Planning Ahead and Writing As You Go

So even though I'm probably 2-ish years from graduating (plus some very large error bars on that number), I've started writing bits and pieces of my thesis. Not just in the sense that I'm writing manuscripts, which I'm also working on, but in that I'm trying to plot out the larger story I'm trying to tell. I also want to right everything down while I still remember why I did it in a particular way.

My advisor seems confused whenever I mention this approach. He's very strongly in the camp of write the papers, and copy-paste to make a thesis. Given his reading habits, it does mean fewer things he has to read, which is good for getting anything out the door. However, at this point, many of my results are of the "and this approach didn't work" variety. Not necessarily paper material, but things I feel should be documented for future students in the group. A quick poll of Twitter seems to indicate that the thesis is a good place to include this sort of thing, and it can always be deleted when you go to do the manuscript. Of course, according to the comments at GenomicRepairman, it seems unlikely hypothetical future students are going to read it anyway.

I also like looking at the bigger picture, because it gives me a sense of things I've *done*, not just the giant list of things I still need to do. When I'm in the writing mood, I'm trying to write up methods sections and working on piecing together background sections as I read. It also helps me plan, and find the holes in my story I need to fill.

What approach did you take (or are you taking) to thesis writing?

Finding Your Committee

Cross posted over at Scientopia!

As of yesterday, I officially have a full committee of people who have agreed and are interested in my project. Huzzah!

My program is a bit odd in the requirements to advance to candidacy. At this point, I've passed my qualifying exams/coursework, and the next major hurdle is the preliminary proposal of thesis work. We have to put together at least part of our thesis committee at this point, though it's highly recommended you try and find a complete committee. Since this can be a daunting process, I felt I should share my steps to finding my committee members.




Step One: Look up your committee requirements

How many people do you need? Are you required to have certain balance of members inside and outside of your department?

Step Two: Identify the types of expertise you need

If you're doing computation on a particular system, such as in my case, is there someone doing experiments on a similar system? Are the other people doing similar experiments on different systems, if you're an experimentalist? If you're doing something that is new to your lab, is there someone else at your university using similar techniques? Faculty websites are a fantastic way to look up this sort of information. Most importantly, have a list of more people than you actually need for your committee. Professors are busy people. They may not have time to be on you committee, so be sure to have backups (but never tell them they are your backup!)

Step Three: Set up a meeting

This is, for me, the hardest part. What do you say? I've been approaching this with the idea of "Brief but thorough". My emails have looked something like this:
Prof. Blah

I am a student working with Pf. Blarg in the process of putting together a thesis commitee. My proposed topic is BasketWeaving, which relates to your work in FiberPreparation. Would it be possible to meet at sometime in the near future? I am unavailable ___, but otherwise flexible.

Regards,
Miss MSE

Step Four: The meeting itself

Sell your project. If you don't sound excited about what you're doing, they have no real motivation to agree to invest time and effort in being on your committee. It's also important to be clear on exactly why you think they would be a helpful addition to your committee (see Janus for the professorial side of this issue)

Once you have your committee comes the fun part: scheduling!

Vertigo and Productivity

I have now been slightly dizzy on and off for 4 days, mostly on. This can stop any time now...

Today's guest post at Scientopia is a rehash of an earlier post here.

I have now officially found people willing to be on my committee! Now, to find a two hour block of time that at least 3 of the 4 can attend... Did I mentioned I'm one of four people in my group doing a preliminary proposal in the next month?  This is why I was originally aiming for May or July. Thankfully, next week marks the end of the summer conference season for my lab group, so I can finally go back and figure out things that went wrong back in June instead of producing slides for my advisor's speculative abstracts.

Epiphanies and Contributing to the Scientific Knowledgebase

I'm currently in the process of writing the proposal for my thesis work, which currently involves a vast quantity of reading. Because I do computational work, I've got even more literature to wade through. First is the computational stuff related to the kind of systems and calculations I'm interested in. However, in order to do good simulations, you need to have experimental data to compare to and validate your model. So every literature search I do, I pretty much end up doing twice.

Ultimately, you hope to find something that no one else has really done that somehow relates to your interests and preliminary work. That's really what the thesis is supposed to be: your novel contribution to science and human knowledge. You may know very early on in your research what that is. Sometimes, finding your little research niche comes about in more roundabout ways. It may be a conversation with faculty or fellow students, or an impulsive change of search terms, but when you find the gap, it feels awfully good.