My travel (a.k.a. light at the end of the tunnel) board - thanks to those awesome people who still use snail mail while holidaying!

 

On Feb 16 I had a deadline. Deadlines rarely come around during a PhD except that big one at the end where you’re threatened with no income and an angry grad school unless you submit your thesis and then find a job. But about two thirds of the way through a PhD you have to undergo a mid-term review. The name “mid-term” lulls you into a false sense of security by being called “mid-term” when it should be called “hurry up or you’re not going to make it-term”. For these reviews three things need to be done 1) a 20 minute presentation to the lab group, supervisors and readers, 2) submit a draft of the first chapter thesis and 3) meet with supervisors and readers to decide if the PhD will be done on time and is being done well. So, after reviewing all my remaining video samples, I got to work analysing the data for my Eat without Being Eaten chapter. This chapter essentially asks the question - how do wildebeests trade-off between foraging and vigilance behaviour and what affects this trade-off? After sorting out my datasets I wrote code in a statistical program called R (often pronounced, if you’re like me, ‘AARRGGHH’). I then went back to my datasets because they had some major flaws (in R that means a misplaced space or capital letter) and then back to R. And then back to my dataset. And on it went… for weeks. It’s pertinent to point out here that some of my models had so many variables and data points that they were taking over 4 days to analyse when running 24/7 on my computer. I say ‘over’ because at the four day mark my computer crashed and took all its progress with it.  Fortunately, it turned out that a lot of my variables (like time of day) didn’t have an effect on behaviour which meant I could eliminate them from my analyses. After analysing my data numerous times, with different subsets of variables, I finally had a clear picture of what was going on. The results are quite extensive, and likely to change slightly before I publish, so there won’t be a big reveal here.  But let’s just say I am happy with how they are looking, and that I have yet to go bald or lose my voice in the process.  

 

Then I wrote the draft of my paper and sent it off to my supervisors for comments before submitting it to my readers. Recently, a number of schools and institutes have advised against using red-pen to mark a student’s work because red is apparently a very negative colour. Seemingly students can’t be told they are wrong. At least not in red pen. So when I saw my supervisors edits I could have felt very negatively about the process -my paper didn’t have the occasional red mark, it was a red mark. My supervisors clearly didn’t get the no-red memo (it may have been directed at primary school teachers, but that’s beside the point). But you know what? If a little red bothers you as a student, please don’t go to uni. Or if you do, just find lazy supervisors to work with. My supervisors are both amazing and as such they are insanely thorough with drafts and enjoy emptying a whole pen’s ink onto one draft (please take this as a compliment A.G. and M.M.!). The result? My paper is looking schmick. So I guess the red pen didn’t kill me, it just improved my work. Fortunately, in this case the constant stream of red pen was largely suggestions for more fluid writing and some paragraph restructuring *. Relief! There wasn’t a single note that just said “no” or the even more horrifying “I think this looks good but you should try reanalysing this in a completely different way..."

*If you’re reading this rambling and thinking they didn’t do a good job, rest assured, they don’t edit my blogs!

 

 

So, once I made all the changes that were needed, I submitted my paper and got onto the final stage before my mid-term - writing a speech. I’ve said it before, but it remains as true now as it did at the time of my confirmation, so I will say it again; I hate public speaking. Really, it is a passion of mine - hating public speaking. I have gotten better at it in the last few years, owing mainly to being more knowledgeable on my topics. Spending over a year on a topic gives you more freedom to ad-lib than the 2 weeks given for an undergraduate assignment does. So I feel confident that if I lose my place I will be able fill until I work out what I am trying to say! I just need to work on my arm gestures - I feel they alternate between being robotic and being similar to an Italian expressing their love of pasta. In my mid-term talk I recall thinking to myself “what on Earth are your arms doing? You aren’t trying to fly away…stop thinking about your arms, you’re supposed to be thinking about what you’re saying. Damnit where was I?” Somewhere in that internal monologue, while still presenting, I managed to garner laughs. My joke that my ‘beests would have gladly eaten a steak during my first field season hit the mark. To explain that joke, because all the best jokes need explaining, wildebeest are definitely not meat-eaters but the grazing plains of 2013 were so devoid of any grass (green or brown) that I really don’t know how they were surviving and think a steak dinner would have been accepted gratefully. Anyway, as it turned out, my readers said my presentation style was so comfortable and relaxed that I should try a different presentation style to step out of my comfort zone (please note this was in fact a compliment, not thinly veiled criticism, I checked). I felt it necessary to set them straight- my comfort zone includes no public speaking, of any style. But I am glad I feel more confident these days and look relaxed. That’s all that counts.