Tag Archives: writing

It came…from the COMPUTER!!!!!!!

Posted on by | Leave a reply

I know I promised I’d be better about Soundbites. I even promised my labmates I’d be better about blogging. In my defense, I present this graph that I hastily drew today on my iPad:

FullSizeRender

It’s a graph of how in control of my life I feel versus time in grad school. Now I’ve got two and a half years of data to back this up, so even though my sample size is n = 1, I feel pretty confident in the conclusions I’m drawing from it.

The beginning of grad school, when I first arrived but hadn’t started working yet, I felt pretty awesome. But then I started to realize how much work I had to do and how in over my head I felt, so there’s that first drop. Fieldwork was pretty up and down, followed by an alright summer and fall with more up and down fieldwork.

But with writing, it’s like I can’t get the rest of my life together to save, well, my life. Running? Out the window. Yoga? Nope. Climbing? Not on your life. Even simple walks to get outside are only done when I’m running between buildings. It’s like the only things I’m capable of are writing, sleeping, and eating, and anything else requires too much brain power to even attempt.

My advisor Tiffany mentioned that this is a common occurrence when students get to the writing phase. Usually I’m really disciplined about taking care of myself while working, but writing has just sucked that ability out of me.

So maybe the best approach is to just embrace it. Okay, the next month and a half is going to be spent existing mostly as a blob of words who occasionally eats food. Seems kind of fitting for a pre-Halloween post:

IMG_0053

Is this my fate? Will I be defending as a blob rather than a human?

Stay tuned…

Also, because I forgot Soundbites this week, here’s a fun link. Because I haven’t become a word blob yet.

13 of the most terrifying sounds ever recorded

Happy Halloween, all!

Reporting for Duty

Posted on by | Leave a reply

I’m going to take a page out of Danielle’s blog/book this week…and talk about thinking.

About one year and 3 weeks ago, Danielle touched on the value of taking time to just think. Not day-dreaming just thinking about all of the Patagonia jackets I want to buy, but thinking about my project, my science, what….and why…I’m actually doing…and doing it.

Since I defended my Master’s in May, life has been a whirlwind. I had a few travel plans for the summer (a conference in July and some field work coming up in a week), there were gliders to be piloted (in Newport and the Gulf of Mexico), I needed to finish up my manuscript of my master’s research and submit it (still in progress…), and there were reports – oh reports – to be written.

Every time I come to blog I can’t remember how much I’ve talked about what my PhD will be about. I feel like I haven’t really, because I don’t even know that well yet! (That is where this whole idea of thinking comes in right now)

The basics, though, are that I’m part of a large scale monitoring project involving flying gliders outfitted with passive acoustic recorders in several different naval training ranges around the Pacific. All of these glider flights are funded NAVFAC, aka the operational U.S. Navy. They want to know what cetaceans are in the areas the use, and when. We have to answer their basic monitoring questions, and then I will get to use this HUGE dataset to do something for my PhD. But first, we have to answer those questions. And that is done in the form of a report. The thing about these reports are that they have deadlines. Very strict deadlines. And they are all stacked on top of each other. So since May it was – analyze MIRC, submit MIRC draft, get MIRC draft edits, revise MIRC draft, submit MIRC draft to Navy, get Navy edits back, submit MIRC final. Then lets put in the exact same thing for HRC (Hawaii) and go over it again:

Analyze MIRC, submit MIRC draft, analyze HRC, get MIRC edits, revise MIRC, submit HRC draft, submit MIRC draft to Navy, get HRC edits, revise HRC draft, get MIRC edits, submit HRC draft to Navy, revise MIRC, submit MIRC final, get HRC edits back – ok – this is where we are at…..now waiting a bit…oh and the Washington and Alaska and other Hawaii reports are do mid September and October and November.

All this happened in a matter of 3 months. That may seem like a lot of time, but please remember all the other stuff going on. Anyway, I’m losing focus here, the point of all of this is that since finishing my Master’s and shifting my focus to my PhD, I haven’t had a chance to stop and THINK. And that is what I’m tasking myself with for the next little while. It’s easy to get caught up in the “putting out fires” way of working. One deadline to the next. But I have to stop right now and think about what I am actually doing. I am a graduate student. I’m learning to be a scientist. And I need to spend some time coming up with the questions that will ultimately make up my dissertation.

So with that, I am ending this blog as the stream of conscious that it is. And there are no pictures. And I’m sorry.

 

SUBMITTED.

Posted on by | Leave a reply

Hello, blog friends! I know I have been absent lately (and I know how much you miss Soundbites, I promise I’ll be bringing them back come fall term…). But I thought I’d check in quickly and report the successful submission of my first-ever academic paper!

