Eureka

Last Friday, I had a meeting with my supervisor to discuss some of the literature I'd been reading. I think it's fair to say I was struggling a little. My project is novel - which is great! - but I was finding it increasingly difficult to ground it in the literature - not so great. It is the type of project that draws on many different areas, but doesn't really belong to any. So, having stressed out for a week, I plucked up the courage to say "Help!!". Let me tell you, I came out of the meeting saying "Best. Day. Ever!" like Rapunzel in Tangled.

Have you ever had the experience of finishing a conversation with a great idea, but being unsure where that idea came from, what exactly triggered it or who's idea it was? All you know is that it is just brilliant. That is what my meeting was like.

Through our conversation, my supervisor and I identified not so much an error in our thinking, but the point at which we had stumbled. The great thing as well is that it hasn't rendered what I've already done useless. In fact, I don't think we could have drawn these conclusions without the work I've done already. Now, we have the opportunity to build and move on from that, let the idea grow and blossom and suddenly, we had three new experiments planned with a multitude of ways to look at the data and most importantly, a renewed enthusiasm and excitement about the project.

Truly one of the best feelings in the world, and I can understand why people strive to feel it again and again. I might not quite have run naked through the streets, but I certainly announced my joy to Facebook and anyone who would listen (and some who wouldn't). Awesome.

From under the marking pile

I've been somewhat absent for the last 10 days or so, being under my first pile of marking. Relatively small to some, seemingly huge to me. Marking second year undergraduate work has surprised me with how little I remember of what it is like to be one of them. Before dissertation and final year exams, before working all hours to get PhD applications just so - it's all a blur.

I am having a short break before beginning on my next pile of marking. (And I mean around half an hour, not a couple of days... unfortunately). I think it's necessary to get out of that zone where the world gets tuned out and my brain is reduced to scoring, key phrases and frustration with students' inability to reference.

I'm also writing today though, because the monotony of marking is blanketing out a small but rising panic. I believe I am encountering the first stages of PhD Panic (with touches of imposter syndrome) where the voice in the back of my head vacilates between feelings of inadequacy, inability and sheer stupidity to being overwhelmed with the enormity of a thesis and a PhD project as a whole.

This is something I am aware everyone goes through. My calm, grown-up internal voice is telling me to just be patient and sit with these concerns, that they are a part of the process and trying to block them out will just make them worse anyway. It's early days and I am perhaps being too hard on myself.

So really, this post is about riding the wave. By next time, perhaps I'll be a little less panicky and a bit more under control. I think coloured pens and pencils are required.

Growing arms and legs

Once you're settled in and are used to the rhythm of the academic life in your university, it can be a little bit difficult - I reflect after only being here three weeks, I know - to figure out how exactly you want to map out your own progress. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm currently waiting for my supervisor to review my ethics so that I can submit the application to the ethics board and hopefully begin my pilot.

What I'm discovering though, is that even something as simple as a pilot with only two participants can grow arms and legs. My study uses a portable eye tracker mounted on glasses frames. It has two cameras: one that points at the eye and one that views the scene. Once you compile the two, you get a pretty idea of where a person is fixating within the scene their head is pointed at (to put it very uneloquently). In theory, this is great! No more bite bars or chin rests, much more resemblance to real-world vision, what could go wrong? Well, those things are true, but there's some underlying complexities in there too.

Adjusting cameras (whilst being terrified I might break it), getting the balance of the calibration right, allocating the right amount of time etc. are all procedural things that I'm sure I'll get used to. After having a bit of a practise using the eye tracking and collecting some arbitrary footage, I'm getting a better picture of the sheer extent of data two participants will produce.

It has at least given me several new questions to answer: How much do I really need to know about where a participant looks? What's important to where they look? Do I really need a frame by frame breakdown?

At the moment, I am sitting on my hands - at least in regards to this - until ethics are approved, but these questions are churning over and I hope that that's something I can figure out soon, so I can best figure out how to run my pilot. The point of this post, I suppose, is to remind myself to think small. It's something I really need to learn, because look how something as small as two participants can grow into something big!

Let's hope the data grows into something big too :)

Earning your keep

I'm aware I keep saying this, but I still find it really hard to believe that already we're nearly done with September. Now it's really time to start putting my skills to use.

One way I'll be doing that very soon is to start earning my keep. The deal with a studentship (at least within my own School) is that PhD students funded by the School earn a certain amount as a stipend no questions asked with no work involved, other than your PhD of course. In addition to this, you can earn extra income through marking undergraduate essays/reports or teaching undergraduate research classes. This year I’m doing marking and I’ve been lucky or unlucky depending on how you look at it in that all my marking falls within a four week period this semester, then another four week period next semester. Good because it gets it over and done with, bad because that’s a really big chunk of time where I’m going to have no time for anything else. I’m sure you will soon find out just how well I’m managing that particular dilemma.

The other way in which I’m starting to use my accrued skills is to run my first experiment. This is exciting and terrifying in a way I can’t seem to convey in words. I think most likely actually “doing something” is exciting because it feels like progress, but terrifying too because I’ve not really run my own experiments since my undergraduate dissertation. Let’s just say, they don’t exactly feel comparable.

My pilot is nice and simple with just two participants. I have a magic trick selected and I’m intending simply to find out what happens when they try to learn it. Well, I might add that it sounds simple, but the amount of data that’s going to come out the other end is ridiculous. It’s certainly giving me an appreciation for why natural-environment eye tracking studies have fewer participants. You’ve screeds and screeds of eye movement data to get through and doing that for 100 participants would be a close approximation of a “kill me now” situation.

