In last month’s post I mentioned that my previous job contract for my postdoc had come to an end, with uncertainty as to whether or not it would actually get renewed. Well I now have an update!
For all previous monthly updates see here: Beyond the PhD Series.
How I spent my time in May
Given that I did some a fair bit of academic work in May, it’s probably clear that I started working again! Beyond work, I spent a chunk of my free time writing content for this website and reading.
Academic work
Publications
As much as I’d love to have good news relating to papers, just like the last few months there are no real updates to share this month!
I’m still waiting to get a response from the editor after submitting minor revisions for a paper from my PhD back in February. The journal is known for being pretty slow to respond but this is getting crazy. We submitted the article not far off a year ago now. Even so, we’re all dealing with unusual working situations at the moment so I won’t hold it against them.
With me taking some time out of work in May there wasn’t much progress with the first paper from my postdoc though we’re now pretty close to submitting it anyway. I expect it’ll be submitted by the end of June which is exciting!
Postdoc
Funding meeting
Following on from last month’s post, a few days into May we had our meeting with the people who funded the first six months of my postdoc position. At the meeting they said they wanted to support the project but didn’t want to spend a high proportion of their limited budget on a project which had already received proof of concept funding from them. This seemed pretty fair to me! The end result is that they’ve underwritten my contract for the next six months.
Underwriting? What do they mean? Basically my job is guaranteed for six months, but they’d prefer to not have to foot the bill for the whole six months. We’re expected to try and secure other funding in the meantime which will take the load off them whilst also hopefully securing us more longer term funding with a big grant. It’s a big relief to have the contract sorted.
Part of what I spent some time on in May was putting together a grant application (with myself as the principal investigator, which was a novelty!) which would pay for a few months of my time: roughly half would fall inside this six months and the other half would add extra length to my contract. We should find out a few weeks into June if I’m through to the next round.
Extension
The weird thing though with this contract extension was that by the time we received the funding offer in writing and the HR team at the university had given me a contract it was already half way through the month, yet the start date was listed as 1st May. Of course I hadn’t actually been working on the project in May though!
I asked if the date could get changed to some future date such as 1st June but got told it would be a big hassle including me getting treated as a new starter including losing employment benefits and having to spend ages doing training courses again.
The end result was that we kept the start date as 1st May, I started back on the project the very next day after signing the contract (20th May) and then frustrating I had to use up a few weeks holiday to “pay” for most of my time off.
This was pretty annoying, though I realised I had still had a fair amount of holiday left, which I’d have lost anyway if the contract wasn’t renewed so don’t think I’ve lost much upcoming holiday.
Life lessons
The process taught me a few lessons:
- Try to avoid getting yourself into these situations where your contact is due to finish but you have unresolved funding applications. I felt in the lurch and didn’t know whether or not I should be applying for other jobs.
- Use your holiday. In this scenario it was handy to have spare holiday to use up but it wasn’t ideal and if I’d not been kept on that annual leave balance would have been lost. For the new bit of contract I want to be able to enjoy time off while I’m in employment.
- This isn’t news but being a postdoc on short term contracts can be annoying. I must admit when I was looking at jobs back in April the private sector ones with permanent contracts (and higher salaries!) looked pretty darn tempting. If we don’t get a substantial extension of my contract at the end of the year maybe this’ll be the route I go down.
The actual work
I’ll be spending the next six five months increasing capabilities of the machine learning screening tool I’ve been building. I’m excited to not only add new features but also fix some of the things which I didn’t have time to work on near the end of my last contract. It’s also fun to be working again with the clinicians.
Potential business venture
Sorry but I don’t have anything concrete to share at the moment about the idea I alluded to a few months ago. I did a bit of work on it in May but didn’t want to spend all my time off working, maybe I’m getting lazy! In June I need to check back in with the person who came to me with the idea to discuss if we want to proceed with the idea.
The Savvy Scientist website
New posts
Four new posts went live in May:
- Beyond the PhD: May 2021
- How To Write A Figure Legend + Published Examples
- My personal finances report for 2020
- Masters vs PhD: Which is Right For You?
I’m pleased to have managed to get a new post out every week in May but of course this was helped by not being in work for the first two weeks. Sadly I didn’t manage to get very far ahead with posts so am not sure I’ll be able to keep up the pace with one a week now I’m back to having a full time job.
Website traffic
Traffic seems to be going down at the moment! 4289 users (-11% compared to April) and 6437 page views (-7%):
Learning new skills
Languages
Spanish and Mandarin are both progressing. I’m only averaging about 10-15 minutes per day but haven’t missed a day since I started last year so am currently on a 233 day streak. It’s fun!
