Well it's about time...

Part of the letter I received today.

What's going on?

Hello to any of you who still read this blog (if there are actually any of you besides my mum). I realise I haven't really been on here much lately. It's hard to think of things to post at the moment - I don't have any silly anecdotes, not many science-y things have been happening in my life (well I got a paper accepted which is great, but still no word from my thesis examiners), and spouse wise: things are fine, except Husband had a bad flu for quite a while. Thankfully he's mostly better now. 

As for other people's spouses, my sister is getting married in a week and half. I'm the maid of honour (technically 'matron' of honour I think, but sounds like such an unattractive word so I'll stick with maid), so it has been a busy time the last couple of weeks. Enjoyable of course though. I'm definitely looking forward to the wedding, however I'm not looking forward to the 100 reports that I'll be receiving to mark that same week. 

Because I don't really have a photo to go with this post I'm including a picture of the shoes I'll be wearing with my bridesmaid dress. Pretty, hey!

Job-wise, still nothing. I had an interview via skype about a month ago which was nerve wracking (seriously I clenched my leg muscles so much during the interview without realising that I had aching legs for a couple of days after!). It was a good experience but I didn't get the job. I've also applied for several others and unfortunately I don't think I got those either since I should have heard by now.

So that's what's been going on. 

P.S. As an afterthought, I do have a slightly silly anecdote. The other day I heard Husband coming home from work and I decided to hide behind the door in the computer room to jump out and surprise him. However I forgot that I had left my bag in plain sight so it was pretty clear I was home. He walked around calling my name and I remained silent. Next he called my phone and you could clearly hear it ringing in the bedroom. He kept walking around calling my name, but I waited until he walked into the computer room. When he finally came in and I jumped out, he was really unimpressed. He said since all my belongings were still home and the door was unlocked he thought I'd been kidnapped and he was getting extremely concerned. Oops. I guess I did let it go on for a little too long. 

P.P.S. I just realised that this blog has been going for a bit over two years now. Wow. It doesn't seem like that long.  

WOOHOO!

Still here.

I thought I'd mention I'm still alive.

We moved house last weekend, which I'm still recovering from I think. Husband has been really great in taking over most of the responsibility of the move so I can focus on my thesis. It seems to be paying off too - my supervisor seems to think I can probably submit my thesis NEXT WEEK. I don't particularly believe that yet though. I keep expecting something will come up, like some big unforseen-yet-obvious mistake that means I have to start my thesis again from scratch. My supervisor also warned me that when I finish I am unlikely to have some big feeling of joy and relief, but rather a feeling of unease. That is because it will too late to fix any of those possible mistakes and the examiners will be reading my thesis and judging it (me).

People have asked me what I plan to do when I finish. So far my answer has been: sleep and probably some existential crisis about what I'm supposed to do with my life. Husband's answer has been: BABIES! In all honesty though I really need to work on finding a post-doc job first - long before any baby-related options. 

Anyway. Perhaps I'll report back next week with the good news that I am in fact finished. Or I'll just avoid posting since I don't want to admit I'm still going. 

Or I'll just not post because I'm asleep.

[via]

Aargh no more scholarship must hand in dreaded thesis day...

... was yesterday. 

original calendar (without aargh!) from here

Unfortunately, as is usually the case with these things, it's been taking longer than expected and so my thesis is not yet done.

I'm not too upset though really, mostly because I can blame other people a bit instead of myself  :P 

Specifically I need research assistants to score some of my data (if I score my own data I can be accused of being biased and making the results fit my hypotheses), plus - Husband's brother (previously known on this blog as "Twin", which still applies since they are still twins) is getting married in mid December in Perth. So we're heading over to Perth for a week or so. We've never been before so it should be fun. Anyway what this means is that while I was still aiming for the end of December to hand in, it's now looking more like January will be the time when I finally finish my thesis.

Here's hoping that I don't write a similar post in January about how it will be a couple more months!

I hope this doesn't happen to me...

via PHD comics

Some days, finishing my thesis seems very achievable and not all that far away. Other days - not so much.

P.S. At uni working on my thesis on a Saturday. At least it's quiet.

