Day 143: Meeting with my two PI’s

Some of our exoskeletons from the lab

Today was an interesting set of events. I had my meeting with my two PI’s (which I still think would make a hilarious television show). The meeting went well, I’m very excited, but I’m also getting ready to be very, VERY busy. Let’s breakdown how it went shall we?

Well the big news is my fellowship includes the cost of a new laptop! If you recall from my previous post(s) on the matter, everything is falling apart around me. No, really like everything in my house is breaking from the garbage disposal to the refrigerator, even my car! Everything I own is seemingly crumbling around me, my laptop was the latest one of these casualties. I don’t know that this would be my laptop, or if it would belong to the school, but in either case as long as I can travel with it, I’m happy. I need some clarification on how much I have to spend on it and what the details are, but this is good news either way.

Next up, I have a new experiment! It’s more in line with what my Co-PI is doing (actually it is exactly what my Co-PI does) and it is actually something I’m super interested in. This will be good because I get my hands dirty and I get to learn how that lab does things, which will further help set me up for the experiment that I NEED to do. It’s a two week experiment, but it will be intensive, two or three subjects a day intensive. For those of you who don’t do experimental work with humans, that is a LOT! Normally we do experiments with one person, two at most. Needless to say, I will be living at my second lab for a few weeks.

This also means something for my funded experiment. The one that I need to get done because it is what is/was paying the bills. We had planned to start it this month, but it looks like it will be starting next month now instead. The good, this means that there is more time for my colleagues from my home lab to get through the onboarding procedure for the second lab, which is much needed because it is slow. The bad, this means I will have less time to analyze the data before my April deadline for the completion of the work.

My own personal research (the possible topic for my dissertation) will have a second more in depth set of experiments to verify my initial findings over the summer (hopefully). Should that go well, by the end of the year I will have the groundwork set for my dissertation proposal. Personally, this is what I’m most excited about, it’s my baby and I cannot wait to see it through! I’m somewhat anxious to further show proof of concept, I really want this to work, but if it doesn’t then well I don’t know what I would do. I’m stuck floating in space trying to realign myself to a new topic for my PhD, which wouldn’t be the worst thing, but it wouldn’t be the best thing either. Thankfully my initial findings are strong, so I would be surprised if it didn’t pan out. That’s just how research works sometimes, if it isn’t repeatable then I’m out of luck.

Lastly, it’s time to talk publications. The new experiment that I am going to be working on means I get co-authorship. It should be in a good journal too, nature neuroscience or something of similar neuroscience prestige. I also will have either one large paper for a journal publication or two smaller papers for either confrence or letters (short journal articles). When I get done with my own (funded) experiment, I should have my first author journal publication, but also a conference paper from the research. All of this will be helpful in getting ready for my PhD proposal defense and be the groundwork for my research.

So essentially we’ve done the impossible, everyone is (at the moment) on the same page! How long that will be the case, I don’t know, but it is very promising. The future looks pretty bright at the moment. Stick around to see what comes next.