Here is an overview of all the exciting things I’ve been up to.
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Yep, pretty empty. So what have I been up to you may be asking? The answer is experiments and thesis writing! After experiencing a whole variety of problems with the apparatus for the last 4 months (I’m not kidding), I finally have a successful experiment. Hopefully the next one will go well too. The last two of the four will have to wait until May because we have a visiting student who also wants to use the apparatus.
These experiments are killing me though. Four weeks of non-stop day in, day out productivity in the lab. The only rest i get is 7 hours sleep. I have to start experimental runs at 10:30 pm and have to be back at uni at 8 am to finish that run and start the next set of shorter runs during the day. Somewhere in between that time I have to finish a paper that has been sitting on my desk for over 6 months. And lastly, of course there is plenty of thesis writing to do. After these experiments in June, I still have quite a bit of sample characterization to do. That means more days behind the Scanning Electron Microscope.
There is a conference early July which I am attending but my supervisor wont be here. He asked if I present a poster of his research of which I know hardly anything about. I kinda wish I didn’t accept this request now…. after all I will be giving a talk which is quite enough. My thesis submission deadline is 20 August. My last bit of responsibility towards the academic system.
So in a nutshell. The life of a stressful PhD student.
