Well hello there! At the start of the summer I took a much needed impromptu few weeks off from the blog. Once I broke out of the habit of a post roughly every week it was all too easy to let it slide and before I knew it this had turned into a four month break! Nevertheless, I’m now back and hope that everyone is well!
To ease back in to writing posts I thought I’d give an update from everything over the summer, including papers, grant submissions, plans for the blog and what I’ve been up to offline. The cover photo by the way is of Bath, the city where I supposedly work yet I’ve only been to the university once in the year I’ve worked there!
For previous monthly (!) updates see here: Beyond the PhD Series.
How I Spent My Time Over The Summer
Besides my day job, I spent my time over the summer pretty equally between doing DIY around our new home, projects to do with food growing and relaxing. Spoiler alert: we fostered some cats and they were a lot of work. More on that later in the post!
Academic Work
My current postdoc role
One year anniversary
I’ve now been in my current role for one year! Generally the work has been going pretty well. Not having a stable contract has made planning my work a little difficult: the longest contract I’ve had was six months long! Helping write grant applications has also taken up quite a lot of the time that I would ideally spend doing actual research.
Overall though I’m very happy with the progress, both on the project and in the skills I’ve picked up over the year. As always there have been some hiccups and I’ve been waiting on some data from other people but always have plenty to be getting on with.
Working 100% remotely is useful for saving time commuting but can still be a bit lonely and weird. Anyhow, almost exactly a year to the day after starting my job, I finally recently met my boss in person! The clinicians I work with organised a group get together and it was lovely to finally meet both my boss and colleagues. What a weird time we live in that I managed to go a whole year without meeting them.
I’m considering writing an article about my first year as a postdoc, let me know if you’d find it interesting and if there are any specific things you’d like to see discussed.
To patent or not?
One topic which has started to take up a bit of my time is IP protection.
We’ve started to have a few discussions to decide whether or not to try patenting what I’ve been developing. These discussions have both been with the university tech transfer team and some external lawyers.
A few key points have come out already:
- If you think you have developed a technology with protectable IP, begin discussions with your university tech transfer team straight away. It is good to be on their radar and they can direct you towards resources at various milestones as you develop the technology.
- Keep your mouth shut about the idea! It turns out that if you wish to pursue patenting you have to be extremely careful with which details get released publicly before submitting the patent application. This sounds obvious, but even just sharing a single slide or figure at a public meeting can completely destroy a patent application.
We’re currently waiting for some further discussions to take place to decide how to proceed and that has implications for our related paper which I’ll come onto shortly.
Grants & Contracts: my first PI grant!
My initial contract was six months long, and since then we’ve managed to secure three bits of funding to top up my contract by 1-6 months. I’m currently due to finish in mid-December but have three other grant applications underway.
Since it looks like my current role may come to an end, my partner had a quick look for jobs for me and found one at another nearby university. The role sounded interesting and the start date would line up with my current end date. I decided to apply and had an interview for it near the end of September. I’m currently waiting to hear back so next update I’ll be able to share the outcome!
Something which has both unexpectedly taken a lot of my time and been an interesting thing to get involved with has been grant writing. Some good news I’ve had since the last update is that one of the grants we’ll be using to extend my contract was my first grant application as the primary investigator (PI). The funding was internal to the university and it’s worth about £14,000 (so very small fry compared to many grants!) but it is still satisfying to have lead the grant application. Writing grant applications certainly requires a different mindset to writing papers. I’ll write a post about it to share my newly found wisdom!
Publications
PhD Paper B
I have some good news to share about papers!
Right near the end of August a paper from my PhD was finally accepted and is available here or for a limited time for free via this link. Since I’m not working in the same group anymore I spent most of a weekend looking for typos, errors and tidying up the figures. These things always take so much longer than expected!
The winding path to getting a paper accepted
This paper has been on a pretty long path before getting accepted.
It was submitted right around the time I finished my PhD in April 2020 and it got swiftly rejected by my first choice journal for it. Why did I want to publish there? The journal had recently published some work on a very similar theme to my work and I felt that our paper represented a lot of progress: not least because it was demonstrated in humans and not mice. I figured we were in with a pretty good shot.
Alas, the journal rejected it really quickly, which was honestly pretty frustrating. I’m starting to realise that perhaps the story you create can be as important as the actual work. Well, that’s what I’m telling myself anyway!
Anyhow, we swiftly reformatted the paper and submitted it to our second choice journal. And it was rejected again. I can’t actually remember how far through the review process it got and how much constructive criticism we received, but in any case we weren’t in any position to do further experiments since I’d moved away and the labs were all closed due to lockdowns.
