Wow, it’s now December and nearly the end of a very unusual year. I’ll save an analysis of my 2020 in review for the end of the year, for now here is my monthly review.
For previous monthly updates see here: Beyond the PhD Series.
How I spent my time in November
Considering I now have a full time job again, it’s hardly surprising that only about a quarter of my productive time is being spent on other things. I’m slightly generous with what I consider productive, even so, I’m pleased to not spent any more time than I already am on these things. It’s important to give yourself a rest every so often!
Academic work
Publications
Last month I mentioned that a fellow student from my PhD lab had submitted a paper with me as a co-author. In November he had a response (minor revisions), made the changes, resubmitted and it’s already online!
It’s crazy how short the turnaround time can be for papers with certain journals. Saman was given five days to make the minor revisions and we had 24 hours (!) to approve the final copy before publication. It isn’t fun trying to fit short deadlines like this around a full time job in another group.
This paper was submitted for the same special issue that I had two papers accepted for a few months back, so the editors may be especially motivated to work quickly? It’s not normal for journal deadlines to be this tight!
In other paper-related news, a paper I submitted back in June (to another journal) has had it’s status updated and seems to be actively under review. Although I’d like to hear back soon, I also don’t fancy potentially have to deal with making large changes whilst working a separate full-time job.
Postdoc
Things are going great with my current job. I’m enjoying it a lot and feel like a lot of progress is being made. It’s been fun to find solutions, chipping away at the challenge and solve small problems every few days. We’ve now been approaching two main (and pretty typical) limitations:
- Computational power
- Access to more data
Until very recently I’d had to work on my own laptop (9 years old!). Thankfully a few weeks ago I finally got my desktop computer, after two months in the job. It was pretty disappointing to see how slow the university were at getting this sorted, especially when my post is only six months long in total! Anyhow, I’ve got it now and just using a larger screen has helped my productivity (and sanity!). Surprisingly, the computer isn’t actually that much more powerful than my old laptop. I’ve begun investigating trying to use the university’s high powered computing (HPC) setup to get things going a bit faster.
The project I’m working on requires ground-truth labelling from expert humans. Thankfully the project involves close collaboration with a clinical team so we’ve enlisted some medics to help out. For the moment I’ve been using a small amount of data available online mixed in with my own (non-expert) ground-truth labelling so I’ll be happy once we get the proper data from the clinicians.
It’s a bit sad that this project is only for six months because I’m enjoying it a lot. We’ve begun looking at other sources of funding to extend my contract but grant applications are slow so it’s unlikely my contact could get extended for long without an intermission. If I can’t stay on it at least gives an opportunity to go elsewhere and try other things.
Presentations
Back in August I gave a presentation as part of the Virtual Seminars in Biomedical Science series and the recording is now online. I’ve not yet watched it myself, but if you fancy doing so knock yourself out!
I had some internet connection issues towards the end, hopefully they weren’t too bad.
The Savvy Scientist website
New posts
This past month, these posts went live:
- Beyond the PhD: November 2020
- How to Survive a PhD Without Caffeine
- PhD Profiles: Siddhartha, PhD Graduate in Applied Physics at University of Groningen, Netherlands
- How to Successfully Defend Your PhD: An Introduction to the PhD Viva
I’ve been trying to work through posts which I had half-written and drafted. The list of draft posts is now down to 26, though there are plenty more on a to-do list which I’ve not even started. It’d be nice over Christmas to work on a few more. Let me know if there is anything in particular which you’d like to see covered.
Website traffic
3019 unique users in November, slightly up on last month and certainly up compared to this time last year.
One of my most popular posts has dropped in google rankings, but a lot of other posts seem to be gaining traction. Over Christmas I’ll spend a bit time checking the health of some of the posts and seeing if there is anything quick I can do to improve them. Why? I’m interested to be able to help reach more people!
Social media
Through my work I got emailed about some training for scientists interested in social media. The session was interesting and momentarily got me interested in posting more. This eagerness didn’t last for long though! Despite having an entire website, I still struggle a lot with putting myself out there on social media. Baby steps!
Here are the main points which were raised during the training session:
- Connect with people! Find relevant groups or hashtags and start interacting with people.
- Consider posting about upcoming awareness days. For example today, 3rd December, is International Day of Persons with Disabilities. I find the idea of using these days to flesh out a social media account a little contrived but that’s probably just me. I can get behind sharing these as a cause for good to raise awareness if done selflessly.
- In your bio include three things which are important to you. Make it clear what you’re about.
- Include some personality.
- Ask questions.
- Include some of your work. I need to do this myself!
I’ve promised to produce a YouTube video for a while now and well, I’ve not delivered again. Between several excuses, some of them external to me and others internal I’ve not done it. Maybe over Christmas? For now there is the presentation I gave which is further up the page!
Learning new skills
Spanish
Last month I decided to start learning Spanish using Duolingo. There are likely more efficient methods to learn a new language but since I’m doing it for fun and don’t have any intention in the short term of actually speaking to anyone in Spanish, I’m happy with this.
Growing up I just learned French in school and it’s been so fun to learn a new skill which is completely different to the other things I’m doing. It reminds me a little of how reading fiction provides a nice break from the usual parts of life. Do consider giving it a go!
