The end of the term
It looks like I survived. Another term down and one step closer to the finish line. It’s not quite the clean victory I was hoping for, but after yesterday I now no longer have any class requirements for my PhD. The only requirements I have now are with my dissertation, so now I can focus on that work exclusively. I’m not going to lie it feels pretty good. Since the end of the term isn’t as clean cut as I was hoping for. I figured today we can look at the leftovers from the past week of panic. We might as well after the week I had!
(more…)Major milestone 3 (of 3)
I’m exhausted. Let’s just get that out of the way. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much work to get done in my life. No, scratch that I know I’ve never had this much work to do in such little time in my life. My eyes feel like they are about to bleed and I’m afraid if I turn my head to the side my brain will leak out my ears. The end of the term is usually an academic marathon, but this is ridiculous. It’s just been deadlines left and right. Anyway today is the end of the next set of major milestones, it’s not the victory I was hoping for, but I’m hoping rest will not be too far behind.
(more…)Time for the big finish
Well call me a wizard because not only did I somehow manage to get everything done yesterday that NEEDED to happen, I also somehow managed to make more work for myself. Yeah, the universe hates it when I’m productive apparently. I’m tipping the balance and that’s never a good thing. But seriously, I now have more work to do and a lot of it is due tomorrow. Don’t worry, I’ll explain. Later I’ll probably cry about it too. (not serious) (super serious)
(more…)Major milestone 2 (of 3)
Can’t stop now. We’re at what I’m calling major milestone 2 of 3. Yep, yet another batch of stuff is due today. I’m not super thrilled with all this and I still have so much to do before Friday I want to scream. As with major milestone 1 (here), we’re going over what I have done (spoiler not enough), what I need to do (a whole lot), and the plan to get it finished (cry for a few hours). Let’s just dive into it since there isn’t a whole lot of time (for me anyway).
(more…)One major milestone down
Yesterday was sort of a cliffhanger. Everything was due, not a lot was fully complete and I had not one, but two things that my main-PI needed to urgently respond to and he was MIA. I swear you couldn’t write something with more drama if you tried (at least for a PhD candidate). Never fear today I’m taking a brief respite from the work I need to get done today to share what happened yesterday. As the usual this week, it was a wild ride all the way to the end.
(more…)Major milestone 1 (of 3)
The good news, like it or not today I will have less work to do! The bad news is that I’m sort of up against the wire here. As promised, it’s all deadlines all the time for the next week. While this may not be the most useful or exciting read, it certainly is going to be a dramatic finish (see: train wreak). Today for simplicity since there’s so much to do and literally only days to do it, let’s go over what I have to do today and exactly where I am in all of that work. Spoiler, it’s not looking pretty.
(more…)The first major deadline
Well tomorrow is the deadline for several of the things I’m working on, including but not limited to things I still need to get done today! Fun times for sure (not really). As promised yesterday we’re pretty much just watching the super slow train wreck that is occurring. To be fair it’s either going to be an extremely close call or a complete disaster, but that’s just how these things go sometimes. Let’s dive into what’s due tomorrow and where I am exactly in the process.
(more…)On the importance of milestones
We’re counting down the days and there’s still so much to do. It’s probably going to be updates from here to the finish line because let’s face it, there’s not much time for anything else! Since yesterday I talked about the importance of planning and why it’s good to lay things out, I figure today I’ll talk about the importance of milestones since I have about a dozen or so I need to hit! For the sake of time, let’s just dive right in.
(more…)The game plan
Well I’ve got two days (not counting today) to get so much stuff done I don’t even know where to start. The good news is I’m feeling slightly better about my odds. The bad news is nothing is done so there’s nothing to celebrate just yet. I have a plan though and I feel good about the way I laid out my work, if I’m careful (and lucky) I’ll be able to get it all done. We’ll see, it’s going to be tough, but today let’s cover why I plan my work when I get swamped like this and how you can do it too.
(more…)The thing about deadlines
It’s no secret I’m running around trying to finish everything I need to do lately. Deadlines for just about everything all fall within a few days of each other. I literally have a about a dozen things all due next week plus or minus two days. I’ve been trying to remain calm and remind myself that I’ve been in this situation before and it always works out in the end. That doesn’t stop me from stressing out and yesterday I got an email that could derail a lot of the planning I’ve been doing to make certain that all the work gets taken care of. Yep, I got another job to do.
