Evolving into Dr. Slowbro!

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My supervisor asks for a 'monthly one-page summary' of what we've done and then decides whether we need to meet based on that :lol:

Already?! It's only been 2 days for you :tongue:

Reply 41

Serentonin

Original post by Slowbro93

So I'm slowly learning my way around linux. I am getting the hang of most of the commands and going to see if I can get this course done today :tongue:

I bet in a few weeks you'll love it! Linux is god.

unless you want to play pc games. then linux is terrible.

Reply 42

Slowbro93

Just got back from my supervision meeting, I have to say that it went a lot better than I thought! It was really setting out the original objectives for the first few months :yep:

the next one will be looking at some of the literature that I would have (eventually) started on :yep:

Now to crack on :work:

Original post by Serentonin

I bet in a few weeks you'll love it! Linux is god.

unless you want to play pc games. then linux is terrible.

HAhahaha, will bear that in mind :tongue:

Reply 43

Slowbro93

SO much code and reading and code and snhr3whjmsyhgemt54t AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Reply 44

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Original post by Slowbro93

SO much code and reading and code and snhr3whjmsyhgemt54t AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

You can do it! We believe in you :rave:

Reply 45

Slowbro93

So although I'm two weeks in, I have had quite a few ideas in terms of writing up now :yep:

I'm heading to the office and planning to do some more reading and summary writing. I have my next supervision in a couple of days and I'm feeling okay about it because I have stuff to show! :zomg:

Reply 46

Slowbro93

So today was big for me in that I had to start discussing the science of my PhD. I was quite scared to be totally honest as I know nothing still but I still tried to present my ideas and thoughts on papers.

I've been reading quite a bit around the field work that happened with the ParisFog field study and I came across quite a recent paper that was very good in nailing the particular issues related to my research. It did bring up quite a few ideas regarding the direction I would want to initially start in and how I can look into having a recent set of modelling data :yep:

Although they disagreed with a few things they overall found it to be a good effort on my side :smile:

Python is also going well too!

Reply 47

punctuation

Original post by Slowbro93

Although they disagreed with a few things they overall found it to be a good effort on my side :smile:

Python is also going well too!

Glad it worked out! Currently trying to puzzle my way through a programming question in Python..

Reply 48

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Original post by Slowbro93

I would want to initially start in and how I can look into having a recent set of modelling data :yep:

Although they disagreed with a few things they overall found it to be a good effort on my side :smile:

Python is also going well too!

Can't remember what Python is but YAY! :king1:

Glad you're off to a good start :biggrin:

Reply 49

Nirgilis

Remind me again, are you on a 3 year, a 3.5 year or 4 year PhD? :tongue:

Reply 50

Slowbro93

Original post by Nirgilis

Remind me again, are you on a 3 year, a 3.5 year or 4 year PhD? :tongue:

Have funding for 3.5 years but we've all been told to try and get it done within 3 years so we've then got the half a year as a contingency :yep:

Reply 51

punctuation

Original post by Slowbro93

Have funding for 3.5 years but we've all been told to try and get it done within 3 years so we've then got the half a year as a contingency :yep:

Ooh, you've got funding for 3.5, nice :tongue:

You'll probably need all of it you can get, judging from the PhD students I've met..

Reply 52

Slowbro93

I think I get how fog actually forms with the help of my friend who majored in Physics! :woo:

Reply 53

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Original post by Slowbro93

I think I get how fog actually forms with the help of my friend who majored in Physics! :woo:

Reply 54

Slowbro93

So today has been interesting ...

I was asked to go to this compulsory teaching course which was very very very dry :yawn:

I did paid for it, but it really did kill me mentally because there was so much that I had to take in. Furthermore, it wasn't that useful for me because a lot of the theories I already put into practice from my years of teaching informally and formally.

I was able to catch my primary supervisor today and talk through my thought process of how I thought fog formed and the physics behind it. He said that he was quite impressed with the thoughts behind it and he did challenge me on a few of the ideas. There were points when I agreed but there were others where I did question he's idea which he did say got him thinking. In terms of fog, he's given me a lot of thought to think about and what I can do in terms of developing research questions. At the moment, I'm going to start reading papers around the topics of radiative cooling and then relate that to clouds and fog (so that's my mini learning challenge for the next couple of weeks). I've struggled with some of the maths so I'm also going to see my other supervisor about it and plan to have a full team meeting with them in about 4 weeks.