We then submitted it to our third choice journal way back in June 2020 and it has taken since then for it to get through peer review.
It took about six months to hear back that we’d been given minor revisions, then another six months after making those revisions to hear back that one reviewer still had a few minor comments. Finally, on 28th August this year it was accepted!
PhD Papers Update
I call this recent paper “Paper B” from my PhD because it’s work from the second chapter of my thesis and it was also the second paper I submitted. But, because of this one taking so long we’ve actually had Papers C and D accepted since this one was submitted. Paper B is really one of the main parts of my PhD project so I’m happy to have it published.
If you’re nosey like I would be, here is a summary of papers from my PhD. They’re in the order that they both appeared in my thesis and were submitted to journals:
| Paper | Status, date published | Journal Rejections Before Publication | Revision Rounds |
| A | Published, October 31st 2019 | 0 | 1 x Major |
| B | Published, 28th August 2021 | 2 | 2 x Minor |
| C | Published, 3rd September 2020 | 0 | 2 x Major |
| D | Published, 4th September 2020 | 0 | 1 x Minor |
| E | Let’s call this one a work in progress, I haven’t written all of it yet… | N/A | N/A |
Some notes:
- Paper A was my first ever first-author paper and although we only faced one round of revisions it was major revisions with FIVE reviewers. I was so happy when we got through that with no more revisions! Check out my separate post for an indepth look at how to survive peer review and get your paper accepted.
- Paper A was the only one I actually had accepted by the time of my viva. It was a relief to have something published but you don’t usually need a publication to successfully pass your viva. I personally recommend submitting papers sooner than you feel fully comfortable as you can otherwise spend months endlessly finessing.
- Papers A-D each make up a chapter of my thesis. Paper E actually barely featured in my thesis, it was little more than half a page. But, I think the work could be interesting to publish so I’ve got it as a pet project in the background. I’d like to send it to my co-authors by the end of the year.
If you’d like a bit more of an in-depth read, check out my series about publishing. It includes a detailed look at many of the components of publishing a paper:
Postdoc Paper A
Way back in my last update I mentioned that we were preparing the first paper from my postdoc for journal submission. Well earlier in the summer we got it submitted.
To give a sense of how long I’ve spent with this current website post drafted, when I first starting writing this post the paper had been under review and I’d typed out “I’m excited to see what reviewers think of it. Hopefully we won’t be waiting six months to find out like with the last paper!”.
Well, it got rejected! Boooo.
The editors had sent it out to three reviewers and two of the three gave very positive reviews. The third was slightly more critical but with comments which could be addressed. Frustratingly we didn’t get a chance to reply because the editors rejected it for a few reasons they could have easily given before sending it out to reviewers. One of the comments was that the sample size was too small, but we’d specifically sent it to their category for short proof of concept studies! I was pretty deflated after getting the result but am motivated to submit it elsewhere since the reviewer comments were largely positive.
As of the end of September we’ve identified our next target journal. I’ve reformatted the text, addressed all the comments from the last set journal and have sent it around to my co-authors ready for submission. But due to the patent conversations mentioned above we might actually delay submitting it. Therefore it turns out that perhaps it was a little lucky that it was rejected!
At least we now have some breathing space to decide which path to follow and don’t need to risk it getting published before we’re ready.
Postdoc Paper B
I’ve started putting together the skeleton for a new paper which’ll take what we did in Paper A, expand upon it and provide a lot more clinically useful insights. The actual research is still very much a work in progress but it’s been fun to get the bones of a paper going and having another paper recently accepted is gives me a good boost of enthusiam. So far I just have one page, but I like to look at it as if that’s still a page more than not getting started at all!
With us delaying the submission of Paper A there is a small chance we’ll either roll both papers into one so I’m not going to spend too long fleshing out what I have so far, nor making trying to make it perfect. I believe that it makes sense to put together an initial skeleton, then talk to co-authors about the direction of the paper before you get too stuck in the fine details.
The Savvy Scientist Website
New posts
Ha! Usually at this point I give a list of all the posts I’ve published since the last update. Well I took four months off and haven’t published a single thing since my last “monthly” update in June.
Since buying my first home earlier in the year I’ve been distracted with loads of other things, which we’ll get onto shortly, and frankly have just been enjoying having my own space and not having housemates for the first time in five years.
Also, I’ve been slightly struggling with motivation for the blog. It is so lovely every time I get a nice message from someone saying that this website has helped them out, but even so I find it really difficult to bring myself to spend even longer starting at a computer after work: like I am right now at 10pm to try and finally get this post out!
