Thoughts on chemistry, general science, and whatever else is banging around in my mind.
Thoughts on chemistry, general science, and whatever else is banging around in my mind.
Chemjobber recently posted a link to the 2012 NSF statistics for physical science postgraduation work & study. Both Chemjobber and the Inside Higher Ed article he links to looked at the job prospects for new PhDs by field. That data table is also broken down by gender, though, and I think there's a story hidden in there.
Read MoreIt's amazing to me how I can – sometimes – make more progress in 3 hours than in 3 days. I've spent a large part of this week slogging through some revisions. I had lot of trouble staying motivated and focused, but I kept pushing at it day after day because I wanted it to be done. Today I whizzed through the rest of the task and was done with it just after 2 pm.
And man, does that feel good.
My undergrad has a lot of histograms to compare, and the MATLAB defaults can get in the way. You can set the number of bins, but if your data sets span slightly different ranges, you'll quickly find that your bins have different widths or different maxima and minima. They're okay defaults for making a single histogram, but if you want to compare multiple figures, as we do, it gets frustrating fast.
Read MoreI wrote this almost three years ago, but it's back in my mind as I start looking for post-grad school jobs.
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I emailed my committee this afternoon to invite them to a talk I will soon give. One of the professors said he'd be glad to attend, and he will happen to be in the country on that day because one of his students is defending. I say “happen to be” because he is currently on sabbatical.
His email got me thinking: not about his reply, but about sabbaticals. With years still left before my own defense, sabbaticals are still a distant future to me, but all the same, they're on my mind. In particular, I wonder what the spouse is supposed to do.
Read MoreToday I had (most of) my pre-defense data meeting.1 My committee has declared me ready to write my thesis, and on track for graduation by or before August of next year. I'd like to be done by May, but that means t's crossed, i's dotted and revisions revised by April, and I still have another project to complete by then. Summer will get here soon enough.
I am glad to have an end in sight. I don't want to be a grad student forever, and some days it feels like it's already been forever since I started.
1: One committee member had to reschedule, so I get to give the same talk all over again tomorrow. I don't mind it a bit, though, because I always enjoy our meetings; I learn something new from him every time.
Looking back at my November writing experiment, I'd call it generally a success. I didn't make it all the way through the month; Thanksgiving visits with family disrupted my schedule. I missed about a week of writing total. But I wrote nearly every day before Thanksgiving, and I am still writing more frequently than before, so I am satisfied.
My plan for now is to do at least one post per week, hopefully with a bit more polish. Not too much polish, since that sends me down Perfectionist Lane sometimes, but more than I've been able to manage for the near-daily writing this last month.
Thoughts on chemistry, general and everyday science, and whatever else is banging around in my mind