I often ask myself this question; exactly why am I here?
I left a good job with good prospects to come and research here, why. The main reason is that I really like to do my own research.
When I took the funding for this PhD the title that had been proposed was to research into materials that could be used for television screens in the future: much more than that, the TV screens would be flexible and see-through when not switched on. It is like something out of minority report.
I spent my days in an office writing out safety cases for nuclear installations; the prospect of doing this research work was just too good to turn down.
However, a short way through my PhD I produced a thin film which (hopefully) kills MRSA and c. diff. which if you read the news are taking lives in hospitals around the world daily. The film is also durable and stable and cheap to make. For me this technology is far more important than the see-through TV screen technology, but I guess that depends on who you are and the way you look at it.
I'm just happy that I have the choice to decide which way my research goes and that hopefully sometime in the future lives may be saved because of the work I am undertaking now.
The second reason is that I would really like to teach University Students in the future. If an undergraduate degree is a license to get a job in the field then a PhD is effectively a license to teach those students. I have already had a taste of teaching and I loved it and hopefully completing this PhD will allow me to teach more often.
27 March 2008
16 January 2008
Being Assessed
It has been a while since I blogged last but I do have a good excuse.
It is time for my interim assessment!!!
As you probably guessed this marks the half way point in my PhD, or at least it is supposed to - recently the EPSRC (the European Union's science and engineering research arm) decided that a PhD is now 3 and a half years long; however this takes time to filter down to the Universities and so I am having my half way review at just 16 months in.
Anyway...less of the moaning, it's not usually in my nature. The interim assessment is a 4000 word report on what I have done so far, it sounds great - 4000 words is only 16 pages (perhaps more because science is mainly about pretty pictures believe it or not) - but try fitting everything you have done for 16 months into a 4000 word report.
The reason this has taken up a lot of my time is two-fold, the first reason is that I really want to do a great job and pass first time so that I can go on and into the second half of my PhD. The second reason is that I am slightly disorganised (maybe slightly more than slightly), I have bits of paper everywhere, I have files strewn across my computer in a much more disorganised fashion than I could ever have on my desk.
Of course I started the PhD with the best of intentions, my desk would be clean and tidy with folders for each run of experiments and associated articles, I set my computer up so that there were also folders for everything under the sun. Within about three months this had gone to the wall.
I was thinking about this and realised that the interim assessment (while a bit of a pain) is actually designed to bring all of these bits and pieces together and help the student to go into the second half prepared with all of their first year work in an order which makes them more efficient. Also the feedback on the report is valuable to ascertain whether it is going in the right direction.
I now have my random bits of paper filed away and the Word documents are packed away in computer folders all ready for me to mess up again over the next 16 months.
It is time for my interim assessment!!!
As you probably guessed this marks the half way point in my PhD, or at least it is supposed to - recently the EPSRC (the European Union's science and engineering research arm) decided that a PhD is now 3 and a half years long; however this takes time to filter down to the Universities and so I am having my half way review at just 16 months in.
Anyway...less of the moaning, it's not usually in my nature. The interim assessment is a 4000 word report on what I have done so far, it sounds great - 4000 words is only 16 pages (perhaps more because science is mainly about pretty pictures believe it or not) - but try fitting everything you have done for 16 months into a 4000 word report.
The reason this has taken up a lot of my time is two-fold, the first reason is that I really want to do a great job and pass first time so that I can go on and into the second half of my PhD. The second reason is that I am slightly disorganised (maybe slightly more than slightly), I have bits of paper everywhere, I have files strewn across my computer in a much more disorganised fashion than I could ever have on my desk.
Of course I started the PhD with the best of intentions, my desk would be clean and tidy with folders for each run of experiments and associated articles, I set my computer up so that there were also folders for everything under the sun. Within about three months this had gone to the wall.
I was thinking about this and realised that the interim assessment (while a bit of a pain) is actually designed to bring all of these bits and pieces together and help the student to go into the second half prepared with all of their first year work in an order which makes them more efficient. Also the feedback on the report is valuable to ascertain whether it is going in the right direction.
