The final push

Hi All

Its been a long time since I wrote something on this blog but please forgive me as I enter my final phrase of my PhD studentship. I have been very busy recently but I just wanted to pause I write down some of my thoughts about what it has been like for me during the last month.

This is the final push for experimental work before I am charge with sitting down on my bottom all day writing out my thesis for submission in the autumn of 2014. It does sound very appealing given the amount of time I spent in the last month working late nights, weekends and early mornings. Laboratory work is finally coming to an end, or at least the planned experiments I had in mind. I am sure there will be a few more experiments needed when I write up.

I realise how hard it is to keep doing experiments whilst being told to keep writing at the same time, do figures, tables, graphs etc etc... I finally understand why all final year PhD students like to rant so much. It is hard to forget the enormous pressure final year students are entering. This post is not about me ranting at all but rather a chance think about what to do next. True, we are busy but it is also quite an exciting time and a time when you will have to start thinking beyond your research project. It that time to start thinking about careers. Shall I stay in academia or not? What will I do afterwards? Should I start applying soon?

For me, the answer is quite simply - start looking around. There are so many opportunities at universities to go on courses, enter competitions or join a team that does something a little different like policy. You never know, you might be able to enter competitions and quite like implementing science into Business. Yes, we are busy with our research but we should not limit ourselves or complain that we don't have enough time to do other things outside of the lab. That is exactly what I will be doing as I look to bolster my CV for the forthcoming months. In the meantime, I need to finish off some experimental work :-)