newbies

Today I spoke at the Higher Degree Research orientation day. It's basically new PhD students. I love it. They're so green. They think they're going to work really hard and be outta here in under 3 years. They keep really strict schedules and only take half hour lunch breaks. They do inefficient literature searches and worry about the ethics committee. I remember those days. I think I shattered their dreams as I told them about all the problems that could halt their research and taught them ways to trick their supervisor into agreeing with them. Generally it was a very interesting meeting. They asked me to delay my talk so that a woman could go and do prayers first, and I met a very interesting GP who works in Indigenous health and is starting his PhD part-time...if that doesn't kill you, nothing will (the PT PhD, not the Indigenous health).

I was actually far more positive than I was last time I spoke at one of these things. I looked at my notes from last time and thought "Wow, I was really disillusioned back then!". Right now I'm in a far more satisfying stage of my research and I'm getting interested in the implications of my work again. I hope that came across today. Though I did start by showing them this comic, which is a good illustration of how I felt during last semester's O-Week. Now, i feel more like this.