It is three years since I was awarded my PhD and life seems to keep getting more and more busy!
Gone are the days of having one research project to concentrate on. Over the past three months I’ve been managing research projects, paper submissions, presentations, and have had the official launch of a spinout company I co-founded. Thankfully I also had a few breaks over this period, including three weeks hiking in Portugal and Spain.
For previous monthly updates see here: Beyond the PhD Series.
Academic work
Publications
- I’ve been involved with a few submissions over this period, one is for a conference and another for a journal. We can expect to hear some outcomes by the next update.
Between supervising two final year undergraduate projects, three interns and managing some other research projects there should be a lot of papers to be published later this year.
I still want to work on the final paper from my PhD but between everything else going on, including a steady stream of eager interns and students to work with during my postdoc role, it never seems urgent to work on this paper. Maybe one day? If I’m being realistic, I think there will always be something else more pressing…
Postdoc job
Recently I seem to have moved more into managing projects rather than actually “doing” the research. It is nice to be able to get involved with a wide variety of projects, which is quite the change compared to both PhD work and the first postdoc role I had.
However, I’m finding myself much more susceptible to feeling overwhelmed and thinking about work outside of normal hours. In large part I think this may be because I know that my current position is temporary and that I’m constantly trying to make the most of opportunities. For instance, when a fantastic intern is only with you for a few months you want to be able to support them as much as possible, but being quite new to managing projects I’m not great at balancing all these demands on my time.
Anyhow, the main news is that I’ve applied for a promotion from senior research associate up to research fellow.
I had always assumed that research fellows were always on their own fellowships on money they’d secured themselves, on projects they’d designed themselves: for instance those with The Royal Society, Royal Academy of Engineering or Marie Curie.
However, it seems like the role of research fellow, in title at least, is simply something you can be promoted to from postdoc along a university’s research pathway:
The weird thing is that the research pathway (Pathway Two) runs parallel to the standard academic one (Pathway One) and that actually in my current role as a senior postdoc I’m already, supposedly, equivalent to a lecturer (in salary at least, grade J in the above chart). Which seems weird to me since my responsibilities are surely much less than someone under pressure to apply for grants, develop their own research group and manage teaching duties.
So I’ve applied for the promotion, and we’ll see what the outcome is next update. To apply I submitted a CV and application form which involved giving evidence for about a dozen topics, some of which were compulsory and others I could choose. The categories included things like “Research output”, “Leadership in your discipline”, “Engagement with external organisations” plus some like “Collegiality”. You could write up to 150 words for each topic.
I’m feeling relatively confident because of my research experience, grant success and outreach (such as this blog) but I’ve not done much in other categories such as teaching.
Spin-out Company
I’m proud to officially announce the spin-out company I co-founded, IngeniumAI. This is the company based off research I conducted in my last postdoc position. Expect a press release next update. Here is a link to our LinkedIn if you fancy giving us a follow.
We’ve recently been going through recruitment for two new full time staff, at least one of which I’ll be line-managing. Once this happens I’ll drop down my hours as a postdoc because otherwise it is a bit much!
I’m tempted to write a post about starting a company around your research. Let me know if you’re keen.
The Savvy Scientist website
New posts
Since the last update post, I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve only published one new post. And technically that was in July… You hopefully only need to see the above sections (and know that I was on holiday for almost one month of the last three!) to realise why I’ve yet again fallen behind!
Website traffic
The Google Analytics platform has completed changed and I’m only just starting to get to grips with it. The bad news is that my lack of posting regularly has had a negative effect on traffic to the website, which is slowly trending downwards since the start of the year:
Time off
Hiking & Holidays
That’s enough about work! It is really important to take breaks from work so over this period I went on:
- A weekend camping trip in the Brecon Beacons with a colleague from work.
- A relaxed week in Portugal, in part in preparation for…
- A ~300km hike from Porto, Portugal to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. We did the Portuguese coastal path of the Camino plus the spiritual variant. Both of which I’d highly recommend.
Pro tip: if you want to actually see a lot of the coast, make sure you’re doing at least part of the route on the “senda litoral” variant of the coastal path: I’ve heard of disappointed people who walked the route a few streets away from the coast!