I now have my random bits of paper filed away and the Word documents are packed away in computer folders all ready for me to mess up again over the next 16 months.
28 November 2007
Renovating houses
As a PhD student there are a great many ways to take advantage of the flexible working hours. My way has been to renovate houses in my spare time.
I know people who tinker with cars, watch daytime TV or even lecture in their spare time; provided they put the amount of work in that they are happy with, they can do the work at any time of the day they want.
I chose to renovate houses as this was what I was doing before I started the PhD in the evenings and weekends. I then realised that if I wasn't feeling up to it on a Saturday perhaps then I could do some work on my PhD instead and maybe do some work on the house on a Wednesday instead. It is great being this flexible; especially as many jobs have to be done in the week, mainly waiting for things to be delivered such as washing machines and RSJs.
Doctors appointments are also very easy as you manage your own time so whatever time you spend on something else you can just make up for later. There are some people who can't do this, mainly the daytime TV watchers that I mentioned above, who put off work on their PhD and then put it off some more and maybe a little bit more, until they find themselves a year behind.
Thankfully going into the studentship with my eyes open helped a lot, knowing that this was a pitfall where many people fail meant that I could try to avoid this. I can't say it has been an easy ride and I have found myself behind at times but I have managed to catch up and keep up with my plan.
I know people who tinker with cars, watch daytime TV or even lecture in their spare time; provided they put the amount of work in that they are happy with, they can do the work at any time of the day they want.
I chose to renovate houses as this was what I was doing before I started the PhD in the evenings and weekends. I then realised that if I wasn't feeling up to it on a Saturday perhaps then I could do some work on my PhD instead and maybe do some work on the house on a Wednesday instead. It is great being this flexible; especially as many jobs have to be done in the week, mainly waiting for things to be delivered such as washing machines and RSJs.
Doctors appointments are also very easy as you manage your own time so whatever time you spend on something else you can just make up for later. There are some people who can't do this, mainly the daytime TV watchers that I mentioned above, who put off work on their PhD and then put it off some more and maybe a little bit more, until they find themselves a year behind.
Thankfully going into the studentship with my eyes open helped a lot, knowing that this was a pitfall where many people fail meant that I could try to avoid this. I can't say it has been an easy ride and I have found myself behind at times but I have managed to catch up and keep up with my plan.
6 November 2007
University Challenge
Here at the University the staff have very good ways of contacting students. The most obvious is email but there are also sms messages, facebook groups and good old fashioned mail; thankfully, they can't send letters to your parents. Perhaps the most innovative, and sometimes annoying is message of the day.
Message of the day is a pop-up that shows up whenever you start up a computer at the University. It is a list of all the goings-on and any information that staff want to pass to students. It is here that I saw the line:
"Do you want to take part in University Challenge?"
Why not I thought. I clicked on the link and it told me to go to the students' union that afternoon.
I had heard about the University Challenge heats at other Universities; you have to answer questions against around forty other people who will eventually be whittled down to the final four with one substitute. If I can just make it into the final four then I'll be happy, even if we don't end up on telly.
I turned up at the students' union to find a room with five other people inside, one of whom was asking the questions. The other four students were mainly based around Engineering and History and were undergraduates - who would answer the questions on classical music and biology that they seem to so frequently ask.
The heats were made up of 25 questions which were supposed to be University Challenge style - and they were relatively hard questions such as:
which four countries make up BRIC?
what post-impressionist technique was used by Seurat?
But the hardest question by a long way was:
what were the full names of the children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
Not surprisingly, I managed to get into the team. With only five people it was not hard to get into a team of five but I was slightly surprised that I got into the four that would be going to audition for the televised show.
We heard from Granada Studios a few weeks later, which we thought was strange as the show is on BBC2. Apparently they make it though. It is lucky because Granada Studios is practically in Salford, being situated on the Manchester side of the River Irwell. Granada wanted us to turn up at their studios for a qualifying round, there are 240 teams invited to this stage and only 28 can make it through to the televised rounds.
We turned up 15 minutes early and were treated very well by Granada, well we were potentially guests on one of their shows. We were invited up to see the producer of the show and on the way saw another team being led away from their interview; we gave them the obligatory evil-eyes and were then shown in to our audition.
