Tag: doctorate

Posted on

Feels Like Friday

Friday is not just the name of a day of the week, it is the name of a feeling. And sometimes, the whole universe feels this feeling with you (as evidenced by nothing going right and equipment often not working on a very particular day of the week).

This week, every day had been feeling like a Friday for some strange reason, and then I realized that this week really was the “Friday” of the year.

No wonder I have been running high on introspection – typical “Friday” mood. Not to mention, this “Friday” also marks the official mid-point of my PhD, which means that the time is ideally situated to look back on how far I have come and how to best manage the rest half.

So, upon the (partially) successful survival of my two years in Finland and in my PhD, I sat down to count my little successes along the way, which took me perhaps five minutes, not much there. I’m also pretty sure that I’m still navigating the unpredictable waters of culture shock and adjustment, but now I find myself on stable ground more often than not (I would probably put together my final thoughts on the subject, which are still worth about three to four blog posts). 

But there is light in the middle of this tunnel. Lately, I have finally been seeing some shape and form from my last two years of optimizations. Or that’s what I would like to believe (the human brain is really good at erasing information that causes it discomfort, so maybe I’m living in my little, custom-made, fantasy bubble).

Today, I did a little exercise. I made boxes for each week I was getting in the next two years (inspired in part by a part of this brilliant and funny TED Talk). Before this, I didn’t know how uncomfortable a task as simple as drawing and counting boxes, can be.

As of 29 December 2019, I have 105 boxes. Don’t look like all that much.

Really put things in perspective for me.

Posted on

Bat Signal

A couple months ago, while measuring some samples with an oscilloscope, I witnessed a never-seen-before phenomenon.

As is completely obvious, the results were undoubtedly a part of some bigger picture.

Source.

Is this a signal from the universe? Some kind of a message?

Is that you, Batman?

 

Posted on

How To Science

So today, I came across this very inspirational post and decided to hold onto it. It was a good reminder that discovering you are wrong is still science (if attempted scientifically).

(Source).

Posted on

The Glove Box

Lately, I’ve been interfacing with the glove box a lot, which is next to inevitable in my field of study.

If you have never seen or heard of a glove box before, I have got an exclusive, self-explanatory diagram of it to show. But like all things science, this story is not as simple as that.

… But suffer, one must: The bare-minimum illustration of a glove box. (If text too small, click on image).

If your glove box is big, in a looming sort of way, it can be quite intimidating at first. And it can seem so… fancy to be working in a glove box then. Like you had to qualify for it. Well, with more experience, you find out that the basic qualifications you need are: 1) having a piece of work that you need to do in a glove box; and 2) appropriate height (as in, tallness of a scientist) relative to the glove box (but let’s be real here, the second criterion doesn’t really exist – stand on a chair if you must).

Plus, having to wear thick big gloves of the “glove” box, it becomes plain clumsy to work in it. And my excuse of “I-am-still-new-to-working-in-the-glove-box” expired a long time ago (which I actually whined about for quite some time compared to normal, not-so-fussy people).

So now I have had to accept that I AM fully responsible for whatever clumsiness I commit – which makes me not-such-a-big-fan of the bumbling person who works in the glove box and cannot even pick up a bottle without first dropping it a couple of times.

The “person” who works in the glove box? Pfft! That’s not me! She is Qudsia Forcephands (secret note: that’s the name for my alter ego for when I have to work in the glove box). She had to be really pushed to start working in there and she kept complaining about how she was still new to working in the glove box even when it was her sixth time! (it’s UNBELIEVABLE what some people will say so they will not have to work, it’s really sad).

But I think, with time (and with MUCH encouragement and suggestions from me), Forcephands is learning the tricks of the trade and she has become waaay better at navigating inside the glove box now. And, as the name might give you an idea, she is now quite adept at using forceps almost as if they were extensions of her hands (or gloves of the glove box).

Forcephands is still somewhat lazy and I often have to give her pep-talks, and even now, she keeps dropping everything in the glove box (are all those forceps inside the glove box there for nothing? Tut tut). But what can you do, some people will just remain at their level no matter how much you try. She has, though, become quite independent at working in the glove box now and, I have to admit, I am somewhat proud of her.

(But I still don’t completely trust her).

Posted on

Stupid Questions

They say that there are no stupid questions.

And yet, in classrooms, presentations, and seminars, it’s very typical for to-be questioners to start with “maybe it is a very stupid question, but…”.

Often, once the question is out there to be judged for its “stupidity”, you find out that it was not a stupid question at all. That could be because there really are no stupid questions (or are there? We have probably not phrased every possible question in every language to make this assumption, so let’s just say that most questions are not stupid).

And yet, even though there are probably no stupid questions, we still like to call some questions stupid (or would have others and ourselves believe that). Working in science, where it can be very important to have the correct terminology, I sometimes wonder if it is really the right thing to do.

In my short career as a scientist, I have also come to believe that it’s rare when a question is stupid (probably only the ones that flit through my head). The thing is, we have been judging the quality of questions on wrong parameters. When you are all these scientists, where everyone is quite competent at what they do themselves, and not-so-good at what the others do, and no two people are working on the exact same thing at the same time – it becomes tricky.  While some questions can be quite basic for some people, they can be a whole novel perspective from another’s point of view.

So, in reality, there are no stupid questions; only rookie questions, basic ones, newbie’s perspectives, outsider’s outlooks. These are all far, far from stupid.

All “stupid” questions just need to be relabelled.

P.S. The author has nothing personal against the word “stupid”. All views expressed in the post are completely neutral and unbiased.