A new low.

I may not be the most absent-minded person ever, but I'm definitely not the least either. I can now report that I've reached a new low in absent-minded-ness (previously the title was probably held by this incident). 

Yesterday (Wednesday) I was at a meeting at uni, and I returned to the office to find out Husband had called frantically looking for me. Apparently he was wondering whether I was home and had just stepped out for a minute. He had just returned home from work to find out the place was very warm. Very very warm. So warm, in fact, that something was on fire. That something was a tray on the stove. Husband thought perhaps I'd been cooking and had stepped out briefly and forgotten to turn the stove off. 

This is quite concerning for a couple of reasons:
1. I had been at uni all day, and definitely didn't cook that morning.
2. I didn't even cook the day before that, we had takeout. 
3. I'd left a big bottle of oil right next to the stove. If the flames reached it, the kitchen might have exploded!

The only possible conclusion therefore is that I had left the stove (and apparently also the oven) on from the last time I'd cooked - Monday night. Yep, that's two whole days. 

I'm not looking forward to the next electricity bill. I'm also a little freaked out that I nearly made the house burn down. 

I'd like to blame the dreaded thesis for this absent-minded episode, but actually Husband and I had been away relaxing for the long weekend (where 'thesis' was a banned word). So really, it's just me.

Oops.

P.S. The weekend away was to a place called Sanctuary Point, about 2.5 hours drive from Sydney. It was lovely. We also went on a short whale and dolphin watching cruise which was awesome (besides the sea-sickness). 

This is the view from the ruined light house in the national park near Sanctuary Point. Pretty.

Back

I've been home for over a week now. My thoughts have definitely gone back to the 'aargh thesis' dark side. My trip feels like it was so long ago that I can't remember it that well anymore. I will say though that the people I met at the course were nice (I guess it pays not to be antisocial sometimes), and I was able to cross another 30 before 30 item off my list - visit another castle. Oh, and we went to a Ceilidh, which was a big dinner in a hall with folk dancing afterwards. It was awkward dancing with a bunch of people I'd just met, but quite amusing. Except for the giant bruise that appeared on my ankle from one overly exuberant dancer accidentally kicking me twice.

As for the course, I'm very glad I went. All the brain dissection parts were very interesting, but in a slightly surreal and abstract way. By that I mean, it was sometimes difficult to reconcile that what I was holding used to contain the thoughts of someone. We also had case conferences, where patients with brain disorders actually came in so we could talk to them. These were great for bringing all the concepts back to reality, but it also made me very sad about how these people's lives have been permanently changed. It also made me want to wear a helmet permanently to avoid injury, along with aiming to get brain scans often - as you can see this course did not help my mild hypochondriasis. At the same time though it's amazing how much the brain does try to adjust and recover with injuries, and the way the patients dealt with their problems and got on with life was truly inspiring. One girl had to teach herself to walk and talk again after a car accident, and she ended up running with the Paralympic torch for part of its' journey to the London games. 

Anyway, before I head back to marking assignments (hey at least they make my thesis look like an attractive work option again) I will post a couple of pictures of my trip below.

Bodnant Garden, Conwy, Wales

Conwy Castle

The town of Conwy is still walled and you can get up on the walls and look around. The view is pretty impressive.

P.S. Brain research is super important so that progress can be made in preventing and treating injuries and diseases. It might be a bit morbid to think about, but please consider donating your brain to science. I plan to. 

**UPDATE: There is an awesome TV show called Battle Castle, and one of the episodes is about Conwy. Hooray!

Countdown

My flight to the UK is on Sunday. I can't believe just how quickly it has come around. As mentioned earlier, I'll be in London for a week and then I'm heading north to Bangor in Wales for my neuro course. I was supposed to be meeting with academics while in London to discuss potential jobs, but unfortunately it doesn't look like that will happen. Either people are still away (since it's uni summer holidays over there) or they do not have any money to hire anyone right now. One person said they'd be happy to meet, but when I tried to get them to set a specific date they never got back to me. Helpful. So instead for that week in London I'll just try to work on my thesis. 