It all started very well, the producer received her degree from Salford University and hadn't had a team for four years audition from Salford. The question setter for the programme was also there and he put on a tape of actual questions which we had to answer individually and our scores would be put together to see how strong we are.
The questions were very hard, we were warned of that before we started, much harder than the first rounds of the actual televised show and only seven seconds to write down the answer for each one and move onto the next one. I don't remember much about the questions but one I think I remember goes like this:
If an object has a rest mass of 1kg what mass does it have at 2/3 of the speed of light?
Seven seconds! More like seven minutes. I think we did OK though between us we were quite confident of the answers for most of the questions when we went through it afterwards. It was at the end of the audition that the producer said something that we did not want to here.
It is true that the University has an incredibly diverse range of cultures and that the gender split is pretty equal, it just happened that the four of us read the message on that particular day. We still maintain that it was positive discrimination which kept us out of the competition and not poor knowledge, but I guess we'll never know.
Message of the day is a pop-up that shows up whenever you start up a computer at the University. It is a list of all the goings-on and any information that staff want to pass to students. It is here that I saw the line:
"Do you want to take part in University Challenge?"
Why not I thought. I clicked on the link and it told me to go to the students' union that afternoon.
I had heard about the University Challenge heats at other Universities; you have to answer questions against around forty other people who will eventually be whittled down to the final four with one substitute. If I can just make it into the final four then I'll be happy, even if we don't end up on telly.
I turned up at the students' union to find a room with five other people inside, one of whom was asking the questions. The other four students were mainly based around Engineering and History and were undergraduates - who would answer the questions on classical music and biology that they seem to so frequently ask.
The heats were made up of 25 questions which were supposed to be University Challenge style - and they were relatively hard questions such as:
which four countries make up BRIC?
what post-impressionist technique was used by Seurat?
But the hardest question by a long way was:
what were the full names of the children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
Not surprisingly, I managed to get into the team. With only five people it was not hard to get into a team of five but I was slightly surprised that I got into the four that would be going to audition for the televised show.
We heard from Granada Studios a few weeks later, which we thought was strange as the show is on BBC2. Apparently they make it though. It is lucky because Granada Studios is practically in Salford, being situated on the Manchester side of the River Irwell. Granada wanted us to turn up at their studios for a qualifying round, there are 240 teams invited to this stage and only 28 can make it through to the televised rounds.
We turned up 15 minutes early and were treated very well by Granada, well we were potentially guests on one of their shows. We were invited up to see the producer of the show and on the way saw another team being led away from their interview; we gave them the obligatory evil-eyes and were then shown in to our audition.
It all started very well, the producer received her degree from Salford University and hadn't had a team for four years audition from Salford. The question setter for the programme was also there and he put on a tape of actual questions which we had to answer individually and our scores would be put together to see how strong we are.
The questions were very hard, we were warned of that before we started, much harder than the first rounds of the actual televised show and only seven seconds to write down the answer for each one and move onto the next one. I don't remember much about the questions but one I think I remember goes like this:
If an object has a rest mass of 1kg what mass does it have at 2/3 of the speed of light?
Seven seconds! More like seven minutes. I think we did OK though between us we were quite confident of the answers for most of the questions when we went through it afterwards. It was at the end of the audition that the producer said something that we did not want to here.
"It is unfortunate that your team consists of four white males and doesn't reflect the diversity that is present at the University of Salford"
It is true that the University has an incredibly diverse range of cultures and that the gender split is pretty equal, it just happened that the four of us read the message on that particular day. We still maintain that it was positive discrimination which kept us out of the competition and not poor knowledge, but I guess we'll never know.
8 October 2007
Rotherham
I have been reading the other blogs left by Students who are also blogging for the University of Salford. Maddie a third year radiography student who is in Finland and Alex a second year student who is currently in Warsaw. How amazing that they get to travel to the far reaches of Europe as part of their degree; I am starting to believe that I may have got the short straw when I picked my PhD because I spent last week in Rotherham.
Before someone from the Rotherham tourist board (do they have one?) gets on to me and tells me that Rotherham is a great place, I'm sure it is but it's not exactly a European capital of culture.
