Professor W!) She clearly cares about her students and loves her job, always a winning combination. Plus, I find her stories about careless misogyny in academia endlessly fascinating (in a horrifying, hope-I-never-act-like-that way).

Bioinformatics Zen

Not updated very often (kind of like this blog, huh?), but when it is, the articles are always worth reading if you're interested in the nitty-gritty of bioinformatics. Anything related to the field can come up here, whether it's the intricacies of programming, tips on how to get a PhD or humorous characterisations of stereotypical bioinformatics people.

Minor Revisions

This blog is a more recent addition to my reading schedule, but a charming one. Katie gives us a glimpse into the life of a biomedical engineering postgrad, and a very personal glimpse at that. I'm always impressed with people who are willing to share their ups and downs on their blog; it's a (skill? trait? strength?) I don't seem to possess. Katie likes having lots of subscribers to her feed, so go subscribe!

Woe is PhD

So I'm looking for a PhD place. Ideally, I'd like it to be at my current university, as the other universities in the UK that are good in my field are mostly located in London, and I don't like that city much. Nor can I really afford to live there.

I'd like it to involve Bioinformatics, but not require any wetlab work that I would have to do myself. There should also be scope for applying Machine Learning techniques. There's two areas of research that interest me. One is work in genetics, such as gene regulation modelling, or protein structure and function prediction. The other is to model biological systems at the macro level and predict how changes in the environment influence animal population size or plant growth.

I could also see myself doing a straight Machine Learning project without any Bioinformatics involved, but with slightly less enthusiasm.

I'd like to have a supportive supervisor, who I can talk to before I start my PhD and who will advise me on how to write up my project proposal. He or she doesn't need to be an academic superstar, but a fair number of puplications and at least some amount of recognition in either Bioinformatics or Machine Learning would not go amiss.

I'd like to get the chance to teach during my PhD, either tutorials or even lectures.

A scholarship would be helpful. If I don't get one, my parents could help, but I'd like to be able to support myself for once.

And tomorrow, I will meet with a potential supervisor who might be able to offer the place that has most of these characteristics. (I'm not sure about the teaching yet.) Fingers crossed!