dating one's research

I don't normally read on-line comics, since I tend to have too many things to read in the way of e-mail, friends posts to their facebook, livejournal and blogs. However, today one of my friends sent me this link from the PhD Comics, and I thought it worth sharing with others. Having done a thesis kind of recently I really understand what the author is saying. Yes, yes indeed, one really does get *that* close to one's research project...

Making choices

I have finally received the examiner’s reports from my thesis (submitted back in June). Much to my delight the suggested corrections they have requested are minor, so it shouldn’t be too much longer until the degree is granted.

There was one statement in the examiner’s report which raised my eyebrows a bit. One of the two examiners expressed “surprise” that I made no use of Thermocalc “pseudosections”, which said examiner has found to give consistent results for a variety of compositions. He is correct; my thesis did not make use of that particular program for that task. Instead I used the program Perple_X, to which I was introduced first. I did consider also learning Thermocalc, and Theriak-Domino as well, since each program approaches the task slightly differently. However, it was recommended to me that rather than learning several different programs for the same sort of tasks that I instead focus on one and use the time not spent learning the mechanics of the other programs generating additional data for other aspects of the thesis. Around this same time I read a paper* by an author who did take the time to use those three different programs to model the same samples, and achieved similar, though not identical, results with each. The advice sounding reasonable to me, and the paper further convinced me that since different tools will give similar results that the important thing was to simply choose one of them. I can fully understand having a preference for one program over the other when doing such modeling and creating such diagrams, but never will I be surprised if a student working on their PhD chooses to go with only one program to accomplish a specific type of task. Today’s students are given a limited amount of time to complete their degree and failure to submit the thesis by the University imposed deadline results in loss of funding/support. Given such constraints it is not possible to use every program available, without sacrificing other sections of the research and some choices must be made.

*Hoschek, G., 2004. Comparison of calculated P-T pseudosections for a kyanite eclogite from the Tauern Window, Eastern Alps, Austria. European Journal of Mineralogy, 16(1), 59-72.

The blessings of free time

A friend of mine recently got laid off from work, as has happened to countless others in the past several months. Many of her friends offered her condolences, but I was inclined to offer her my congratulations. The wish I gave her was: “May you be inspired to use your new free time productively to accomplish what you truly want to be doing with your time, and may you find so much enjoyment in your daily activities that you don't miss working.”

I have occasionally heard people express regret when they are laid off of work, but this approach to life mystifies me for two reasons.

1) While I was growing up I never wanted a "job" or to "work"; because from an early age I'd heard people say that they couldn't come participate in whatever fun activity to which they'd been invited, or work on whatever cool project they wanted to make because they "have to go to work", and it sounded terrible to me to thus miss out on such fun.

2) After my dad retired from the military he joined his brothers working for a Labour's Union in Alaska. They'd get short-term jobs, often in remote parts of Alaska, work for a few months earning some decent money, but have no free time in which to spend it. As a result they would look forward to the seasonal lay-offs which come with such employment so that they could spend some time at home with their loved ones, doing the things they want to be doing and enjoying the fruits of their labour. As a result, I learned that being laid off from work is a good thing (so long as it happened after earning some minimum amount of cash to cover the budget for the next few months).

Yes, I do understand that many of today’s lay-offs are happening to people who do not have sufficient savings to tide them over till next they find employment, and that is sad, but still I rejoice for those who have been laid off for whom a layoff is a gift of time and who choose to make good use of that time doing things which make them happy.

Perhaps I’m even more focused upon the value of time than I was in my youth. Having finally completed and submitted my thesis I have just come off of a couple of month’s worth of concentrated effort. A period in my life wherein I was the one turning down social engagements in favour of working on my thesis so that I could finish before the deadline imposed by plane tickets to leave the country. However, as intense as that period was, and as odd as it might seem to those who have known me for years for me to give up working on sewing projects, evenings of dancing, and reading fiction, I found it easy to do knowing that it was for a limited time only. Since printing the thesis I’ve had nearly two weeks of holiday, traveling to see friends and family in the US. I’ve done dancing, I’ve started new sewing projects, I’ve picked up books to read for pleasure, and I’ve loved every moment of it. I’ve nearly one more week of vacation left, and then I’ll commence my first post-doctoral position. From what I know of the job, it should be fun, and I think I’ll enjoy it. However, I am glad to know that they will only expect a “full time” commitment—an eight hour work day still leaves plenty of time in life for entertainment unrelated to one’s occupation, and, after the past few months of “finishing up”, that will seem like a generous plenty of “free time”.

Seeing the “constructive” part of constructive criticism

Summarizing three+ years of research and talking about the significance thereof can be a daunting task. Needing to do so in a very short amount of time because one has a firm deadline, in the form of plane tickets for departure to take up a post-doctoral position makes it an interesting task. I’ve found that my reaction to this situation has varied from day to day, ranging from extreme writer’s block to highly inspired. Fortunately, when the writer’s block struck I still had other tasks to turn to such that I was still being productive with my time by gathering yet more drawings, charts, and graphs, and assembling them into ready-to print versions of the figures for thesis. Eventually, a good week later than I’d wished to do so, I completed a first draft of my final chapter, the “discussions and conclusions” part of the thesis (note: in Australia the term “thesis” is used at the PhD level, rather than “dissertation”, which is what they say in the US—I don’t know what terms are used in other countries). Oh, the joy I felt when the e-mail was sent, and I could resume working on the corrections he’d suggested to the earlier chapters.

