Hey all! I'm an Australian PhD student working in supramolecular chemistry (mainly photoswitch related, with lots of supporting NMR studies). Alongside the chemistry I play music, dance, and have interests in politics/international relations/global security (any open-source analysts hanging around here?).
I've tried mastodon on and off a few times before this account, but never really managed to find a critical mass of enough others with shared interests to keep me here. With all the interest M's been picking up recently, it seemed like it might be worth trying again!
@spinflip Welcome here!As a researcher (but in neuroscience) I wish you good luck with your PhD :)
@black_sun hah, thanks. That thesis deadline is starting to get awfully close…
I honestly have no idea if I'll be looking for research work after my PhD or not, but so far I'm glad I decided to do it. Being given the time and support to spend a few years working on cool projects with minimal oversight is pretty great :)
@spinflip For me (I'm an assoc prof now) the real fun with science began after completing my PhD, when I started doing my own projects :)
@black_sun I feel that might well depend a lot on your student-supervisor relationship! Mine has been happy to let me pursue whatever seemed most interesting at the time, which has almost entirely been my own projects. With hindsight I really could have done with more direction, but I've certainly had an interesting time
@spinflip I was quite literally left by myself, with no practical or substantive support. However, it resulted in my independence and self-reliance, which according to a recent study are indicators of a good research performance :) http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2018/08/18/independence-performance-researchers/