The good news is that my supervisor from the Met Office is coming up to Leeds :biggrin:

He's going to start running through the model with me and I need to set myself up on the High Performance Computer. That should be half a day working on that and seeing what can and can't be possible in terms of my research questions. One of the questions that I want to look at is if the type of terrain (so grass vs say a city) has a determination on the activation of fog droplets. Obviously it's water vapour so if it's not on the ground it has to go somewhere! Where that goes, it could be fog but there are other sink sources which I was discussing with my supervisor today. I'm also getting prepared to present my project next week at the annual science meeting next week. There was a whole level of chaos regarding getting my poster printed but I stayed calm and got that all sorted! Some people I know have opted for A0 but I'm going to opt for A1 because not only do I not have any results but I do think that A0 may have some logistic issues. Hopefully that should be done this weekend so I can get it checked and then printed next week Monday for Thursday!

Now I mentioned this in GOGSoc, but I have had a conference opportunity call for abstracts that will be happening in July next year. I am scared to mention it to my supervisor because I'm literally a month into my PhD :cry2:

Reply 55

punctuation

Original post by Slowbro93

Wow, for being a month in your PhD you seem really on it! That meeting with your supervisor seemed it went really well. Keep it up!

Reply 56

Slowbro93

Original post by punctuation

Wow, for being a month in your PhD you seem really on it! That meeting with your supervisor seemed it went really well. Keep it up!

Thanks! I do feel that people are making more progress than myself (like I know people who've read a lot more literature, done experiment design etc.) which does scare me but I'm just staying calm because I have to remember a lot of this I'm doing from scratch! I'm going to most likely do half a day of coding tomorrow though :smile:

Reply 57

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Original post by Slowbro93

Now I mentioned this in GOGSoc, but I have had a conference opportunity call for abstracts that will be happening in July next year. I am scared to mention it to my supervisor because I'm literally a month into my PhD :cry2:

If it makes you feel better about it: about 1.5 months into my PhD a friend sent me a CfP for a really cool conference on popular music fandom. I just went "oh that's a shame, I've nothing to present/it's too early in the PhD" and put it aside. Then I mentioned it in passing to another friend, who lectured me about how I should ask supervisor about it, so I sent supervisor an email and was like "I know it's too early but it's a one-off conference and what if it doesn't happen again OMG WHAT DO I DO, TELL ME NOW!!!!!" and she said to go for it :eek:

So we very quickly cobbled together an abstract for the deadline (which by this point was fast approaching). I submitted the conference paper abstract in November of my first year and was accepted about a week before Christmas :king1:

Conference was in April of my first year and I did a very basic presentation introducing the academic

world to ABBA with some vague references to the conference theme (and when I mean vague, I mean VAGUE :tongue:

). They really seemed to like it, so I am glad I did it! Plus because I was like I'M A FIRST YEAR, DON'T EAT ME, everyone was very nice and constructive :biggrin:

Reply 58

Slowbro93

So what has happened for me this week:

- I've presented at the Annual Science Meeting my work and research questions which was helpful in terms of working out what directions I could go into
- I have come across the model that I'm going to use which at first I went (****!) but now it's not too bad as the ideas are settling in
- I'm half way through my python course which is coming along quite nicely now :smile:

- I finally had the guts to talk to my supervisor and he said that because of the sheer size it may be difficult to get a conference talk in (and this is as a PhD student, let alone a first year!) That said, he did say that it's something we could write a very vague abstract to and depending on what I have could either be a verbal talk or a poster presentation :yep:

However, he does want me to attend for certain!

Have a meeting with him on Tuesday and I do have an idea for a potential piece of work that could make up one of my chapters (or a paper) however, I need to see if it's actually possible given the data that I may be able to gain. Furthermore, I would also look at what would happen with some work my Met Office supervisor wants me to look at and consider writing a paper for too :yep:

There's also the fact that I need to consider scrapping one type of fog which is scary because I don't want to find that I've limited myself and not taken into account other possibilities (if that makes sense).

As a summary, life is a bit hectic atm!