[via]

A few people have said I should just enjoy my time there and not think about writing at all. I don't think I can do that entirely however. A friend of mine will be in London for some of that time so I'll make sure to have some fun... though I'll probably enjoy myself more if I've done a fair bit of work and therefore don't have to feel guilty about getting further behind (my self-imposed schedule).

On a sort-of-related-note, here's a movie not to watch just before you travel alone overseas: Taken. I was so focused on worrying about the flights that I forgot all about the possibility of being kidnapped and forced into trafficking. However I will say I am not as stupid as the girls in the movie to tell complete strangers where they'll be staying alone. Goobers. It's a good movie though - I'm sure husband would have enjoyed it more if I didn't spend the whole time going "Oh NO! What if I get TAKEN!" 

He did say he'd come get me though, so that's nice.

Even more spit.

I haven't spoken about spit in a while and I thought it time to remedy that. In case you're new here, part of my PhD research involves collecting saliva to assess particular hormones released when people are distressed (because I stress them out - muah ha ha haaaa). In case you're not new, well sorry you're having to read about this again!

Not my actual samples, but it kinda looks like this [via].

Yesterday I finally ran the assays for the rest of my samples. I've been waiting a while for this as it's supposed to be my last study of my PhD. Unfortunately it's taken over a year to get to this point, as for some reason watching a distressing film and spitting into a tube does not seem to be a popular experiment to volunteer for. In case you are very grossed out at this point, I will mention that the samples all get irradiated to kill any germs and we still wear gloves anyway. So no touching of spit actually occurs. Also to make sure I don't gross you out I definitely won't talk about all the FLOATIES in the samples...

... err anyway. Now I'm a bit nervous to actually run the statistics - what if it doesn't work? It has been my plan to finish my thesis by November 12 (AKA arrgh-no-more-scholarship-must-hand-in-dreaded-thesis-day). However if my experiment is a total dud I instead will have to run another one or two experiments, taking my PhD into mid next year. I do not particularly care for that option.

Either way I will keep you all updated since I'm sure you're all dying to know what I've found in people's spit.

P.S. Totally unrelated to this post, something quite unexpected happened - I was voted the Featured Blogger for August over at 20SB! Thank you so much to the people who voted for me, I really appreciate it. An extra special thanks goes to Little Missy Me who nominated me: you're awesome! :)

Booked.

Plane tickets and accommodation for my trip to the UK have been sorted! I'll be in London for about a week, and then heading up to Bangor in Wales for my neuroanatomy course. I'm supposed to be organising to meet with academics from different universities for while I'm in London, however it has been quite difficult to pin people down to agree to meet with me. It is a bit hard to get a job if I can't actually talk to anyone! I still have several weeks to go though so hopefully it will get sorted. If not I will have a fair bit of time on my hands in London. Unfortunately I will probably be a bit boring and use the time to work on writing my thesis. At least I've been to London twice before so I've seen many of the attractions already. Also from what the travel agent told me yesterday, even though the olympics will be over by the time I get there a lot of the visitors will still be around so the city will still be super packed. All the more reason to avoid the really popular places! I'm sure I'll find some cool places to write though, and definitely do not plan to be cooped up in the hotel the whole time.

While I do mean to mostly write while there, the place I've booked to stay at is right near the British Museum which I haven't visited before, and I am considering one of those big day tours (if they're not all booked out).There's one that goes to the Cotswolds which looks pretty amazing.

[from here]

Then of course there's the train trip up to Bangor (which is pretty northern) so I'll get a good chance to see the countryside then as well. I'm also very nerdishly excited about the neuroanatomy stuff too. 

So here I am again, thinking of the UK instead of focusing on my thesis... oops.

Switch

If you saw my previous post, I was all 'woo productivity' and 'yay thesis' (how annoying!). Well, that definitely isn't the sentiment this week. Both Monday and yesterday were complete write-offs and today has not started the best either. I'm attempting to work from home however it's almost time for me to make my overly time-consuming elaborate lunch so I can procrastinate further.

I'm not entirely sure how or why this switch occurs from going really well, to kind of crappy. Maybe I just need a break. At least I've been assured that this reaction is fairly common in PhD land!

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got this to prepare...

