I am sitting here waiting on one of those recent phenomena; I am
waiting for a new keyboard and mouse to be delivered by Amazon’s
prime service. Once this delivery has arrived I can engage in one of
the oldest and greatest phenomena that humanity has ever created; I
can return my library books.
I find myself ordering my day
around the delivery of packages more often than I would like to
admit, and I would not be surprised if there was a term for the
phenomenon. But, I should stop complaining as it was in my lifetime
that you had to go somewhere to acquire goods. In my case, growing up
in a small village, it involved begging my parents to take me to
town, or waiting until I could drive and then do it myself. It indeed
wasn’t a simpler time.
But enough rambling and
pre-amble, it is time to try and twist and contort my thoughts of
what I did this week into something more interesting than it actually
is.
It has been a slow week in PhDs-Ville, I am waiting on
some consumables, mainly filters so that I can continue analysing
samples. I am still not that proficient at time-tabling; if I were
better I would be a bit more efficient, but also, a lot more fatigued
as I would have less downtime. So, I have just justified my lack of
organisation as a device for rest and recovery – winging it is one
of the best skills one can learn.
The first two days of
the week were as boring as you can get, I weighed out hundreds of
samples at 0.01 gram per go, which is quite tricky sometimes. From my
PhD, I would say that roughly 40% of the time I am doing something
utterly mundane that requires no thought whatsoever, it’s not all
chalkboards and equations. The beakers don’t wash themselves!
The
remainder of the week was spent doing data analysis and writing
abstracts for a couple of conferences I would like to go to this
year. Oh, and I had a couple of meetings.
Hopefully, if
all goes well, I shall be going to Berlin and Prague this year
on-the-house. I will have to give a presentation, but that is but a
minor act in the academic conference – so I have been told. Mostly
it’s for networking a.k.a. drinking, dining and talking – as well
as getting a free holiday. Who am I to not engage in such
activities.
Having mentioned that, I hate almost all the
aspects of conferences; I detest writing the abstract and then
presenting it, and I am not a big fan of networking either. I am
mostly going because it feels like one of those things you ‘have’
to do. Talking to other people I am still none the wiser as to why
people go to them; I think it has lots of un-apparent benefits that
are hard to quantify. Anyway, I shall give it a go this year and try
my best to seem interested.
It will be nice to get out of
the house!
A gift of life that we have
Such a soulful poem
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Most of the times I forget. Thank you for reminding me today. ‘The beakers don’t get wash themselves!’
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I really enjoy this!!
Question, I noticed on several occasions that two or more words were strung together without spaces in between. Was that poetic license on your part or is your keyboard maybe broken? 🙂
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Louis, what is your PhD in? I’m sure if I read back far enough I would find it. I was working on a PhD once – and at some point i decided I seriously disliked research and decided instead to go to Medical School… That was 12 years ago, and here I am still not done that pathway! But this post reminded me about how much I disliked bench work. Plots, and filters, and weighing stuff, and making reagents. At least I got an MSc out of the deal, but I am still so thankful I did not go down that path! Thanks for reminding me. On the plus side – Prague and Berlin! Amazing! I am very envious, for sure!
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It is an interesting piunt you raise. All of the people I know that have stopped pursuing thier PhDs have been becuase of the lifestyle — it is never related to difficulty or anything academic!
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So funny, your life is so fascinating and this conference sounds enviable, like a meeting of enthusiastic minds… and the fact that you will be presenting is spectacular, to many of us less imposed-upon, and/or talented, and/or hard-working and/or fortunate; but in each of our own lives it’s the same, I suppose: the mundane and dutiful become, well, the mundane and dutiful. Hope you had fun in your thematic meandering, anyway, Louis :))
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Are you calling me mundane and dutiful? haha
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Definitely not :))
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I am currently doing my masters thesis and ugly crying almost every single day 😭😭
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Oh no! I don’t know you, but I am very confident you will be fine.
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Hey …man can we conversate ?
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Look on the ‘Promote your blog’ it has my email.
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How big are your conferences? Hundreds? Thousands? I was never very sure about these vast cattle markets either. But I suppose if someone somewhere down the line remembers you from somewhere, that might stand you in good stead. In the end, though, a really good paper in a really good journal is what counts, isn’t it? Or does that make your heart sink?
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It does make my heart sink a bit, but I already knew this was the case, and why I will never be a good academic. I am not interested enough in writing papers.
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I would have to say that I would always recommend that you follow your heart (ah, such a cliche) and find something you are passionate about. You will have an excellent skills set in your own field but it’s interesting that you are attracted to writing. There might well be a market for science noir!!
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