This is a big deal for me. As someone who came from a non-science background, I didn’t really understand how important it is to get your name on something in a journal. And when I started in grad school, I figured I wouldn’t be publishing until I had finished my masters research, since the project was big.

Thankfully, Holger and Tiffany included me on a side project involving red-legged frogs, and I got to take point on it. So after several weeks and months of this:

phd072114s

(image copyright Jorge Cham, PhD Comics)

we finally ended up with a manuscript and some figures worthy of submission. And after a last crunchtime effort by Holger and I this afternoon, we got it out the door just in time for me to go on vacation to Europe for two weeks!

The relief is palpable.

I have really enjoyed having this project be my first manuscript submission, as I have a lot of intellectual investment in it but pretty much no emotional investment (unlike my thesis, which is my baby). Failures during the writing process were easier to learn from, and successes were great.

So keep your eyes peeled…we just have to go through review…and then, fingers crossed, PUBLICATION!

Inversion Layer

Posted on by | Leave a reply

Well, I took last month off from blogging because I didn’t have much exciting to share. Then my turn came up again this month and again I realized I don’t have much to share. So I decided to go with it and just ramble for a bit. I have been working on wrapping up my master’s thesis and so I’ve been very busy writing, and reading, and writing, and editing, and making Holger read stuff, and writing. But the end is near, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, all those other catch phrases about finishing something!

This is how I imagine I will feel the morning of my defense.
This is how I imagine I will feel the morning of my defense.
Found inspiration in this guy at the Point Reyes National Seashore.
Found inspiration in this guy at the Point Reyes National Seashore.

I spent the Christmas holiday with my family but headed back to Oregon soon after to get back to work. I’ve been fortunate enough to be hanging out on the coast while doing all this hectic finishing up, and it has been surprisingly nice weather. I have been spending a lot of time staring at this screen, but at least the sun has been out my window!! And it makes taking breaks to walk the dog all that much easier.

Yay for sun out my window!
Yay for sun out my window!

 

 

 

 

 

Happy New Year to all our followers!!

 

 

 

Work Hard, Play Hard

Posted on by | 1 Reply

Work Hard

If you’ve been keeping up with all the goings on of ORCAA students this summer, you might think our lives as grad students are full of glamorous field work. I’m sorry to report that there is more to being a grad student then picturesque moments with charismatic study species in beautiful locations. We spend the majority of our time in front of a computer, and much of that time is spent writing. I used to find the idea of writing a thesis quite overwhelming, and sort of dreaded it. But writing is how we, as scientists communicate with our peers and with the public; it’s the most fundamental way we make our research mean something! So I decided I better get used to it, and get better at it ASAP.

This summer I was lucky enough to spend an entire week learning about writing. I took the special Thesis Writing class taught by Dr. Vicki Tolar Burton of the Writing Department here at OSU. This class wasn’t just about sentence structure or grammar (affect vs effect, anyone?), but was all about figuring out how I operate as a writer and developing writing-habits and productivity tools so I can sit down to write and, well, actually write! We wrote all day for 5 days – no cell phone, no email, no errands – then met for 2 hours each evening for peer review and discussion. I was surprisingly exhausted by the end, but I finished the class with a more positive confidence about writing. I not only gained some valuable writing habits, but more importantly I learned how to try new tools and evaluate their effectiveness for me personally so I can continue to develop as a productive writer.

writingclass
Happy students on our last day of class. We don’t look that tired do we?

My favorite part of the class was discovering my five Character Strengths and learning how I can use them to find success as a graduate student, in writing and otherwise. My top five described me perfectly, and although I first thought they seemed like weaknesses when it came to writing, by the end I was able to see how I can use them in the best way possible. You can find your own here; it’s worth registering.

Play “but also counts as work” Hard

So after my week of writing I was ready to get back to the fun stuff (someday writing might be fun…). Some folks from Hydronalix and NOAA came out to Newport to train Holger, Alex and I to drive and care for one of ORCAA’s newest toys: the EMILY. The EMILY is a totally awesome remote-controlled boat I suspect was built just for scientists like us who aren’t ready to be adults quite yet. They are currently used by beach lifeguards as rescue buoys and there are plans to send them kamikaze-style into hurricanes to collect storm data. ORCAA has plans to tow a hydrophone behind it and listen for ultra high frequency cetaceans (eg harbor porpoise) off Newport’s coast where NNMREC tests wave energy devices. EMILY needed some modifications for the conditions here in Oregon (too much seagrass!!) but we got her up and running and only had to carry out a few rescue missions with the skiff. I’m looking forward to getting some more time with these little torpedos!

These pictures may look familiar if you follow us on Twitter @ORCAAlab.