Just kidding, but it does actually look pretty good (from here). 

Does this sort of thing happen to you? What do you do to get back on track? I could definitely do with some tips! 

The end of productivity...

...well hopefully not, but it is the end of Productive June today. At least I'm ending it on a somewhat productive note, as I am in fact at uni today (yes Saturday) working on my thesis - well besides this quick break I'm obviously taking! As it is so quiet in the PhD office on the weekend (usually only 1-2 other people come in, but I'm often alone) I find it less distracting, but also since I know I'm depriving myself of relaxing/having fun I think I may as well use the time properly and actually do work. 

My writing is going reasonably too. Many people gave me the advice "just write 500 words a day", and I have to say, now that I have finally taken that advice it actually works. I've been (nerdishly) plotting my word count in an excel spreadsheet graph, and I find it encouraging to see the progress. It also spurs me on to at least get to 500, and once I do that I usually end up writing more. It's also helped me to worry a bit less about the looming deadline of November 12 (to be henceforth known as "arrgh no more scholarship must hand in dreaded thesis day" ...too long?), as I (also nerdishly) calculated exactly how many words I could have written by then if I write around the same amount most days. It seems feasible I could have a thesis by then! The other cool thing (well cool to me anyway) is that since I'm doing so much thinking/reading/writing about my topic, I'm really starting to enjoy it again. Additionally it's encouraging to re-read things I first read in my first year and barely understood, and find that now not only do I understand it, but I can critique it.

One downside however is the increasing pile of papers and mess my desk is accumulating. I think this PHD comic sums it up pretty well:

from here

Well sorry if this was totally boring but hey this is pretty much my life at the moment - so thanks for calling my life boring :P

Oh No! Or... Hooray?

So as I mentioned a little while ago, I gave myself a haircut on a whim, due to my distaste of going to hair salons. It was not very good. I finally decided to get it fixed, and got a hairdresser who came to my house, which was good. I asked for it quite short, and well now it definitely is that...

I'm not 100% sure what I think about it to be honest, but perhaps in a few days I'll like it better. Otherwise I guess I'll just be wearing a lot of hats.

And be towering over Manhattan about to grab the Statue of Liberty (not to scale).

P.S. At least this has been a fairly good distraction from the 'aargh thesis' side of life!

Productive June...

... has actually so far been quite productive (no idea what Productive June is?)! Mostly due to the minor freaking out that is going on in my brain about trying to finish my thesis. Even though this past weekend was a long weekend (woowoo), I ended up going to uni to work on Saturday. It ended up being quite successful, and I'm now thinking I'll do it every Saturday from now on (the excitement never ends here people!). 

I think what happened productivity-wise was I just stopped being in denial as to when my thesis is actually due. While November 12th may still seem quite far away (it's actually 5 months exactly today), I have 8 chapters to write, and specific deadlines each month of when each chapter draft is supposed to go to my supervisor. Not to mention the fact that I'll probably have revisions to make once she's read each chapter! At this stage I'm not sure I will be able to properly meet those deadlines, to be honest.

Because I didn't want this post to just be a boring whinge, here's this thing I found amusing. 

[you can get it on a t-shirt at threadless!]

 

So in conclusion, aargh. 

Q: Are you having a Productive June so far?

Uncertainty.

[from here]

There's a fair bit of it in my life right now. Like I mentioned previously, I really have no idea what will be happening after I finish my thesis. Academia is pretty competitive, and I need the experiments that I'm finishing up to have exciting publishable results that will make my CV look impressive so people will consider hiring me. However I have no idea what the results are yet (hopefully in a few weeks...), or exactly when I'll be finishing my thesis (but really hoping it's before my scholarship runs out). Another thing I'm hoping is to get into a short (one week) course I applied for in Wales. It's on neuroanatomy and if I get accepted they'll fly me over there and my accommodation is sorted too!! I'm supposed to find out by the end of May, so of course I've been checking my email every five minutes in case they've decided. If I get into the course, I might also take the opportunity to visit a few researchers in the UK and try to politely convince them to hire me. I still would really (really really) like to work in the UK obviously, however I have no idea how realistic that goal is either.

