Giving a talk can be somewhat terrifying, especially if you lack confidence in your work or your abilities. It is over much faster though, and has more opportunity for guts and glory. The thing is, giving presentations is part of the territory, so the more you do now, the easier you will cope in future. In my lab, our boss looked down on posters as an easy way out, and therefore each abstract we submitted was marked (T). By number 9 I had found most of my fear at being in front of my peers and having my work ripped to shreds had evaporated.
But conferences are more than just about 10 minutes of sheer terror or 3 hours of sheer boredom. First, it's time off from the lab. It's a chance to meet up with old friends and make new ones. Networking is important, and I'm not talking about wifi. Just like in every other industry, this is how the best jobs are found - word of mouth. You'll also get a chance to meet the opposite sex, and odds are they're going to be dressed up and showing off like peacocks. Conferences are also an opportunity to meet other people working on similar problems to you. Finding out that everyone has the same problems with a particular assay, or developing a collaboration with a lab that can complement your work are ways in which a boring meeting can become a great success.
OK, you've beavered away in the lab for a few years now. You've transformed from a swaggering, cocky upstart to an overworked, underpaid cynic. You may have endured a crisis of confidence, bouts of depression or maybe even turned vegan. Experiments work now. Data begins to build up and you start putting together a picture of your thesis. Writing up affects people in different ways. Some do it quickly, over a matter of several weeks. Others find it a much more drawn out process. This author obviously enjoys the act of writing, or you'd not be reading this, and so I found it true for my PhD. Sitting down and surveying the body of work you've produced over the preceding years lets you appreciate the scope of your work, and you can show off and use long words. Different mentors will encourage their young charges to approach the writing in different orders.
A thesis will consist of the following: A general introduction, methods, results chapters and a discussion. Word and Endnote will take care of the references for you. I'd start with the methods. This describes what you've been doing everyday in the lab, and ought to be the easiest part. It is safe to say that if you struggle here, you're going to have bigger problems further down the line. You can even start to write this as you work your way through grad school. The general introduction is where you get to read over all the important papers, and many more too, in the field, in order to put your work in context. The thing is, this will be read by your examiners, probably quite carefully, so for god's sake make sure that the papers you quote actually say what you think they say. Next up come the results chapters. Each of these should tell an individual part of the story, and each one might make a paper in and of itself. Be consistent with your graphs and figures. It's here that those IT skills will begin to shine again, and you can fill your thesis with schematics and diagrams while you laugh at your colleagues, brows deeply furrowed, hunting and pecking away at their keyboards. The discussion will be the last part you write, wherein you explain the greater ramifications of your work, and make wild statements about how you think it will transform the world, without having to actually back it up too much. I had great fun writing mine, and was thoroughly looking forward to discussing what I saw as brilliant thinking and writing. Boy was I in for a surprise.
Next week, we look at the ordeal that is getting your PhD, and the excitement to follow.
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