Fortunately for me, I had reason to head into town on the next business day, and stopped in my advisor’s office that afternoon, as he was just finishing up a reply e-mail to me with his comments on the chapter. I sat and talked with him for a good hour, as he filled me in on the important points I’d not yet addressed, and why he felt that they were important. I explained that when I’d sent it to him I did feel like, perhaps, it wasn’t perfect yet, but I knew that I needed to say *something*, because it is far, far easier to edit/change text, than to write the first paragraphs on a given topic. I left that meeting feeling inspired and ready to go. As a result, when I saw his e-mail and read the comments in the chapter itself, I was ready and able to immediately work on doing the expansions he thought it needed. However, looking at the e-mail itself, I think that if I had read it before having the conversation with him, I would likely have been devastated. There is something about the thought that one’s effort isn’t deemed worthy, for whatever reason, which can either be crippling or inspiring. How easy it is to let a negative opinion on one’s work ruin one’s day, but how much better it feels when, instead, one hears the constructive, helpful suggestions one has been offered and is able to run with them, putting the suggestions to work to improve one’s efforts. This time the latter was easier to do because of the conversation. I hope that in the future, should it happen that I receive such suggestions from a mentor or colleague without such a warning conversation, I shall be able to appreciate their help and act upon their advice straight away, without any “someone doesn’t like my work” feelings standing in the way.

The tool I learned to use today, and what I discovered when I applied it

My life recently has reduced itself to not much more than working on the thesis in progress, or taking the occasional walk for exercise; I’ve even chosen to miss out on social events I would have otherwise attended in my push to “finish”. However, as I work I keep discovering new things I need to learn in the process. I once heard that the learning curve on a PhD project is exponential, and, truly, I believe it—it seems to me that I am learning ever so much more every day now in this very late stage of the project than I did in the early months of working on it (and, for the record, during those early months, I was astounded by just how very much I was learning compared to my prior rates of information acquisition).

One of this week’s new lessons was how to apply a t-test in an Excel spreadsheet. When my advisor gave me back chapter five, with comments and suggestions for improvement, one of the things he said was that the variation of some of the abundances for some of the trace elements in the monazite for the grains which grew in the Cambrian looked on the graph like they might, perhaps, vary by age of the grains. The “vary by age” we are talking here is very minor—these crystals grew ~505 Million years ago, give or take a handful of million years. How long did that growth period take? If it was fast it might have been just a couple million years, but if it was slow it could have taken tens of millions of years. In the latter case, it would be possible for there to be changes in the growing conditions (temperature/pressure) over the time period. If there were changes in the temperature and pressure during the metamorphic episode it is possible that during that period different minerals would be stable at different times during the event. It is known that how much of any given trace element is incorporated into monazite is based, in part, on what other minerals are growing or breaking down at the same time the monazite is growing. Since monazite tends to be a small mineral (generally <> 1 mm, and sometimes > 1 cm)) tend to out-compete it for any elements they are fond of if they are growing at the same time, or if the large mineral is breaking down, they tend to release trace elements, which the monazite can then incorporate into its own crystal structure.

Therefore, to test this, part of my day was spent going back to the results of my monazite analyses, sorting them by age to get all of the ones from the ~505 Million year old growing episode together, then sorting them back out into their individual samples again, then sorting each sample by first one, and then another trace element, then doing a t-test for each element to compare all of the analyses from a single sample which are high in that element with those which are low in that element. If the “t Stat” number reported is larger than the “t Critical two-tail” number then I can say that, yes, there is a statically valid difference in the ages of the two groups. However, for the samples from the first region I’ve tested, I can’t say that. Statically, the ages for those analyses high in these elements are indistinguishable from those which are low in those elements. Therefore, the factor which is more likely to effect how much of each of those trace elements wound up in the monazite is probably just a simple “how close was each grain of monazite to the other minerals which were either giving off, or taking up, those elements?”.

Having done all of that for this region, I next need to repeat the process for the other regions, write up the results (in less general terms!) in the thesis, and move on to the next task on the list…

Why is it harder?

A friend of mine, who is working on her PhD in Medieval Literature, recently wondered in my hearing why it is that the dissertation (or, here in Australia, the PhD thesis) is so much more difficult to write than any other paper, ever. I couldn’t help agreeing with her on that observation, although I’m not certain I am able to give a complete answer to the question. One major factor may well be the time scale in which the project is undertaken. A paper which is written over the course of a month or two will be easier to keep coherent—to use a consistent voice throughout, and to make certain that all lose threads are tied up before the conclusion of the discussion. A PhD project on the other hand, takes years to complete. Research which is done early on is either written up straight away, or it is set aside and we have to go back to old notes from (by now largely forgotten) previous works sessions and write it up. While it makes much sense to do the writing as the work is done, for a PhD project with a steep learning curve (aren’t they all?), it is very likely that things learned over the course of the project will mean that what was written for segments done early on will need to be changed, often dramatically, for the final write up. On the other hand, if one chooses *not* to write paragraphs about the work done early on, but to simply leave the data & graphs to stand on their own for writing at a later date then much time is wasted looking over the data again, trying to remember what was done with this sample before the writing can commence.

In my case the writing bits of it here and bits of it there have conspired to add an additional complication. I’ve just received back comments from my advisor on one of my chapters, and he points out that the thesis is meant to be written in a formal style throughout, yet in some places I’ve adopted a casual, chatty tone summarizing what I did to obtain the results. Looking over my work I see that he is correct, the voice used varies greatly from one segment to another, no doubt based upon how I was feeling on any given day, how much sleep I’d had, if I was hungry, and, possibly, even what the weather was like on the day. So not only do I need to finish up the summary of all of my results, I also need to read over everything and convert it all to a consistent writing style. Why didn’t I think about that aspect earlier along in the writing process?