(more…)Learning can be painful
Well today was the final lab meeting of the term. While the weekly meetings will (probably) be continuing, it’s still a big deal and could (hopefully) mean the end of my six weeks or so of torment. Normally I give it a few days before I talk about just how badly the meeting went, but this time was different and I’m thankful for it. The difference? My main-PI was out for medical reasons, so we got to talk about the project a little more freely.
(more…)An end in sight
Well I had an awkward conversation with my main-PI yesterday about some of the progress I had made and while he seemed generally supportive, it unfortunately wasn’t particularly helpful. All that work I had hoped to finish over the weekend? Still going, but there’s other things going on too so we’re counting down to the end of the term now and there’s an end to a lot of this, but it’s going to be (as always) a race to finish.
(more…)Flexible coding for data visualization
My main-PI has an odd habit of wanting us to edit things as we’re presenting them. I’ve watched this happen and had to do it myself. Suddenly you find yourself editing a paper/grant/etc. and forgetting how to spell your name because you’re so flustered. It isn’t just papers though, it’s our visualizations that we make. He will ask us to go in and change things as they are being shown. This has happened to me several times already and more often than not I’m ready for it. So today I figured I would go over some of the things I do to make sure that I don’t spend the entire time sweating over edits to my code.
(more…)Apparently I’m close?!
We’re talking about it again, the fact that every week for the past 5 weeks now I’ve been given tasks to do and then presenting on them the following week. It’s been… hard. However, my main-PI gave me hope that the end of all this is close, at least that’s the hope. He said I was close, so today we’re going to talk (as usual vaguely) about what I have left to do before this weeks meeting and why I cannot wait to be done with this.
(more…)When you don’t want to say no
In undergrad I had a discussion with my advisor, or rather he was more of a mentor, he wasn’t technically an advisor. It went something like this, I don’t know what to do next because it all seems so interesting. He argued that it was a good problem to have and while I have generally narrowed down my focus (I am doing a PhD after all), I still have an issue with focusing my excitement. It’s like being at Disneyland and trying to force yourself to go on just a single ride your entire trip. I don’t wanna, I want all the knowledge!
(more…)Journal club
Okay, get this I completely skipped over the fact that my Co-PI started a “journal club” for our little lab. I say little because for the longest time it was just the two of us and the research coordinator (who is amazing by the way!), but now we have not one, but two others in the lab. It’s nice not having to do a lot of extra work, but different topic for another time. We formed a journal club a short 8 weeks ago and every other week one of us sends out a research paper they find interesting about a week prior to our biweekly meetings and then that person presents on it. This week it’s my turn and of course, the universe is against me.
(more…)On the ambiguity of email
As per the usual around here I’ve been swamped with things to do. Between classwork, experiments, data processing, and writing, its been a lot. It may sound like I’m repeating myself at this point, but stuff just keeps coming up and I prefer talking about it instead of just keeping it all bottled up. More to the point, it means I have new things to do and I like to talk them out here so I have a clear(er) path moving forward. What does this have to do with email and the title of today’s post? Well, let’s talk about that.
(more…)Mental health and time management
I don’t make the rules. As much as I like to think I’m in charge of my body and that I can will it to do what I want, I’m more of a passenger here. Sure I can make plans, that doesn’t mean my body will agree or that my brain will let me do all the things. It’s a very tense arrangement, I have life stuff to do because I have basic human needs and my body/brain tells me exactly where I can shove all that. Somehow I’ve managed and I figure why not share how I’ve developed work arounds for some of this, maybe it will help someone else in the same boat.
(more…)Fun with coding!
Yesterday I worked and worked, then I worked some more. By the time I called it quits it was well past my normal stopping time. The problem was that nothing was going right yesterday. When I finally gave up I had gotten exactly nothing done. It was one of those days as a collogue said sometimes you just have to power through it. The problem is I don’t have the time to just power through. Which reminded me of how I normally deal with stress, which is funny and I recommend others do this too.
