PhD Update

In addition to all the sporting events and activities Justin & I have been participating in, recently I've made some significant progress on the PhD. In fact, that's one of the reasons why I had a big gap in blog posts a few weeks ago. Between our weekend plans and the actual work I was doing during the week, I had no time or energy to write about anything. I figure that means its time for a PhD update.

Months ago I wrote a post about what 'doing a PhD' actually means. All the stuff I talk about in that post is still relevant: academia is still needlessly confusing and pretentious, the work is still very often frustrating and redundant, I still have lots of reading to do. Although to be honest I have been pretty slack about this recently. I should probably be reading & writing more. When I say I have made progress in my PhD, I'm mostly talking about the design of the actual study I'm going to run.

Massive caveat here: Everyone's PhD looks different. Depending on what you are studying, you will have different timelines, goals, progress markers, etc. Because doing a PhD is about generating new knowledge in an area, there is no single or 'right' way to do things.

As it turns out, my PhD is (theoretically, as of this moment) heavily front loaded. Pretty much all of my data collection is going to come from a single study/project. Right now the goal is to do data collection for a short but very intense period in late 2023/early 2024. After data collection is done, I will take on the process of sorting through the mountains of information and try to make sense of everything. This is also when I will do lots and lots of writing. Of course, this is all subject to change for any number of reasons. And I expect it will change, I just don't know how significantly, or in what direction. But right now that is the plan.

Because this is actual science that we are (hoping to) do, once we start data collection, we have very limited ability to change our procedure. Technically we are able to, but it will make it much harder to actually get information from the data. So we want to make sure our study procedure is as good, valid, and accurate as possible right from the start. For my full study, I'm going to be bringing participants in to the sleep lab and running them through a full simulated paramedic rotation, complete with simulated paramedic 'shifts' and tasks. At this point I have completely lost perspective as to whether this sounds complicated or not. So you will just have to take my word for it when I say that this is actually very complicated to organize and plan. Lots of moving pieces and things to coordinate.

Even early on in the planning stages, it was clear that we were going to have to do some pilot testing of our procedures. So a few weeks ago, between the snorkeling, and the AFL grand final, I ran a group of participants through 4 days of pilot testing. I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty of what pilot testing entails. Partially because I don't think it would be that interesting for most of you to read about, and partially because after living it for a week I am already tired of writing/talking about it. Suffice to say I had a team of 8 research assistants & volunteers helping run the participants through a bunch of cognitive, decision making, and paramedic tasks over the course of ~5 hours every day. It probably goes without saying, but it was an exhausting week for me. Despite the stress and fatigue, by all accounts the pilot testing was a great success. We showed proof of concept for our full study, didn't have any major issues arise, and got a lot of really valuable information that will inform the full protocol.

Pretty much immediately after pilot testing was finished, I had my first PhD milestone. There are lots of parts of PhD's that are essentially a free-for-all in terms of how things get done. But universities do have some structure & support in place to make sure that things are, in fact, getting done. These structures vary widely from country to country, and even from university to university. In Australia, we have PhD milestones. The university requires 3 milestones - one after each year of the PhD. They are called confirmation, mid-candidature, and final review. On top of these three, lots of faculties include a 6 month milestone to make sure you are on track before you are too far into the program. Psychology is one of those faculties, so over the course of my PhD I will have 4 milestones.

Due to some administrative hiccups (theirs, not mine) my 6-month milestone was actually a bit late. It was really more of a 7.5 month milestone. The timing of it depends on how the schedules of several very busy professors align, so while the timing was not ideal it was pretty much my only option. During the milestone, you make a short presentation about your research: the project, your timeline, the work you are expecting to do, etc. You also submit a short written report beforehand with a lot of the same information. Then the 'panel', consisting of a chair and 2 panel members, all of whom are profs with expertise in the PhD area, ask questions about your project. My supervisors (primary & secondary) are also there. After the presentation & question period, the PhD student steps out, and the panel talks to the supervisors about whether they have any concerns or issues they want to raise. Then the supervisors step out, and the PhD student comes back to talk with just the panel about any issues with the supervisors or concerns with the project. They also tell you whether you 'passed' your milestone or not.

Milestones are one more strange part of academia where almost no one fails, but there is still a possibility that you could fail if you absolutely botch things. So even though it shouldn't really be stressful, it kind of is. Despite the less than ideal timing, I am happy with how my first milestone went, and have officially passed. The 6 month milestone is private - its just the student, supervisors, and the panel. The next three are technically public. They are announced to the department ahead of time, and since they take place online there is a zoom link for people to join & watch. Mostly its just other PhD student who tune in though. They aren't exactly exciting, plus the presentations are targeted at academics, so they can be hard to follow. Because my first milestone was a bit late, I only have about 4.5 months until my next one. Based on my timeline, I suspect it will also fall during a terribly busy time of data collection. At least I can see it coming I guess.

Anyways, that's the actual PhD update. From now on its pretty safe to assume that if my blogging has slowed down, its because the PhD work has rapidly sped up.