I do want to get back on top of content though so here is a new strategy I’m coming up with as I type this:
- Reduced frequency. I need to be realistic that I have other ways I want to spend my time so cranking out a post a week won’t actually happen. Let’s go for a post every two weeks.
- Writing content I enjoy creating. Although super in-depth guides can be useful I don’t always find them that fun to write. Especially if it is on topics which I think content elsewhere covers pretty well. I want to make sure to add more of my own personal insights, since I figure I should be able to share some useful perspectives. I wouldn’t say I’ve ever sugarcoated the PhD experience, but maybe it’d be fun to write some honest content about the downsides of PhDs, which you might not find published elsewhere.
I’ll also probably try writing some shorter posts, but I hope this won’t mean they’re any less useful.
Website traffic
Here is traffic over the last year:
It’s been relatively flat, considering all the posts I wrote from March 2020 to May 2021!
Having not written any new posts in so long I didn’t have much of an expectation for recent traffic, but it’s nice to see it hasn’t tanked since not posting for four months. That’s not to say that I don’t want to post any more. In fact I really want to get back into a good routine with the website. One good reason to do so is that the rate of new subscribers seems to be increasing, so welcome to everyone who has recently decided to tag along. 🙂
In the last update back in May there were 6437 views by 4289 users. September has just ended and there were 7296 views by 5289 users: the website’s biggest month! Traffic is a little seasonal and it makes sense that around the start of the new academic year would see more traffic. Compared to September 2020, traffic is up by about 40%.
Life Outside of Work
That was enough academic and website content, let’s move on to some more interesting stuff!
We’ve got pets!
Fostering cats
For a long time my partner has wanted a pet but we’ve been put off committing to one since we still want to go abroad for an extended period when it’s possible. We started looking at fostering cats and after a bit of convincing I came around to the idea.
The idea being that we get to enjoy having a pet around for a short time while helping out a charity who also covers all the costs: sounds great right, what could possible go wrong?!
A few enquiries later and we were due to look after a cat which had to be rehomed quickly. We got a spot in our house prepared for it and on the day we were due to get the cat the plans changed. Instead of the one cat, we got asked if we could take on a pair of brothers. The previous fosterers were going away on holiday in just a few days so suddenly we went from no cats to having two!
The cats, called Raul and Pablo, were very cute at times but made it pretty difficult to get on with any work, sometimes by physically getting in the way!
Sadly the charity needed the cats to be kept inside and they had a LOT of energy. This made dealing with them pretty difficult at times. We could only cope with it for about three weeks and had to ask to give them back. The previous fosterers, who were now back from their holiday, were only too happy to take them back: much to our relief!!
Tortoise time
Due to some unfortunate circumstances within my family, in June we ended up with a more chilled pet: my family’s tortoise called Nifty. His pace and less demanding nature suits us much better than the cats who were constantly in need of attention. Better still, he eats a lot of the same food as us (as in, vegetables) and is always happy to devour any spare vegetables we’re growing outside.
Usually in the late afternoon he’ll wander back to his “house” but we recently had a bit of scare when Nifty didn’t return to his home.
Many hours searching later and it turned out that he had burrowed in the soil under our shed! With the cold weather and longer nights we think he was looking for a more cosy place to hibernate for winter. Little did he know that we had already planned to bring him inside just a few days later, so we were very pleased to grab him before it got too cold!
Language Learning
In September I hit 350 days in a row of language learning: Spanish and Mandarin. I still stand by the idea that Duolingo probably isn’t the most efficient way to actually learn a language, but it is certainly accessible, easy to use and addictive. If you have Duolingo and want to connect, you can find my account here.
Chin ups & Pull ups
Earlier in the year I set the goal of doing three sets of 10 pull ups. I’m glad to say that I’ve now hit this goal and gone up to five sets of 10 and three sets of 11, yay!
My training involves a session every 3 days and goes like:
- Chin ups: 5 sets of max reps
- Chin ups: 3 sets of max reps and some extra volume with bands to decrease difficulty
- Chin ups: As many reps as possible in 10 minutes
Then repeat for pull ups. I also do either dips or some type of press ups each session.
As soon as I get to sets of 12 for either chin ups or pull ups, I’ve started adding on weight. For now I’m on sets of 8-9 reps with a 3kg weight attached. The dream would be getting this many reps with a proper 20kg plate attached, let’s try and get there!
Home projects
One of the main reasons I’ve not posted over the summer is that I’ve been enjoying both the good weather and my new home: and even better a combination of both! I’ve made a number of sustainable improvements to the property and had a go at making some things from the scrap wood I cheekily got for free earlier in the year.
