Day-to-day research activities (PhD life II)

Hi folks!

I received an anonymous email from somebody that happened upon this blog, this email asked if I'd talk a little more about the "average day" or "day-to-day" routines that go on if you are researching. I think this is important because a standard PhD here in the UK is 3.5 years, or greater in many countries (USA=4year?), so obviously it is good to do some pre-research research.

 I wanted to do this eventually, but thought it was maybe a little arrogant of me to do it so soon into PhD. Further thinking, though, shows that this is probably one of the best times to talk about it! It would be a great idea to show how the work changes over the course of the next few years.

In my previous PhD life blog (PhD life I), I have briefly described some of the main 'events' that occur, for example - seminars; 0~2 times a month. Anyway without further ado, I give you a few typical couple of days from this weeks shenanigans...




Sorry not sure how that got in there...


Monday

• This morning I got up at 9am and decided to work from home, yes - we can do that! 
• My main task this week is to process data, by which I mean cleaning images; by which I mean clicking on pin-points of light on my monitor that do not belong on the images, which removes them. I have about 300 more images to process by this point, estimated time to complete is Thursday!
• I continued this till around 12:30 and then had some lunch, being at home gave me the benefit of having lunch far quicker than if I were in the office - which makes up for starting late, I hope.
• A bit of a twist to this day came in the afternoon when I was drafted to help out with some lab demonstrating for 'astrophysical techniques'. In other words I was asked to help undergraduates with their lab work, which is to design, build and use a telescope. I had prepared for this at the weekend by reading the manual they would be working with; on Sunday I spent about 3hours making sure I knew most of it. This ran from 2-5pm and went without much trouble, since this was the first time I'd demonstrated, the teacher of this session was on hand to help!
• So after this day was over on the campus I headed home, mentally drained but happy to have re-learnt many things about telescopes - plus the university pay by the hour for demonstrating! Funnily enough, when home I ended up processing several more images...glutton for punishment that day I guess?

Friday

• OK - I got up at a more respectable 8am this day, I really wanted to finish everything off so I got to my office before 9am. After finishing cleaning all of the images on Thursday, I proceeded to process some of the 'scraps', during the week I found that there were a few dozen more files to do. I also had to establish reasons for why some of the files were unable to be processed; in all there were only about 3 baddies out of the full 600, which is amazing! 
• Break time! In our office we tend to have a break at around 10:20am every day (not mentioned in Monday's post because I was at home that morning). We tend to do the daily crossword from the Guardian news paper, and I tend to barely understand any of the clues and feel stupid. It is also a time to catch up with people and what they are doing, this is usually work related (conferences, papers...etc) but is often the type of general chit-chat you get in every workplace!
• Fast forwarding to the afternoon, because I would just be repeating myself from Monday's routine. I had just finished going through all of the data in time for a quick afternoon break at around 3:30pm. After this I simply collated all of my results on to one A4 page - a kind of summary, since prior to this everything was scribbled on bits of paper all over my desk!
  

So I hope you have seen that these are simply two random days when no special event is going on, other days will differ - next week I will be doing some more lab demonstrating and instead of data processing I will be creating programs for the next stage of work (which I have little clue about right now!). 

If you are considering a career in research in the next few years, I hope you will follow this blog and it will give you some indication of what it can be like. The days I have described were essentially like an office job, but knowledge does come out at the end of all this processing, and science can be extracted!


My next blog will most likely be a tribute to all the most pioneering satellites of the outer solar system, they have a great story to tell!

Thanks,

James