Welcome to the blog and my first month as a PhD student!

Hello and welcome to my PhD blog! 

You might be wondering why I am starting a PhD blog, and why now? The reason I am wanted to start a PhD blog is because during the three years of my PhD, many things are going to happen and this way I can note them down so that I don’t forget (you never know it could be useful one day!). Also I get to talk about what I have learnt and allow my friends, family and anyone else who is interested, know about my progress during my PhD and anyone interested in Fucus research. So you might be wondering why start now, you are already a month into your PhD? Well I had thought with the idea of writing a PhD blog, but the move to Norway and adjusting to my life here got in the way. Now that things have settled down I feel I have some time to sit down and type away. I would also like to point out that this blog will be for fun, so I will not go back and check with a microscope for spelling or grammatical mistakes, I am dyslexic, there are going to be some. 

Although it has just been my first month there has been a lot that has happened and to post everything in to this blog post might be long. I will be making a post dedicated to what I plan to do during my PhD at a later date as the project plan is still a work in progress.

Just before I started my PhD, one of my colleges needed help to collect samples early in the morning. I used this opportunity to get to know one of the loveliest people I have met so far here in Bodø (Chloé Maréchal), snap a few photos and collect a few samples. 

My samples!

Cyanea lamarckii

Chloé Maréchal sampling.

My first week was a mix of getting settled in both the administration side of my PhD and the project side. On the administration side you need to get used to the university, how it works and getting your office and computer up and running. On the project side I was getting to know my research team and reading papers, so that I can get my roots in the topic I will be working on for the next three years. At the end of the first week we had a gathering for all the PhD students as there was around 6/7 new PhDs all starting at the same time. I cannot tell you how lucky I am to be working around such a lovely group of people. They are all intelligent, kind, and likeminded people whose topics range far and wide.    

At the start of my second week I had my first meeting with my supervisor and co-supervisor to discuss the direction of the project. It is a strange thing starting a PhD, especially if it’s in a new field of study. The first port of call is to write a project plan, which requires you to know everything and plan the entire 3 years of you PhD, which includes the timing of all experiments, data analysis, writing, courses and so on. The rest of my week was mainly filled with searching for the courses that I will need to take during my degree. At this point in time, I have applied for a one-week course in Gothenburg, Sweden on “An introduction to bioinformatic tools for metagenetic and population genomic data analysis” and a two, two-week workshop in Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic on “genomics” and “phylogenomics”. I am very excited and hopeful, as both will be a great kick start to my PhD and will give me the skills I need to do great work. Also during the week, we had a meeting about an upcoming event, in which I put forward a few ideas to make it more exciting for young children. At the end of my second week I went to a local event to support my research team present their work to the local community of Valnesfjord and even ended up in the local newspaper!   

Some of the helpful people at Valnesfjord. 

My son enjoying the marine creatures.

My week three was a little bit of everything, I started with a couple of meetings and followed by some applications to be a member of some scientific communities (ForBio, ARCTOS and Evolution digests). I also found out that I had been accepted onto the Swedish course and so had to organise my trip to Gothenburg. As this was my first time during my PhD I had to learn all the do’s and don’ts when traveling for work. Near the end of the work week I was working on my presentation about hybridisation for the “Research Battle” qualifying round on Monday next week. Finally, at the end of the week I took my family to the university's research stations "open day" and it was great. My son was able to take a look and get his hands on some marine creatures, such as starfish and jellyfish which he enjoyed. In the meeting last week, I suggested hiding some finding nemo/dory toys inside the tanks/mesocosms to encourage the young children to look into them to win a prize and it seemed to go down very well.

The final presentation.

Last week, week 4, was a crazy week! It started on Monday with the qualifying rounds of the “Research Battle”. I presented my PhD topic "Hybridization" to the public at the local student bar for science week. I have never presented to such a large crowed and have never had to make my complicated topic understandable to the public. Only the top 7 presentations got through to the next round, but me and a few of my friends (Helene Knutsen, Asan Sahib and Peter Schulze) managed to get through to the final! On the Wednesday we had a course on how to improve your presentation skill, so that we could put on a good show for Fridays final of the "research battle". We started by jumping around, making weird noises and then some improvisation and although very similar to fatherhood, it was a very different work day than I was used to. The course improved all of the finalist’s presentations exponentially and so it was going to be a tight competition for Fridays final. The finals for the “research battle” were held in the cities library Stormen and the attitude was a lot more serious than the qualifying rounds on Monday. My presentation went very well and I had improved a lot since Monday and managed to get 4^th place, with my amazing friend Helene Knutsen stealing the show and coming in 1st place.

Now that you are all caught up on what has happened so far in my PhD I am sure the future posts will be far smaller and on a weekly basis (I hope). I hope you enjoyed the read and I hope you will join me on this amazing ride that will be my PhD.