I've known since I was around 15 that I wanted to study psychology at university, and even knew which uni I wanted to go to. So it happened. When doing psychology I decided I really wanted to get into honours, so I did. This PhD opportunity pretty much fell in my lap too, so I've been pretty used to doing what I wanted and not having to wait long to get it. That is why this whole having-no-idea-what's-next thing is pretty unsettling. Perhaps being at uni for so long has just pushed back my 'quarter life crisis' a couple of years. 

Having said that though, I've received a lot of encouragement the last couple of days, which I've really appreciated. I had a great meeting with my supervisor Monday, where we made a very specific plan of deadlines for writing my thesis chapters. Since then I've been motivated and productive (and it's not even Productive June yet!) - I've completed two more papers that should be submitted to journals shortly, finished marking reports, and worked on my thesis a fair bit. I also had a meeting with another academic involved in my project and he made it clear he thought my thesis would be well-written, and he said he'd speak to some contacts he has in the UK about possible work. Most of all, Husband has been super encouraging. He doesn't seem at all concerned that things won't work out, and it's helped me not to crawl into a ball overwhelmed by all the things I need to do, but rather get to work and make sure I do my best. Because of that, I've actually felt much more positive than I have in a long time - unfortunately that doesn't change how busy I am!

[via]

Well here's what happened.

I didn't mean to take a 5 week break from blogging, honest. It's not that I was super busy, or super unhappy or unwell or something. I just didn't have a lot to say, and then I kept thinking I should wait until I have something super important or interesting to talk about. I still don't really. However I just thought I would write an update (that is potentially non-important, non-interesting, sorry) anyway. Like previously, I've broken it up into three categories:

[via]

Science: Some good news and some good/scary news. The good news is that my first first-author paper has been accepted for publication (old news for twitter followers)! This is a relief, as it had taken a while for it to get accepted somewhere. It will be out next month. The good/scary news is my PhD scholarship has been extended for 6 months. Good in that I will not be poor for the next 6 months, but scary because the confirmation email also included the date the scholarship stops: November 12. This then gives me a very specific date to try and finish my thesis by, and it really doesn't seem all that far away now... gulp. As for the fact that I have no idea what I'll do after that, well that's the especially scary part.

Spouses: Yep, still got one of those (although he's been slightly MIA recently since the release of computer game Diablo III). It's actually Husband's birthday tomorrow, and we're going out to play laser tag, which should be fun / slightly nerdy. We're also going out on Saturday night to a Brazilian BBQ place, which essentially involves being served larged quantities of meat.

Silliness: Well on a whim about two weeks ago I did something I've never done (or planned to do) before: I gave myself a haircut. I decided I was sick of how long my hair was, and impulsively grabbed some scissors and started hacking. After I did the first snip I regretted it immediately, but obviously had to continue. Towards the end I decided I should be sensible about it and used my hair straightener so I could make sure it was all even. It went from being half-way down my back to just above my shoulders. My (post-hoc) reasoning was that I'm contemplating getting a more drastic haircut (see picture below), but I hate going to the hairdressers (I'm sure they're very nice people but I really don't like all the pointless chit-chat). This way when I do go there's less hair to cut and dye, and therefore I'll be there for less time (??). 

[from my pinterest]

Well enough about me:

What have you been up to lately?

Have you ever done something strange/impulsive and you're not really sure why?
Is anyone else afraid of going to the hairdressers?

New Plans or Just Dreaming?

I've started to become a bit reluctant to share (on here, but also with others in person) what I think is potentially newsworthy in my life, since I realised (eventually - it had to happen sometime) that I often come up with grand schemes that don't always go anywhere. The "we're taking a giant trip to the USA" post comes to mind. We were originally going to go this September, then it was pushed back to sometime next year, and now... well not sure if it's happening to be honest.

However at the same time, I doubt I'm going to stop coming up with big plans, especially since they're so fun to think about. Also it's my blog so I can dream on it if I want to!

