An adventure a day…
…by Chiara / from Austria / PhD Neuroscience 2016-2019
Hi everyone,
apologies for not showing any signs of life since my last blog post well over a month ago. Even when I try to deny it, it won’t help: PhD life did finally hit me with a full blast. While the first few months were fairly intensive in terms of getting everything set up, it is only now that I realise the full load of work. The deeper you dig in your data, the more possibilities open up for further interesting research questions you want to address – science is a never-ending story! The most important thing at the moment is to keep organised and try and focus my questions to a certain degree, because even though 3 years seemed like a long time to work on a project for me, time flies and I will (frustratingly) not be able to answer all these burning questions that have opened up with my first completed data set.
I feel it is very important to maintain a good balance between work and social life, and try to implement it as well as possible – but to be honest: there are days when you will not be able to have a proper lunch, and there are days when you will have to stay very late – a PhD is a commitment!
Talking about free time (this is probably not a really good example) – here are some things that I’ve done since my last blog post:
- I was procrastinating (and I was all out of colour schemes to try out in Graphpad) so I decided to make a homepage for my lab. My coding skills are a bit rusty, but I think it turned out nicely. Check the homepage our here:
www.herrgen-lab.com - Organised more Pint of Science: I have already spoken about this in one of my previous blog posts, but now things are really coming along. Pint of Science is a global science communication event that takes place on the 23rd to 25th of May this year, and Edinburgh (click here to look at the team) is going to be represented for the first time. I’m really excited to be on the Beautiful Mind team – making sure that neuroscience will be well represented in this great opportunity. The three nights are coming into shape now and ticket sale starts on the 18th of April – so make sure you check it out!
- I like visiting new cities and the flights were so cheap that I decided to take a trip to Belgium, more exactly: Bruges. Yep, Bruges is mainly known for the movie “In Bruges” and it’s a very touristy place, but it’s also very pretty. It’s a small old town with lots of sights and swans (there is a medieval curse that should there be ever fewer than 126 swans in the canals of Bruges, the city will be flooded and get destroyed). I also visited a neighbour city called Ghent, which is more studenty and also very pretty. Can recommend Belgium for journeys!
That’s all I have for now – cheerio!
