I’m working hard, honest!

I started my PhD 10 months ago. Soon I will be a second year PhD student. I’ll have two years of funding left, and realistically not much to show for the year behind me. Am I worried? Well, no actually. Even though I still don’t have a definite subject for my thesis, I’m feeling pretty good.

Over the last three weeks I’ve been working on a literature review that was officially due in October. The main reason why I’ve been putting it off is because I couldn’t decide what to review. With a PhD subject as vague as “transients and high-time resolution astronomy”, I could have been reading and writing for years. But, after Vik tried and failed to convince the head of the astronomy group that I shouldn’t really need to do one, it became obvious that I couldn’t put it off any longer. It was my top priority for the new year.

I chose to write a review on the Fast Radio Bursts that I mentioned in a previous post. This was a good choice because this is a new, very exciting, and little understood topic, so there are relatively few papers to read, and not much to write about. This was a bad choice because I have no background understanding of radio astronomy.

Thankfully, the positive points outweighed the negative ones, and two weeks of reading fascinating papers seemed to fly by. I usually absolutely despise reading the literature. It’s by far my least favourite part of science, and yet, I thoroughly enjoyed it this time round. If that doesn’t convince you of how cool these bursts are, maybe this cat will.

“Fast Radio Bursts? Oh yeah they’re cool…”

The review was supposed to be 3000 words, but of course I pushed that to something like 4700. It took two further days to write the essay, and one last day to make the corrections that Vik advised. I submitted it this afternoon, and now have at least one piece of work I can show to say I haven’t been watching YouTube all year. 

With new FRBs being discovered regularly, focus is beginning to shift to optical wavelengths, and the hope of seeing these bursts as they occur. I’m really hoping this might become my main PhD project, as we aim to start following up discoveries, or even schedule simultaneous observations, with the pt5m in La Palma and ULTRASPEC in Thailand. If so, the literature review will be an integral part of the introduction chapter of my thesis. If not, it will be somewhat of a wasted exercise.

Speaking of La Palma and Thailand, I will of course be heading out there again soon. This time I’m scheduled for two separate ULTRACAM runs at the WHT, which have a gap of about 5 days between them (more hiking and diving I hope). I’ll also be back at the Thai National Observatory for a week of observations at the end of March, followed by a week of diving in the South. This means another 40 days away from home (with a week’s gap in the middle) for more observing experience and holiday, but dire prospects for progress with the PhD. Not that I’m complaining of course! It just means I really ought to start working a bit harder.

On that note, it’s 6pm on Friday evening – home time!