I said I would try to post more regular updates about everyday PhDing, but I haven’t… Here it goes. All will be tagged with everyday PhDing.

What have I been up to over the past two* weeks?

  • Planned what needs to get done this year, as it is the last year of my PhD, so I really ought to get going now. I also put all the important dates, like meetings, seminars, conferences, teaching etc. into my calendar.
  • Sorted out my desk at home and at work to make sure I get a nice clean start.
  • Wrote and submitted an abstract for ESEB 2017.
  • Wrote and submitted an abstract for GradSchool Conference.
  • Put together an outline of the content for my first manuscript. We have decided on re-packaging the analyses in a slightly different way after I got some interesting results. I’m hoping that getting all authors to agree on the paper content first will speed the rest of the process up. This outline includes which models will go into the paper, what figures and tables will be presented, what will make it into the main body and what will be in the supplementary materials.
  • Skyped with my supervisor to discuss the above, which was really useful.
  • I did some thinking about the possible explanations for the mentioned interesting result… It needs more thinking.
  • Sorted out a new demonstrating contract: I will be involved in the Behavioural Ecology 3 this semester.
  • Started re-reading papers about superb fairy-wrens. The purpose of this is three-fold: (a) it is a warm up to get me back into the right frame of mind in this new year; (b) it is an easy way to kick start my regular reading again; (c) this refreshed knowledge will hopefully come in handy when I’m writing up the manuscripts. I’m tweeting the titles of the papers I read under #SFWpapers and #230papers.
  • Joined ASAB and renewed my BES membership.
  • Pondered how I could engage more and disseminate more knowledge about my study organism. I decided to tweet some snippets of information about superb fairy-wrens, our study population and project under #SFWtidbit. There is no official account for the project, so I’m hoping that this will give you a little bit more insight into the lives of those peculiar birds, but do keep in mind that I am just one little cog in a very big machine here (and any opinions are my own).

*technically week and a half as the University didn’t re-open till 4th Jan.