It was a great trip and felt more like three months away than three weeks! However, arriving into a new place every day gets pretty tiring. Highlights included staying in a monastery run by nuns, staying in a cork house on the Portuguese coast and lots of lovely coastal views. Since this trip was three weeks long I likely won’t be going away for another proper holiday for a while, but have a few weekend breaks coming up.
Wildlife
For a while now I’ve wanted to install a pond in our garden and crazy (inspiring?) videos like this one certainly haven’t helped.
However, not only do we not have heaps of space but we also have a tortoise who probably doesn’t fancy his chances of becoming a turtle. Therefore we’ve had to go for a lot more of a modest container pond.
Just before going away on our holiday I planted a set of native pond plants and thankfully they all survived while we were away. I look forward to seeing the pond develop.
After meticulously removing every blade of grass from a small patch of land I sowed some native wildflower seeds which are all now starting to come up.
Being away for a few weeks during a very dry spell didn’t do these seeds, or our fruit plants, any favours. Thankfully some neighbours and friends did their best. They should all mature over several years so I’m not at all sad to have gone away!
Pets
I’ve very sad to share that a few weeks ago we had our cat put down after a relatively short and unexpected illness which caught us all by surprise. The vets told us that we had to make a decision quickly, and it is one that my girlfriend and I both questioned afterwards. Honestly, the situation affected us both a lot more than I think either of us expected it to and it threw us off for more than a few days.
We had come to look after her a few years ago after she had gone missing for several years back in London where she had been my family’s cat. It was really a miracle that she managed to have that second lease of life and I think she enjoyed her few years living here with us. She would have turned 16 this July.
Media I’ve consumed
Books
- The Year of Living Danishly: My Twelve Months Unearthing the Secrets of the World’s Happiest Country by Helen Russell. Now I want to look for a job in Denmark…
- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. I didn’t agree with some of the arguments but the general gist of the book, making the most of our time (which includes taking a break), was useful to read.
- The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race by Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long. Interesting and worth a read. I learned things about myself and you probably can too.
Videos
Well worth a watch:
Monthly finances
Income
Postdoc +£2360.55/month
I’ll be getting a small pay rise in August.
Savings
Over these three months my savings increased by £4479. This is a combination of low outgoings and having some existing savings which are working for me. Not bad considering the state of the financial markets and that I went on a three week long holiday which turned up to be pretty pricy between all the accommodation and pre-trip purchases.
With interest rates the way they are I’m trying to make sure I’m being savvy with both spending and putting my savings to work.
Disappointingly a few of my investments through Abundance have defaulted and it seems like the directors of the companies I invested in were doing dodgy things. Thankfully I only ever invest a small amount each time and don’t mind a few losses here and there, but it’s not a great look for Abundance as a platform.
Summary & plans
Despite feeling like I handled my PhD and first postdoc position well (managing to avoid stress and thinking about work outside of hours) I can feel myself becoming slightly too busy and overwhelmed with different projects at the moment. And that doesn’t even include the spin-out company!
Taking holidays is great, but relying on taking frequent holidays isn’t much of a solution.
To address this my plan for the coming three months includes:
- Reduce expectations on myself, realising that it isn’t possible to pursue every possible research project
- Drop down my hours in my postdoc role so that I’m not trying to run the spin-out on top of a full time job
- Take frequent short breaks
Hopefully these things help, we’ll find out next update!
I hope you’ve found this interesting. Make sure to check out previous posts in the Beyond the PhD Series and you can subscribe below to be notified of new content:
Fantastic and a very educative stuff.
Thank you for commenting, Iddi! Best wishes, Jeff
I also did the espiritual variant of the Camino recently! Straight after the Focus on Microscopy conference at the start of April in Porto, so only 6 days to Santiago.
Like you say it was beautiful!
Hi Billy, thanks for commenting. Six days from Porto to Santiago via the spiritual variant?! Sounds intense! I’m glad you enjoyed it too. Best wishes, Jeff
Keep up the good work! It’s an encouragement for me, a 1st year PhD student. I think my hands are full, but clearly not full enough. hehehe.
Hi Afia, thanks and apologies for missing your comment previously! I’m glad you found it encouraging. Please don’t think you need to be more busy though, especially when you’re early in your PhD! Best of luck with your PhD. Jeff.