I'm still hoping to finish my PhD by the end of this year. The plans/dreams concern what I would be doing next year. Originally I was hoping to get a job at a neighbouring university, and therefore stay in Sydney. However when discussing this with my supervisor, she mentioned that it is quite difficult career-wise to stay in the same place. Universities want to hire academics from different countries, or at least people with experience working in another country. I ended up speaking to Husband about this, and he was surprisingly fine with us moving overseas if I got a post-doctoral position somewhere. Post-doc jobs typically last 2 years, and then we could come back to Sydney, and I might have a better chance of securing a permanent position here with the international experience.

London (from my pinterest board 'dreaming of the UK').

Thinking about this possibility allowed my wish to live in the UK to resurface. I would find it hard to move there forever as I'd miss people here too much, but knowing I could potentially stay there for a year or two would be lovely. So now in the next few months when I have to start looking for work for next year, the UK is going to be my first choice. The hard thing though is - in my head I've already moved there and am having a wonderful time. This just makes it that much more disappointing if it doesn't actually occur. 

Plus, well I suppose I should also work on making sure I do finish my PhD first! But dreaming of my possible adventures over there is much more enjoyable right now...

I May Regret This...

Starting in March, besides my PhD, during the week I will also be teaching a 2nd year Psychology course, and also helping out and lecturing a bit for a Masters night course. I also applied (and got accepted) to do a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education at uni. Also, I put my hand up to be Postgrad Rep (a person who liases between the students and faculty to highlight relevant issues etc.) this year. Perhaps you may be thinking: 

Go crazy? Don't mind if I do! [via]

"Lozzz123 - are you going CRAZY!?"

To which I say - yeh, probably. However, the course is free for university staff, and it's actually only 4 hours of class every fortnight. It's a great opportunity to learn how to be a good lecturer/course coordinator before I actually may get a full time job doing that (it's interesting that this is not compulsory and although pre-school, primary school and high school teachers all need specific degrees in teaching, most university level teachers don't have any teacher training except perhaps a 1-2 day course, but that's a completely different issue)! As for the Postgrad Rep, I'll be sharing the responsibility with another PhD student too, and besides a meeting or two each week and emailing/talking to any students that have questions it shouldn't be super time consuming. And well, all the teaching/helping/lecturing is good money.

Considering I'll be trying to fit testing for two experiments and trying to write up my thesis in there too (and well, having a bit of a life possibly) it will make for a busy and slightly stressful year.

The thing is though, I actually seem to function better when I have so much stuff to do, that I don't have a choice but to do it NOW. As mentioned previously, when I only have one thing to work on without any immediate looming deadlines, I seem to flounder, get bored easily, and just generally procrastinate and not do much at all (unless you count non-uni activities like cooking and running, which I don't).

I just hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew this time...! 

Bored people are boring.

Usually in January/February in my PhD office it is extremely quiet. The new PhD students don't start until March, and neither does teaching. A lot of people (not me, unfortunately) take this to mean they have an extended holiday. Also, besides a couple of weeks of summer school, there's no first year psychology students to experiment on. So really, all that leaves to do is writing. 

I am definitely keen to finish my thesis this year, but am expecting it won't be until the end of the year. I don't seem to go very well with long term goals like that. Also, with no teaching or testing, there's no real reason to go into the office as I can read and write at home. 

So here I am, at home. I try to work, but it just doesn't seem to happen. I could always set shorter goals for myself, e.g. write 1000 words today, but I can always rationalise those sorts of things. What happens if I don't write 1000 words today? Well, nothing. My supervisor is working on a paper I sent her, so she doesn't really need to see any other work from me right now. So I don't even have that as a motivation. I guess I need to recapture the initial excitement I had for this project - I was one of those nerds in my office who got started early on their PhD by coming in to work even when my office computer hadn't been delivered yet, and was pestering my supervisor for suggestions of readings to do. How I can feel that again however, I'm not sure right now. It's not that I hate my project now, but I have no new experiment findings to think about, and no new experiments to plan (all the experiments I'm doing for my thesis have been planned, some finished, and others started, but I now have to wait until March to continue).

So I have some questions for you:

- Do you ever have problems like this?

- What do you do to overcome motivation problems?

- What do you do to overcome procrastination problems? 

- What do you think of this picture?

[via imgur]