(more…)Another week in review
A week ago exactly I gave a review of the week I had and a look at the week coming up. I thought it was so much fun I’m doing it again, because that’s what passes for fun around here. Who knows maybe I’ll do this regularly! Basically a lot has happened this week and now is a good time to catch everyone up on some of the oddball things I’ve done and things I may have missed in favor of freaking out about the work I’m doing. So let’s just jump into my semi-traditional introduction, then we can look back and ahead. It’s fun for everyone!
(more…)The homework rush
Not the most exciting of topics, especially after yesterdays news that I’m giving a presentation at the BRAIN conference, but my homework is due tomorrow. This will be the first time this term that I haven’t finished it early. Normally I will have turned it in days in advance to get it off my plate, but there’s so much going on that I’m not even certain that I will have the chance to finish it. What do I do in that situation? Well keep calm and carry on… I’m not British, but I think that’s how the phrase goes.
(more…)I’m giving a talk!
Well I slipped through the cracks yet again! It hurts me to admit that I’ve probably earned this one. The 7th annual BRAIN initiative investigators meeting is coming (in June) and I was selected for a Trainee Highlight Award. Is it a big deal? Probably not, but I’ll take a win when I can get it. Today we’re going to dive into what exactly this means for me and why even little victories should be celebrated. Is it a little victory? I mean they did pick me, so what does that say about them?
(more…)Everything went better than expected!
So yesterday I had my hands full with a bunch of work to do, no motivation what so ever to do it, and a deadline that was today. I didn’t want to burn myself out, especially since I still have a homework assignment due this weekend and yet another round of tasks set out before me, this time before the next week so that’s… umm terrifying. Let’s just dive into what happened today during my meeting.
(more…)When the exhaustion hits
Woke up this morning feeling less than stellar. This happens pretty regularly when I push myself for long periods of time. It’s not ideal, since I still have a bunch of stuff to do, but thankfully after living with my limits for so long I have a few back up strategies to help me get through it all. Ideally the school would offer accommodations to people like me, but to get them there is a lot of hoop jumping, enough that it doesn’t make it worth the effort. I suspect that’s the point.
(more…)New computer issues…
Well if I’m not a magnet for computer issues I don’t know who is. If it’s not one computer it’s the other. In this case, I had problems a while back with my desktop (here) where the watercooler went bad and my CPU decided it wanted to scream at me anytime I ran the computer, like just turned it on, not doing anything with it. This time it’s my laptop that I’m having trouble with and unlike my desktop, the laptop is my daily use computer so I’m not too happy.
(more…)Mental health in academia
Five years, that’s the average time it takes to finish your PhD. Depending on who you are and how you think, that may be a blink of an eye or forever. I signed away four years of my life early on so five years and frankly the commitments leading up to it didn’t feel like that long at all. In a lot of ways getting a PhD is a lifetime of work and not long at all. I’ve hit the half way point roughly and I can see why so many people drop out of the program. It’s a lot.
(more…)A week in review
I figure it’s a good time for the recap of the week. I mean there was a lot going on and while I want to spend some more time on my “in statistics” series, I also really need a break. So instead of spending a lot of time making sure the information I’m presenting is accurate, concise(ish), and (with luck) well thought out, I figure it would be easier to talk about the things I’ve had to do this week and the things I get to look forward to! Joy, welcome to life as a PhD candidate.
(more…)Defining parametric tests in statistics
We’ve been throwing around the term a lot in this series. I’ve been saying in parametric statistics this, in parametric statistics that, but I kept putting off giving a definition. It’s not because it’s hard to understand, it’s just that typically when you’re doing statistics you already know if you’re using a parametric test, but because we try to make no assumptions in this series, we’re going to put this to bed once and for all. Today we’re talking about parametric statistics!
(more…)Independence in statistics
A while back we introduced the central limit theorem, it was a way to take data and make it normal (gaussian) as if by magic, which is one of the assumptions needed for parametric statistics (the most commonly used kind). Today we’re introducing another assumption, that the data are independent. The idea of independent events is probably straightforward, but it’s yet another bedrock of statistics that we should talk about in depth to help us understand why things are the way they are.
(more…)Variance in statistics
Variance, it’s one of those concepts that get’s explained briefly then you find yourself using it over and over. Now that I have a free moment, I figure it’s about time to revisit the “simple” concept and just take a minute to apricate why we have to deal with variance so often and why we try so hard to minimize it when we’re doing experiments. Just like the discussion about the mean, there’s some subtilty that goes into the idea of variance and it’s square root cousin standard deviation and we skip over it in favor of getting into more complex topics.