Posted on

Discoveries in the Lab

So it happened some days ago, during an unusually in-depth cleaning session of the lab, that we came across super-strong magnets. Such a great discovery should not be in vain.  So since then, we have been trying to come up with some uses for these.

I mean, they can be very useful to pull magnetic stirrers out of a solution if you don’t want to throw away the solution or contaminate it by putting something else in it. But THEN, the magnets might be so strong that if you would use a pair of “metal” forceps to grab the magnetic stirrer sitting on the lip of the bottle, the super-strong magnets might deflect the FORCEPS themselves and you may not be able to grab the magnet AT ALL (yes, I tried – in a casual evasion-of-common-sense moment).

But of course, that could not be the only possible use. What if, instead of pulling the stirrers out of solutions, you wanted to keep the stirrers INSIDE? Like when you are washing magnetic stirrers in a bottle and you come to the part when you have to drain the liquid (soap solution, ethanol, etc.). There’s always a risk of dropping the stirrer with it, which means you have to wash it all over again (depending on where you actually drop it).

So then, if you would use a super-strong magnet (or maybe even just a magnet), you can keep the magnet inside while completely inverting your bottle to drain the solvent. Can be pretty useful sometimes. And now you have a use for super-strong magnets lying around (or rather, sticking around) in your lab.

And as I am now discovering, they are also quite good for designing little games. Like taking smaller magnets and dropping them close enough to the bigger magnets and see how they deflect the dropping magnets. If you control the distance precisely, you can make them hit a particular point on a metal pole.

And there, now you have a game of magnet darts (and another use for super-strong magnets lying around in your lab).

Posted on

#3: This Week in Science: Eclipsed

So this particular week in solar cells (some weeks ago), I finally managed to make my own batch of solar cells – after which I started to consider myself qualified enough – in the capacity of an independent solar cell researcher ^_^

Posted on

Our Very Selfish Reasons

In one of our group meetings, a professor raised a very interesting question for us to think over: Why you are doing what you are doing and what is the importance of your work?

In research, this comes up a lot, especially when you are writing grants or research papers, or when you are presenting at conferences. At these times, you are expected to communicate the impact of your work and your motivation to get a doctoral degree (same stuff is supposed to work for both, pfft – after all, why would anyone be motivated to work on something if it wasn’t making an impact on the society and the world).

This time, when the question got popped all of a sudden, I was baffled.

I mean, I know why I am getting a PhD and why it is important (or at least I think I do). In fact, on better days, I have been known to drone on and on about why I am doing what I am doing. On regular days, however, I just trust that when we chose to enter this catastrophe, we had a very logical reason for it (even if we can’t remember it right now) and we were extremely passionate and excited about this new chapter.

Just as right now, when I am trying to pen it down in hopes that it’ll clear my own vision, I am completely clueless. But I do remember it was for some very selfish reason that I decided to take this path.

One of the reasons is probably that I want to continue in academia and nobody is going to let me in if I don’t have a PhD (a very self-centered point).

Of course, I would also like to have my own research group and students that I can squeeze scientists out of (I can only hope for the poor souls and myself).

Another (very selfish) reason that I can think of is the training that a PhD can offer. If I get through to the other side, I would expect myself to be quite good at doing some things, be more mentally tough, and to have grown considerably on personal and professional levels.

So I do think about this and I am completely aware that I should have a well-prepped answer for this for a time like when-a-professor-may-suddenly-throw-this-question-at-me. I should have a very good idea about the impact my work is making.

But on regular days, I don’t worry about it too much. I think that impact is over-rated for regular-day science. But then again, are we all not making an impact every day (positive or negative)? Don’t we all ruin or make someone’s day depending on how we interact with them? And when you are working interdisciplinarily, with all these other people, every little bit of science not only has an impact on your own work but also on the work of the people around you.

And more on a scientific level, wouldn’t I end up making some kind of impact anyway if I end up completing my degree? Even if I was planning on not making any? It may be very small, but it would have added something to the knowledge of the world.

But aside from all this glorious philosophical ranting, I do realize I need to have a well-prepared answer for difficult times (but then aren’t all humans selfish by nature and whatever we are doing, isn’t it all self-serving in some way?).

Right, yes, we need to focus on writing down a good response to this one that we can pull out of our hat in times of need (but then again…

Posted on

The Light Bulb Moments

This is what science is made of: Long stretches of I-have-no-clue-what-this-means, but as you go along with it, you might find a light bulb or two (or more like, a couple burning candles)*.

Sometimes, you will go through literature and concepts which make no sense to you. You will go over them again and again without absorbing anything (like when you have to go over a sentence twice just to confirm that it is (indeed) written in English). Did you perhaps miss a lecture in your classes? Missed a lesson life might have been trying to teach you at some point in the past? Or are you just missing the point here? Were you just not made for this? Did that escalate really quickly**?.

You will feel hopeless and a failure and start debating every life decision you have made leading you to this particular research article. But, in time, you will find this is not entirely true. You will realize (at some point) that all that reading and going through concepts, again and again, was actually going through to your brain in some way. And that you are definitely not as dumb as you had started to think you were (not too many self-esteem points, though – you are still capable of dumbness, just not as much as you had begun to believe).

Somewhere along, you see that it has started to make some sense. That definitely this line that you are reading right now, this would have been complete nonsense a couple journal articles ago.

It doesn’t happen all of a sudden, not (at all) like someone has switched on a light bulb. But the vision slowly clears and you can see a little more. It’s like each new paper you go through, you start to understand everything just a bit better than before (in some kind of a cumulative effect). 

That all that wandering wasn’t getting you lost. That there’s still hope for you (probably).

 

*This definition may differ from scientist to scientist.

**The answer is yes.