Green Living Changes
Harvesting rain water
There were a few water butts already connected to our shed roof when we got here, and the previous owners weren’t using them. It was simply a case of adding a piece of hose and a tap to make them functional!
But it was bugging me that when it rained we would only be collecting water from the tiny shed roof and all the water from our house roof would head straight down the drain.
Therefore I decided to buy some water butts to go along the side of our house. I tried to buy them secondhand but there were absolutely none available!
Refreshing my memory of fluid mechanics I came up with a simple way for three water butts to be connected seamlessly from the single gutter downpipe. Once the water butts are full any excess water automatically overflows down the drain: I’m very happy with how well it all works.
Rainwater is great, not just because it is free once you have somewhere to store it but I understand that it’s also much better for plants, which I’m trying to grow more of as we’ll come onto shortly.
Loft insulation
In September I braved a visit up into our loft space for the first time. It was quickly evident that we don’t have quite as much loft insulation as is currently recommended (270-300mm) so we decided that now was the perfect time of year to top it up. We went for this stuff, composed of 80% recycled glass.
At the time of writing here is how my partner’s office is looking…
Next task after publishing this blog post is to install all the insultation!
Food growing DIY
Raised bed
Most of our garden is paved or covered in gravel, therefore there wasn’t much of an opportunity to grow too many vegetables besides in small plastic pots. A fun project therefore was to make this raised bed:
As an added bonus, it was mostly filled with our homemade compost from earlier in the year, which felt pretty wholesome! We’ve now got a constant supply of tasty and super nutritious greens.
We planted a mix of rainbow chard, kale, spinach beet and pak choi. It’s been great to take a few leaves every few days and then watch them magically regrow!
Tomato frame
I’d seen vidoes online of people growing really tall tomatoes by winding them around some string attached to a frame and decided to have a go at doing the same.
They did pretty well but we started them far too late in the season and they were eventually hit by blight. We had better luck with another variety called tumbling toms. Tumbling toms are a bushy variety which grow in pots so we were able (in theory at least) to move them to a sheltered area as and when necessary. Moving heavy pots laden with tomatoes wasn’t particularly fun though so I think we’ll stick with a mix.
Strawberry planter
Our most successful and enjoyable food crop this year was most definitely strawberries. They’re so easy to grow and propagate, yet are delicious and very healthy. A lot of ours are the Marshmello variety and they are super tasty. If any readers are based in Bristol and want a plant, let me know: we’re constantly spreading the strawberry joy with friends, family and neighbours! We found that the ones which did best were raised off the ground.
I want to expand our capacity next year and make some improvements. I therefore had a go at making this planter. I wanted to try out different ways of building something so I learned a lot and am happy with how it turned out. It still needs sanding and protecting from the elements before it is ready for the outside world. It’ll stay inside over the winter because I don’t actually trust that the free wood I used would stand up to the elements too well long term. The plants won’t be growing much now until spring next year anyway.
If you want to order one, get in touch. Actually please don’t, this took me too long to make and it’s not at all a viable business!
On the topic of berries, I’ve very happy with how all our different varieties are doing. Here is a harvest one morning featuring: strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, a raspberry and some fuchsia berries. We have a few big fuchsia bushes in our garden and I only just found out that they are edible: it turns out they are delicious as well as having gorgeous flowers.
Media I’ve Consumed
Books
Here are the books I’ve read over the last four months:
June
- The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares. I should have read a synopsis of this first because boy was it confusing. It was pretty good once I figured out what was going on but it wouldn’t be the first book I’d recommend.
- Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming – Stephen LaBerge & Howard Rheingold. Available for free here. I rarely reread books but did this time because I’m still captivated by lucid dreaming, it just seems amazing. Wikipedia here if you want an intro to what lucid dreaming is. I’ve largely been unsuccessful at inducing a lucid dream but it’s still on my mind and would like to develop the skill.
July
- A Void by Georges Perec. I was even more confused by this than The Invention of Morel. For unconventional books like this I really must start reading a synopsis before I read it because going in blind doesn’t make it a more enjoyable experience. Now I understand it better I’d like to reread this one to fully appreciate it.
- The Opal Deception by Eoin Colfer. Fourth in the Artemis Fowl series. These books are embarrasingly basic but good fun to read and a really nice break from work.
August
- The Backyard Homestead: Produce All the Food You Need on Just a Quarter Acre!, edited by Carleen Madigan. Available for free here. Growing your own food is so rewarding and now that I have my own space I wanted to read a bit more about how to maximise the use of space and have got a few new ideas. Even if you just have a balcony or window sill I’d recommend trying to grow something. It is magical.