I’m not sure how soon I can get it up and running as I’ve yet to find out the ethics situation, but it’s more than likely going to be after my marking marathon. I’m getting prepared though, and with perhaps one more meeting with my supervisor, I might even start booking some time slots in the lab. Exciting times!

Early days

It's now week two of the academic year and I am slowly settling into postgraduate life.

I have an office (how exciting!) which will hopefully soon have my name on the door. And yes, you will be subjected to photographic proof. I've met people and shook hands and attended talks including one by Keith Rayner (psycholinguistics celeb) who also came to our Lab pub lunch on Friday. I've been to classes, I've learned how to use a mobile eye tracker and I've slowly started adding to my stationery and book collections in my office.

Up until now, it's been a bit of a whirlwind, but there are some very vivid moments of panic interspersed amongst them. If I'm honest, those mostly consist of thoughts like "They all know loads! You have to understand things to ask questions... I'm so far behind!" and "I really hope they don't find out how little I know about [insert whatever the current subject is] or they won't want me as a PhD student anymore!" and, of course, "Where the hell do I start?!" I've been assured by my supervisor and many others that these are feelings that everyone experiences at some time or other. Know it, but doesn't stop it.

The question of where I start is the most pertinent to me just now. I've begun by familiarising myself with a bit about eye tracking in real world scenarios as this was something I didn't know much about and made sense to have that background to help me shape my reading. Now, I'm trying to put together some rough ideas for a first experiment, which is a lot harder than I could have imagined. I take each day at a time, and am slowly building up a picture of where I need to start investigating and what I need to start reading about. It has given me a real appreciation of what previous PhD students I've known meant when they told me I'd need to be very blinkered. As soon as you start looking at what X, Y and Z are doing, you're making unfair comparisons because we've all come to this with different knowledge, experience and research topics.

So, blinkers on, I wonder what I'll get up to this week. Pub night tonight, for a start. I have my priorities straight. :)

Welcome to the Active Vision Lab

What do you know, I'm an official student after all!

This week is my first "on the job", but there's still a lot of settling in to be done. As ever, the matriculation process is a little hectic and leaves you with the feeling that surely there is a simpler way to do things. Nevertheless, I have secured a student card (with a truly awful picture - I'll need to see what can be done about that), my university email and my new start has been advertised on my Lab's website. It's called the Active Vision Lab (or AVL) and you can read all about it here. We're actually very lucky in that all the projects running from the lab are really interesting and it's a great set of people to be working with!

So what have I done so far as an official PhD student? Well, there was a lot of checking online modules and a great deal of excitement at being able to select "Doctorate of Philosophy" as my course title. I also had the opportunity to meet two other girls starting their PhD's this year who I hadn't met before. Both are lovely, and have really exciting projects too! Altogether, there are five or six new PhD students starting across this month and next, and I think it really makes a difference having so many people starting all together. It certainly makes it a little less formidable and makes you feel more like part of the group. Two of the other students I know already from my undergrad years, which is nice too.

I've been in and around the building, which I love because it feels like coming home and also because the building is rather attractive (even if I am a little biased). I've done some work too and I definitely find it easier to be productive in uni as opposed to at home. I'm still waiting to find out where my office is going to be, but since so many people need to be accommodated it's understandable it's taking a while. Once I do have some space, I've got all my stuff ready to move in - books, stationery, plant and all!

We have a Welcome to the School party on Wednesday and a Welcome to the Lab lunch on Friday (I will be eating well this week haha) and after that, classes start. It's exciting times! For now, I'm plodding away with some reading and trying to think about what my first experiment might be. Whatever I'm doing though, it's nice to know I'm officially part of the School again.

Big girl school

Starting life as a postgraduate student is very different from when you enroll as an undergraduate. I've not quite made it to matriculation yet (that's on the 9th) but I'm getting there with paperwork and figuring out what exactly is going to be going on. So, why is it different?

As an undergraduate, you don't exactly get your hand held through the process, but it's not far short. If you head to university straight from school, your guidance teachers or career advisors help you through the application process via UCAS and you go on school visits to universities and so on. When you get accepted to your chosen university, you get heaps of paper. Letters about the uni, what there is to do in the city where it's located, what's going to happen when you get there, about your halls of residence (if you're staying in them), the Union, societies... It's never ending! It's reassuring too though because when the average age of freshman students is 18, knowing what you're going into makes leaving home for the first time seem more like an adventure.

Being a postgraduate doesn't work quite like that. I've already detailed the application process I went through, which you can read here. Since the School or university doesn't have a guaranteed number of postgraduate places per year, admissions doesn't quite work the same. In short, you're a lot more responsible for making sure that you have everything you need!

I wouldn't want you to think this is a criticism. It is, in fact, a good way of doing things. If you're planning on going into a life of academia, you need to get used to how admin works from the word go. When you've got the responsibility for your own learning, you should have the responsibility of making sure you know how things work. You get the chance to practice, with a trained eye supervising you, instead of a safety net.

So, I guess I'm all grown up now. I'm quickly learning who, where, what and when things go on and while it can be a little bit scary or stressful, it's pretty cool to feel like you're finally in control of exactly where you're going. Thumbs up from me!