Anyway, the reason I was there was to visit my Industrial sponsor. Many PhDs are funded by companies and public bodies outside of the University. Mine is part funded by the European Union and part funded by Corus. This puts me in an excellent position as I get to not only use the equipment here at the University (we have some pretty neat stuff) but I also get to use the equipment at Corus (they also have some pretty neat stuff).
My trip involved taking some samples I had made here at the University on the train over to Rotherham and getting them checked out by their research team. Apart from having to get up at 5.45am it was a great commute - there are not too many people out at that time.
Because they are an industrial research group they have very different analysis equipment to the equipment we have here and it also works much faster. The results were stunning in just two days I had learnt how to use most of the kit there and I had plenty of results to take back to the University and digest. The same work would have taken two weeks at the University. This is not because the University's equipment is not as good, we just have it for very different reasons and speed is not one of them.
The staff at Corus were very good and made me feel like part of the team for the couple of days that I was there, they also pay all transport costs which is excellent. I am booked in to go back just before Christmas so I am now busy creating more work to take with me.
Before someone from the Rotherham tourist board (do they have one?) gets on to me and tells me that Rotherham is a great place, I'm sure it is but it's not exactly a European capital of culture.
Anyway, the reason I was there was to visit my Industrial sponsor. Many PhDs are funded by companies and public bodies outside of the University. Mine is part funded by the European Union and part funded by Corus. This puts me in an excellent position as I get to not only use the equipment here at the University (we have some pretty neat stuff) but I also get to use the equipment at Corus (they also have some pretty neat stuff).
My trip involved taking some samples I had made here at the University on the train over to Rotherham and getting them checked out by their research team. Apart from having to get up at 5.45am it was a great commute - there are not too many people out at that time.
Because they are an industrial research group they have very different analysis equipment to the equipment we have here and it also works much faster. The results were stunning in just two days I had learnt how to use most of the kit there and I had plenty of results to take back to the University and digest. The same work would have taken two weeks at the University. This is not because the University's equipment is not as good, we just have it for very different reasons and speed is not one of them.
The staff at Corus were very good and made me feel like part of the team for the couple of days that I was there, they also pay all transport costs which is excellent. I am booked in to go back just before Christmas so I am now busy creating more work to take with me.
5 October 2007
My first post
Sitting here, working out what first line could possibly start a year's worth of blogging, I have realised that it is very much like when I sat in the same chair working out what possible first line could start my PhD thesis.
It was at this point that someone mentioned to me that you always start from the middle of a thesis and work backwards and forwards at the same time. It seemed like a strange concept at first but I gave it a go, meaning that my first line read something like "the graph below proves that the initial hypothesis of a proportional relationship was correct."
Disregarding the fact that I had not written down an initial hypothesis at this point it certainly made it easier to start. Can I apply the same rule to this blog? Well I'm going to give it a go.
I started my PhD one year ago pretty much to the day, a lot has happened in a year and while I hope to convey what is happening on a day-to-day basis I also hope to get across just how much has happened in my first year of study.
I can safely say at this point that a PhD has been the right choice for me, it doesn't work for everybody but I have thoroughly enjoyed it so far and I am very happy with my progress. Keep checking back to see how I am getting on and how I coped entering the world of academic research.
It was at this point that someone mentioned to me that you always start from the middle of a thesis and work backwards and forwards at the same time. It seemed like a strange concept at first but I gave it a go, meaning that my first line read something like "the graph below proves that the initial hypothesis of a proportional relationship was correct."
Disregarding the fact that I had not written down an initial hypothesis at this point it certainly made it easier to start. Can I apply the same rule to this blog? Well I'm going to give it a go.
I started my PhD one year ago pretty much to the day, a lot has happened in a year and while I hope to convey what is happening on a day-to-day basis I also hope to get across just how much has happened in my first year of study.
I can safely say at this point that a PhD has been the right choice for me, it doesn't work for everybody but I have thoroughly enjoyed it so far and I am very happy with my progress. Keep checking back to see how I am getting on and how I coped entering the world of academic research.
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