Addendum to Doctor of Philosophy

Long time no post.. I am sorry. At first my current life has been incompatible with any leisure. If you cannot see the reason try to concentrate on writing a thesis, selling your bloody results as the best research ever done and see how ruined your life can become.. Despite all the sacrifice I am now nearly finished (as I hope), actually the first deadline is gone and the next and last one is on due next week, therefore is time to get this thingy done, revised and most important over!! On the course of writing up my first year report sort of little baby thesis, of course I wondered how is that gonna be for the big one but thats another story. Being just writing I moved my stuff home and spent here the most of my time going to the uni just for meetings.. such as lab meeeting, journal club, school seminars and after all meeting with the supervisor/advisor/boss or whatever you want to call the person to whom your services of researcher sort of slave are addressed to. My post for you today is then an Addendum to another post I wrote some time ago that you can read here Doctor of Philosophy, PhD or How to get a complex life (sometimes is nice!!).

Through meetings and meetings ...

Meeting with your group, but is more with your supervisor.

Something that happens in one's PhD life are the group meetings. One goes there, sits, handles a notebook with something to say (or not), and usually, at least for me these seminars aim to put everyone to know what is going on in the lab, including major findings or disasters.. In my group we also have a second kind of lab meeting where from time to time, members of the lab present results and discuss them to see the direction of research and get some feedback. I think meetings in my group are work fairly well, but apparently it doesnt work for everyone the same, have a look into the cartoons and see whether you identify yourself with them:

Meeting with your supervisor.

When it comes to meeting with the supervisor the things change a lot from student to student and supervisor to supervisor. In my case I am quite happy with it but of course I tell you this in comparison with what I know on this regards.. As a matter of fact I do still identify myself with the following cartoons and to be honest I dont know a single person who is happy with their project and with their supervisors. Sooner or later both tend to become problematic.. Let see first.. when is the ideal time to meet with your supervisor?

Secondly, the supervisors have a very, but very bad indeed memory for whatever gives respect to their students.. There are the pro and cons for that.. here you are the cons (the bad comes first):

And here you find the pros:

The reason is obvious.. For the students, the supervisors are the most important person in the world, the one who will ultimately decide on their careers since he has the power to award them with the so much sought PhD. Therefore the supervisor becomes some sort of a God, to whom one prays very day, unconditionally obeys and try not to disappoint him at all costs... On the other hand, for the supervisor, the student is as insignificant as another student and another student.. Is just one more student from a bunch of students, etc.. The supervisor has his own life and his own friends and never remembers the student, why would he do so??

Eventually he will remember the face and the name but never ever will recall what has so ever talked about in the last meeting with the student.




Conferences:
At a certain time in one's PhD life there is the chance to apply for a conference. Conferences are usually scheduled in nice places and it is very expensive to pay to go (And what is the point to pay go to THE conference?). Therefore the sacrificed and miserable PhD students apply for conference funding through the writing of a conference paper that will be further presented at the conference, usually a 5 minutes talk. No one guaranties that writing the paper you get to the conference.. there is to a nice 1 week free vacation at Hawaii for example.. There you go a suggestion of how not to spend unworthy time and that also gives you the chance to apply for different conferences (Hawaii, Skiing in Canada, beach resort in Barbados, sightseeing in China, etc, etc) :

Mind I said Hawaii..

Apparently here you can find a list of conferences in your area and where are they gonna be.. See how much you can get, there is whether your school pays you the expenses to go and the conference itself. Obviously avoid to mention the skiing forfeit or the diving course... I personally still didnt find the conference to go, besides I haven’t spent much time looking for. Next year I will do that ;)

Good luck with your PhD, if that is the case, or with everything else exciting you are doing. Have fun. I will as soon as I get released.. I may say I have been visiting the hell during the past month and I find it rather cold and dark and empty place..