- The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer. Artemis Fowl book #5.
September
- How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease by Michael Greger & Gene Stone. This and the lucid dreaming book from June are perhaps the only books I’ve ever knowingly reread. It is well worth reading. I’m not convinced by everything in the book but some of the overarching themes about preventing disease are very thought provoking. It has shifted my mindset to ensure I’m conscious of what I’m eating to take care of my body more carefully. I would recommend reading this one. It could honestly make a huge difference to the quality and length of your life.
- Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox by Eoin Colfer. Artemis Fowl book #6. Not quite as profound as How Not to Die!
Video
- How Does Film ACTUALLY Work? (It’s MAGIC) [Photos and Development] – Smarter Every Day 258. I’ve long been a subscriber to Destin’s Smarter Every Day Youtube channel. This video is fantastic and I reckon us researchers could learn a lot from him about how to better communicate our work.
- Searching for Sugar Man takes you on a pretty amazing journey about a musician I’d not even heard of before watching the film. Well worth a watch.
- I only recently discovered the Kurzgesagt Youtube channel and have been devouring a lot of their videos. The content is educational and very engaging (and often cute) with great production quality. Below is one of the first videos of theirs I watched, but they’ve all been great. Check out all the most popular videos here. You won’t be disappointed.
Other Interesting Content
- Career Advice article by George Monbiot. For those of us interested in unconvential careers striving for impact this is superb. I’ve bookmarked it for regular future reading.
Monthly Finances
Income
Postdoc +£2024.91/month after all taxes (salary ~£35k). Income from my day job went up a little since the last update, I think because of some union action. Saying that it’s pretty eye opening looking around at typical salaries for jobs similar to mine in private companies!
Prolific + under £20/month. Every month I do a very small number of studies on Prolific. It’s not the best way to make money but it’s convenient and can be a nice break from work. If you want to find out more you can read my article reviewing Prolific as well as my post about top ideas to make money as a student.
Nationwide current account offer – Free £125! In August I took advantage of a very good offer from Nationwide: switch your current account to them and get £125 for free. Yes, it really is that simple. Within a week of switching I had the money in my account. I’m a serial current account switcher (read some of my previous monthly updates!) and why not, you get free money! Switching is super easy, they handle moving all payments, what’s not to love. I recommend subscribing to the Money Saving Expert weekly newsletter for good offers like this. All current account switching offers are listed here.
Savings
Since the last update for May my savings increased by £5055: about £1250 a month. I never know how interesting financial content is to readers, if you want more detail about how I save money and what I do with my savings let me know. Here are the one-off things I did since the last update:
Investments
I’ve made a few investments through Abundance recently. All three of them relate to food growing, perhaps because I’ve got it on my mind with all the food growing I’m trying to do myself!
- £120 Strawberry Global Berry
- £175 Sterling Suffolk
- £100 GB Lights
My general approach is to invest a small amount in as many different investments which could have a positive impact on the world. Only invest what you’re willing to lose.
Full disclosure: I now own a very small share of the Abundance platform itself. None of these links are affiliate links but for good measure here is a link to my policy.
Summer Summary & Upcoming Plan
Although my website has suffered for it, I feel like I’ve had an enjoyable and productive summer. Academically things are progressing well, and although there is uncertainty around my job contract I’m starting to feel like I’ve achieved enough in it to be happy with the progress, no matter when the contract ends. A lot of the next few months of work will include finishing off grant applications to be able to extend my contract, otherwise I’ll be looking for a job elsewhere.
Outside of my day job it was fun doing some things around the house and having the pet tortoise join us has been a nice addition. With the cold weather coming there are still lots of sustainable changes I want to make around making the house more insulated and efficient: it’s the engineer in me coming out!
Going forwards I plan to do these updates every quarter, but don’t worry I’m back from my break so will be posting much more frequently than I had been over the summer.
No matter where you’re at in your academic journey, keep well and as always do feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about academia!
A new addition to the site I’m trialling since the last update post:
Thoroughly enjoyed your post. Some ideas I might borrow :). Do you still do any matched betting and if not would you mind me asking why.
Thanks for your comment Alison, this series doesn’t get much love! I’m working on the next quarterly post so look out for that in the next week.
No, I don’t do any matched betting at the moment. I stand by the idea that MB can be a great way to make some money but for me personally I’m currently time-poor rather than cash-poor. There are simply other things which I find more rewarding that I’d rather be spending my time on at the moment. Saying that I plan to look into it again in the Spring when my workload should be easing up a bit.