I’ve been researching AND carrying out my project for two and a half years now! I’m due to finish after three years (I have a lot of work left to do but hopefully I’ll finish in time!). 🙂
Hi Wesley1, I have several projects running at the moment. Some are older than others. My soil clean up project has been running since 2005, though we have gone through many stages of the project. The three pieces that I am working on now are between a few months and a year and a half old. That’s my oldest project. Some of my others are much newer. I do a lot of work with other scientists so each of us has our part to do. Normally it takes me a while to take an idea and translate it into a project. It’s a bit like incubating — the idea needs time to hatch.
I am looking at various ways to model animal movement behaviour – both individual and in groups, and for various animals (coral reef fish, plankton, human crowds, and others).
I am also doing a number of projects related to management of fisheries. Some of this work is used by the EU fisheries managers to make decisions about how many fish to catch each year, so this is quite useful and important work!
I don’t do all this myself though – I have about 7-8 other scientists who I work with and I also supervise 6 PhD students who are all working on their own projects as well.
I am also carrying out several projects at the same time. I have started planning my PhD about three years ago now. Some projects I have to plan as I go (field research) and this one I will finish this autumn. One experiment I am running took me about half a year in the planning, and it will last even past the time I finish in about a year. Another experiment I planned in a matter of weeks, and it’s only taking me about two months to carry it out, although that one I can just work on occasionally.
I am in the second year of my PhD so I have only done 2 years of work and will finish next year. But hopefully I can continue with similar research somewhere else!
Interesting because I have friends doing astro physics and apparently they turn up before their PhD with all the data they need so they just use the time to write about it and work on it.. maybe some equations and things like that!
@Zara, you will be amazed at how much work you will get done in the next few months and how much writing. Good luck! May the caffeine be with you! 🙂
No postdocs lined up, although there is going to be another PhD student picking up where I left off when I finish! But you’re right, I’m gonna have to deal with having a crayfish-shaped hole in my life… I won’t know what to do with myself! :-O
Comments
Christine commented on :
@Zara, you will be amazed at how much work you will get done in the next few months and how much writing. Good luck! May the caffeine be with you! 🙂
Zara commented on :
@Christine here’s hoping! every now and then I realise how much I still have to write and am overcome with a crippling fear…. dark times lie ahead!!
Edd commented on :
How will you cope without crayfish? Or is there a crayfish postdoc on the horizon…? 🙂
Zara commented on :
No postdocs lined up, although there is going to be another PhD student picking up where I left off when I finish! But you’re right, I’m gonna have to deal with having a crayfish-shaped hole in my life… I won’t know what to do with myself! :-O