Chin-ups & Pull-ups
Now that I have a proper set up I’ve been able to practice both chin ups and pull ups consistently for the first time in a long while! I’m aiming to hit three sets of 10 on pull ups, in May my highest was three sets of 7. As with many things in life, chipping away regularly at a challenge seems to be the best way to make progress.
Other stuff
Media I’ve consumed
In May I read:
Books
- Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert. Pretty decent read, reminded me a fair bit of Anna Karenina.
- The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long-Term in a Short-Term World – Roman Krznaric. This book was a bit of an impulse buy (second hand, on eBay as with many of my things!) after seeing this interview of Roman by my favourite bank. I’d recommend this book to everyone, ideas in the book can touch on so many parts of our lives.
Articles
- The Self Educating Child – MMM. I’ve followed MMM for years and think the point about the education system being outdated and hugely inefficient is becoming even more clear. I agree that tech could and should be better leveraged to get the most out of our educators. As long as all students have access to the tech (not a given!) I think it would make a lot of sense for content to be online (eg Khan Academy) and then teachers being able to focus on ensuring everyone is up to speed and helping with queries.
- 99 Additional Bits of Unsolicited Advice. I shared a similar list not too long ago and find them pretty fun to go through. Should probably bookmark it to embed some some of the more useful and interesting points.
Also in May I started my own list of things I’m grateful for, with the idea being that I add a few things everyday. So far I’ve not been consistent with it but I’d like to carry it on. I like the idea of becoming more appreciative of all the things we can be thankful for.
House: Green Living Changes
- We sowed loads of different veggies, and they’re looking great and itching to get planted in the ground. The veggies include tomatoes, peppers, kale, rainbow chard and even a few butternut squash which came from seeds I’d saved from our weekly veg box. Next step and a task for June is to make some raised beds for lots of the veggies with some of the scrap wood I saved from getting dumped last month. Kind of relating to all this talk of plants, my partner showed me pictures of this house in Japan and wow!
- Using some of that scrap wood (specifically pallets) I made my first thing: a tray to put hot cooking pans to serve things for dinner. It’s not much but was fun to make, especially knowing I’ve given the wood another use rather than it going to waste!
- Campaigning website 38 Degrees annually runs a Seeds For Bees campaign and I was able to sow some wildflower seeds, I’ll take a picture once they’re up!
- Related to the last point, I’d seen a suggestion for “No Mow May” on Twitter: not mowing grass for the whole month to help the local insect population out. We don’t actually have much grass at our property and without a lawn mower at the moment this was an easy challenge to adhere to! I’m not a fan of lawns anyway so would like to keep the grassy area a bit more wild long term. It’s been interesting to see all the different plant series popping up in an area that had previously always been mown short.
Monthly finances
Income
Postdoc +£2002.31. Between the new financial year which started in April, and seemingly getting an unexpected pay rise, I’m now taking home slightly more money. Still, it’s a pretty low salary for someone with a PhD!
With my time off in May I had considered making some cash for example doing matched betting (post here) but decided I’d rather enjoy the time off. On some of my posts I have started adding links for people to book calls to discuss PhD questions:
I’m not in a rush to monetise the website and don’t ever want to take away from the free content. These links are just for people who want additional PhD assistance.
Savings
In May my savings increased by £1246. With interest rates on bank accounts so low at the moment, I spent some time trying to think about where to keep my savings.
At the moment I’ve decided to invest a portion of my savings with tickr but also want to keep some savings in cash. The best place I’ve thought of, slightly unintuitively is to overpay my mortgage. The interest rate on the mortgage is higher than on any bank accounts (meaning I’m “up” compared to putting my money elsewhere) and once you built up an overpayment pot you can then take a break from making future payments. If I didn’t have a mortgage I’d probably be keeping some money easily accessible in Premium Bonds which currently pay a depressing 1%: which is at least better than nothing though!
May Summary
I enjoyed having a few weeks off in May, but it was a bit stressful at first with the uncertainty around my job. I’m glad to be back at work and am excited to get going with the next phase of the work but it was certainly nice to have a few weeks off first!
June Plan
My plan for June is simply to get back into the flow of my job, build some raised beds for the plants, enjoy the good weather and hopefully get my first vaccine dose. 🙂
I hope you have a great month!
Subscribe here to stay up to date with content:
Hello, hope you are doing well.
Eager to read about your ‘Beyond The Phd – July 2021’.
Cheers,
Sam
Hi Sam, thanks very much for checking in. Life got in the way and I’ve dropped the ball on regular posts, gah! I’ve been putting together an update which I’ll aim to post this weekend!
Thanks for the reminder and best wishes!
Jeff