(more…)Scientific figures are hard!
Well now, part of the work I needed to get done this week involved making some new figures. Actually I had added work dumped on me yesterday that I got done just as quickly thankfully. However, there’s a bunch of other figures I need to make that are due… tomorrow! Ah! So of course instead of actually making them I’m here to talk about how big a pain figures are and why we (the scientific community) stress out about them so much.
(more…)Clinical research in a pandemic
One of the more interesting things about the pandemic is that everything at the university level shut down. They still send out emails suggesting that everyone wants to go back to in person classes, but they haven’t followed through with that threat. Human participant research has been halted and even though we’re probably going back to “normal” in the fall, right now nothing is happening. That’s at the university level though, clinical research is a different story.
(more…)Another approaching deadline!
Well it’s going to be down to the wire this week. It’s good to know we’re keeping the theme, if you’ve been following along for awhile you already know it’s always down to the wire. This week is particularly challenging because I have competing interests for the time I have. There’s only 24 hours in a day, so there’s only so much work that can get done. I would prefer to not do it at the last minute, but here we are… again.
(more…)Fun with Rstudio
Okay, not really. Having to use R is a pain. I’m not a fan and the structure they use is very confusing to me as someone who uses MATLAB on a regular basis. I understand matrices, I regularly make and successfully work with higher dimensional matrices ( > 3, which hurts your brain to think about a 20+ dimensional matrix, but hey whatever gets the job done). R on the other hand feels foreign and the commands feel clunky.
(more…)Cracks in the support system
Family, friends, relationships, these are just a few things that provide people with a safety net. How many people, if they lost their job, would be able to rely on family for support? Surely not everyone, but a good portion of people have others to help them if they were in need. Hell, here in the US we’ve made it almost necessary to rely on the kindness of others to crowd fund for healthcare needs. Like it or not, people need people, well most do anyway…
(more…)Caution: under pressure
For a third week in a row I’ve been instructed by my main-PI to give our lab virtual presentations on the work I’ve been doing. It’s been a point of stress now for almost a full month and doesn’t seem to be letting up any time soon. After every meeting I get a list of things I need to do before the following meeting and this time was no different, so today I guess we’re going to take a look at what exactly is next on my to-do list.
(more…)On failure
Maybe it’s the hangover from yesterday’s news about my fellowship, but I feel like I got backed over repeatedly by a truck. Maybe it’s the uncertainty of the future, or all the work I still need to get done for tomorrow, maybe it’s a lot of things. Somedays I wish I could just pause, but I don’t think I’ve ever been able to stop and don’t really know what I would do with myself if I did. Actually I do know, since I can recall at least one time in my life where I hit the pause button and it didn’t end well.
(more…)NDSEG fellowship result
Applying for a fellowship is sort of like creating a time capsule. The lag between when you submit it and when you hear anything back can be 6 or more months, long enough that you’ve completely forgotten that you applied. Or at the very least it isn’t at the forefront of your brain anymore. I’ve kept an eye on my application sporadically, I know people who check weekly and I’m sure there are plenty who don’t check at all until the results are sent out. It’s a slow motion car crash, you hope for the best, but it’s no longer in your control.
(more…)The long data processing road
Okay I’m taking another break from the “in statistics” posts, at least for today since the next topic is going to be a long multi-day post worth of stuff and I need an easier post for today. I have way too much stuff going on at the moment to organize a long post! In any case, I figure I could give an update to the data I’ve been working with and how that whole mess is going. It’s mind numbing and exhausting work, but not in the way you would think.
(more…)The Bonferroni correction in statistics
Well we’re doing it, today we’re talking about the Bonferroni correction, which is just one of many different ways to correct your analysis when you’re doing multiple comparisons. There are a lot of reasons you may want to do multiple comparisons and your privacy is our main concern so we won’t ask why. Instead we’re going to talk about how to adjust your alpha (chances of making a type 1 error) so you don’t end up making a mistake.
(more…)One-tailed vs. two-tailed tests in statistics
Sit right back because we’re telling a troubling tale of tails full of trials, twists, and turns. The real question is, will we run out of words that start with t during this post? It will be tricky, but only time will tell. When do we use a two-tailed test vs. a one-tailed test and what do tails have to do with tests anyway? With a little thought, I think we can tackle the thorny topic. In short, let’s talk tails!