Chin-ups
A few months ago I set myself the challenge of doing 10 (strict) chin-ups in a row.
I train outside and stupidly used the equipment while it was raining a bit, midway through November. From that I seemed to do something odd and got a small injury which is thankfully fine now. Right before the injury I’d hit a maximum of 9 reps in a set. I think we’re on track to get up to 10 chin-ups in a set by the end of the year.
Volunteering
I’ve dived back in for volunteering with the Prince’s Trust. A few months ago things fizzled out with the previous young person I was helping but I’ve got involved again.
At the end of November I had some more training and next year I’ll be starting doing more with them. This’ll likely include some individual mentoring, helping with some sessions for young people looking to get into work or training and potentially some stuff in schools depending on how the virus goes!
In November I also spoke at an event for current Bath Uni PhD students to let them know a bit about doing a postdoc after the PhD. It’s fun helping people, I suggest getting involved in some way if you don’t already!
Time off
US Elections
Wow, I spent farrrr too long watching live coverage of the US election results rolling in for days. Election day became election week. Thankfully the result was a positive one, though I am concerned on some violent acts in the short term.
Why do I care? Well loads of reasons which I’m sure I share with many people around the world. Personally though, there are a few main ones:
- The Prime Minister over here has already said the election outcome will dictate his Brexit plans which could have a very real impact on things here.
- I actively decided to not go to the US over Trump’s presidency. Yeah this doesn’t really mean much and now I type it it sounds pretty silly. Even so, with Biden now coming into power and my current postdoc position coming to the end it I’m considering applying for jobs in the US amongst many other countries.
Baking
This video popped up and so I decided to make naan (flat?!) breads, served with homemade seitan. The meal was tasty though I was a bit disappointed with the texture of the bread. Something to try again I think.
We made a pumpkin pie for the first time ever. In part for Halloween and also used Thanksgiving as a reason, not that we celebrate it. I suggest blind baking the pastry first to ensure that it gets fully cooked.
Media I’ve consumed
Books
I finished reading only one book in November:
- A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail. A pretty funny (and fun) book to read, especially while under lockdown.
Posts
- https://hbr.org/2017/04/why-you-should-have-at-least-two-careers I don’t think the examples in this post were great, but I think the principal is reasonable. I personally like the idea of being good at multiple things, having fall-back options and alternative revenue streams and a variety of projects to keep life interesting.
Monthly finances
Income
- Postdoc +£1951.96
- Prolific +£19.45. Just an hour or so, read my review of prolific here.
Savings
Investments
I try to not make too many changes to my investments. My mantra is to make regular monthly investments in funds. Both these actions help to spread the risk around. In November I did a few things which broke this rule:
TSLA
Near the end of November I took half of my remaining shares out of Tesla when they were trading at around $590. They had shot up over another $100 in just about a week and I bottled it. I believe in the mission and company’s products, but there is no denying that the company is currently grossly overvalued. In my opinion it is simply a question of when the bubble will burst, not if.
A few months ago I already withdrew twice the value of my initial investment. Even so, I didn’t fancy the potential of losing a lot of what I have left in there, so now I only stand to “lose” half. Considering I have already banked returns of ~500% and still have half a dozen shares I won’t feel hard done by it if keeps on rallying for a while longer.
APPL
With my current Macbook Pro being about 9 years old, I’ve been keenly expecting the results for their own M1 chips for many months. The performance looks great but there was no change in the stock price in the weeks after the release which surprised me a little. Perhaps it’ll take sales results to drive a change in share price.
Rather than buy one of the new laptops I decided to put a bit of the money instead towards a few shares. Back in 2006 I went to New York and bought an expensive iPod. Had I instead bought Apple shares they’d now be worth about £30,000…
I should perhaps take my own advice to not buy individual companies but still ~90% of my investments are in funds.
Since I wanted to only buy a few shares, using one of my main investing accounts such as AJBell didn’t make sense because of the fees so instead started using Trading212. It seems decent and it’s nice that you can buy fractions of shares which is nice if you don’t want to put much in. If you’re interested in using them they offer an affiliate deal where we both get 1 free share in a random company. Please read my affiliate policy here.
November Summary
Working remotely it can be tempting to blur work and home life. On top of that, I only have about 3.5 months left on this project so it is especially tempting to work a lot to maximise what I can get done in the time. From experience I know that it’s better to work smart than long. To this end consciously try to ensure I set pretty strict limits on my time. I’ve found this a great way to stay motivated and improve my mental health, whilst getting a lot done.
I’ve been really happy with how things are going at the moment. Work is progressing nicely and I’m learning lots of new skills to boot. For the most part I’ve been able to get on with the things I want to be doing outside of work.
In the back of my mind I’d still like to start some new things but don’t yet have fully formed ideas. I still think it’d be fun to start a business of some kind. Plus I’d like to find an outlet for my passion to help the environment. Some things to think about over Christmas I recon.
December Plan
I won’t be setting myself any particular goals to achieve in December, instead I’ll be trying to take a bit of a break with a few weeks off over Christmas. I hope that you can do the same!
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