Graduate life

A perennial problem that is perhaps universal to all students is the difficulty of having to sit down and actually write something. A paper, a letter to a journal editor, whatever, many of us find it difficult to start/finish/write at all. Of course this problem is multiplied a thousand-fold when the document in question is a massive thesis. We’ve all had those days where we sit in front of the computer with a stack of journal articles planning to do a day of writing, before finding that there are so many other better things to do. Make a cup of tea. Check your emails. Do another experiment to (unnecessarily) check your results. Chat with your desk neighbour. Write for two minutes and then manically check your word count. ANYTHING but actually writing.

So are you stuck with your writing? Forget nailing your feet to the floor or bribing yourself with chocolate, Dr Wicked has a better idea. Why not replace your fear of writing with a fear of not writing?! Have a go at Write or Die, where they put the ‘prod’ back in productivity!

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After my sojourn in Seattle, I headed north almost to the border of Canada for a wildlife conference. Right from the start it was a fabulous conference, and the most interesting I have been to by far (in fact, I barely missed any of the talks because they were all so great!). There were about 300 people there, and we had talks about rabies in squirrels, ebola in gorillas, the best way to rescue wildlife caught in oil spills (there is quite an art to this, I didn’t even realise!), toxic algal blooms and their effect on marine life, the social structure of orca pods in Puget Sound, beluga whales, toxicity from lead shot in birds, infectious diseases in Australian finfish, bison breeding programs, toxicity in Kakapo (that will teach them to destroy cars and buildings!), effects of a shipwreck on a coral reef, winter elk feeding grounds... and of course platypuses! My talk went pretty well (got a lot of questions and only counted three people that were asleep...) and I was excited as I came second in the student presentation competition!

One great thing about doing research is the opportunity to go and spend some time doing your research at an overseas institution, and to go to conferences and present your work. The conferences are often in interesting places, and if you are lucky you will be able to apply for some sort of funding from the university (or from the organisation funding your research). I’m spending a year in the US on a Fulbright Scholarship, and last week I attended a wildlife conference in Washington State, which meant, hurrah, that I got to spend some time in Seattle, too.

Greetings from the USA! I made it here safely and have been settling in to my new lab. I could tell you about all of the cool new lab toys that I now have to play with, or the interesting research that I will be doing here to finish off my PhD, but first things first... My apartment that I will call home for the next 8 months or so.

After more than 24 hours in transit, I dragged my slightly hallucinating self to my new apartment building. One small incident with my keys (which, it transpired, were not actually my keys) later, I crashed my way into the flat, dropped my two very heavy bags (a total of 300g under maximum weight, yessssss!), and found... a small mountain of flat- pack furniture and packaged dinnerware/bedding etc stuck all over with labels like “Gosa Vadd Schlewovski”.

In time-honoured fashion, I bring you the final instalment of my list of top-10 time wasters. Now when you start your postgraduate program, you’ll have a head start over all of those other poor students who are also starting out and have no clue about how to really procrastinate properly. No, no, don’t thank me...

You laugh, but it's a serious issue that every postgraduate (particularly research postgraduates, who have three-plus years of what seems like unlimited unstructured time on their hands) must face. This week I bring you the continued results of my time-wasting by extending my fabulous list of top-10 ways to procrastinate.

Last week I touched on a big (and, I feel, under-discussed) issue in the lives of postgraduate students. As a sacrifice to you, dear readers, I am now going to air my dirty laundry and tell you about my favourite time-wasting activities. However, I must insert here a disclaimer- have you got an impending deadline? A paper due? A talk to write? Exams to study for? Marking to do? An actual job? If so, DO NOT read on. You have been warned!

On this blog, you are going to hear a lot of wonderful things about being a graduate student. I know I’ve already told you about the personal computer and the sandwich toaster, but there are many other fabulous perks that I and my fellow bloggers are sure to enlighten you on. So, in order to stymie any possible accusations of bias in the Graduate Life blog, I am going to inform you about some of the side effects that I have experienced in my efforts to get educated.

Welcome to my first blog!
I’m a third year PhD student in the Faculty of Veterinary Science and I’m researching platypus venom. This is where you can read about all about the excitement, frustration, whimsy and procrastination of a research student’s existence. To quote Bernard L. Black (aka Dylan Moran): “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it’ll change your life” *.