(more…)The p-value in statistics
We’ve been dancing around the p-value for some time and gave it a good definition early on. The p-value is simply the probability that you’ve made a type one error, the lower the p-value the less chance you have of making a type one error, but you increase your probability that you’ll make a type two error (errors in statistics for more). However, just like with the mean, there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to the p-value so let’s go!
(more…)The z-score in statistics
Okay, time to get back to statistics, if only for today! P-value, z-score, f-statistic, there are a lot of ways to get information about the sample of data you have. Of course, they all tell you something slightly different about the data and that information is useful when you know what the heck it is even trying to tell you. For that reason we’re diving into the z-score, it’s actually one of the more intuitive (to me anyway) measurements so let’s talk about it!
(more…)Freedom of speech
I didn’t expect to have to talk this out, but here we are. Freedom of speech applies to the government, not private entities such as (but not limited to) twitter, facebook, schools, work, and basically any private place you congregate. Freedom of speech also does not mean freedom from consequences of that speech, you can’t talk about blowing up a school for example without consequences, even if it was a “joke.” More importantly, the government already ruled that certain hate speech isn’t protected. Why is this important? Well it’s a good reminder for the internet in general, but this time it’s a little closer to home reminder, namely the lab I work in.
(more…)EEG cleaning progress
Yesterday’s coding work went better than expected! That may or may not bode will for the rest of the week, but hey at least I’m sort of ahead of schedule. Today I figure we can take a quick look at what I’ve been doing with the data and why. This will be part informative and part me complaining about how everything has to be so damned hard (basically the usual around here). Mostly it will just be some visuals of the things I’ve had to change to get everything looking like my main-PI wants, he’s got a particular style he likes so a lot of large text, bolded labels, etc.
(more…)The juggling act
Blogging and coding and writing, oh my! There’s a lot to get done, seems like a running theme around here doesn’t it? If it were possible to clear some of it off my plate it wouldn’t be so bad, but the sad truth is deadlines seem to like to group together and there are quite a few coming up. Most of them are for my class so I can’t really miss those even if I wanted to. My research deadlines I can’t really miss either, not without some consequences anyway. So we’re back to juggling everything, but as we’ve seen in the past, I’m pretty good at this.
(more…)The new to-do list
It’s been busy! So busy I was trying to find time to write while working on the million other things I have going on. Since I have a moment, I thought now would be as good a time as any to go over the big list my main-PI gave me to do before next week. It’s a long, long, long list and as you may expect, he’s pretty far removed from the situation, so I don’t think he realizes how difficult it is to do what he’s asking, but we’re doing any anyway! Thankfully I’ve gotten pretty good at coding, the bad side is that it’s not my code I’m working with, so that’s the start of my struggles.
(more…)Twice the work, half the… fun?
I work with… Braiiiiins!! Well yesterday I touched on an experiment I did waaaay back in October-ish of last year! With the way things are going it feels like five years not 5 months, but what can you do? My main-PI has started to not so gently or subtly push me to process the data to his satisfaction and start working on the publication of the results. There’s been a lot going on that has pulled me away from the project, from the end of December to the middle of February I was working on grants, but now there isn’t a whole lot stopping me from working on this project almost exclusively… if you don’t include the other grant I’m writing and the fellowship I’m supposed to apply for.
(more…)A PhD proposal defense
Not mine, at least not yet. A colleague of mine is defending his PhD proposal today and while I was going to wait until I did mine to go over the details about how that works and why we do it, I figured today was as good a time as any to do it. Besides I probably (definitely) repeat myself a lot around here, but that’s the catch with blogging daily. So let’s get into what a proposal defense is and why it’s important, shall we?
(more…)The mean in statistics
Yeah it seems simple, I mean (no pun intended) the mean is just the average! Yet as with so many different things in statistics there’s more to the mean than meets the eye! We’re going to go into why the mean is important, why it’s our best guess, why it may not always be your best option, and why we work so hard to find the mean sometimes! It seems simple, but I promise today we’re answering a lot of the big “why’s” in statistics, so let’s go!
(more…)
Lunatic Laboratories 