Where did February go?? January wasn’t too bad but February has been intense.
Since my last official update, I’ve progressed through my cloning woes to get two of my plasmids, plasmid #8 and #9.
Plasmid #2 is being a pain, so I haven’t got the green insert in yet. But- I did confirm that the yellow-red protein is being made, and I’ve also checked to see whether the yellow-blue protein is being made by Coxiella… But…
There’s always a certain amount of protein that sort of… degrades. They detach from each other, and you get individual protein fragments. Hopefully you have more of the protein that hasn’t degraded, but sometimes, you get more degradation than you want. Unfortunately that’s what’s happening with the yellow-blue protein. There’s more of them in fragments (yellow or blue) than together, for one of my strains.
Sometimes it just comes down to the bug, so I’ll check them again later this week and see if I get any yellow-blue protein. Fingers crossed I find them hand in hand!
A major victory for me today is that I managed to compile my Ph. D thesis chapters into a full draft. Each chapter has already received feedback from my primary supervisor, but now I’ve scheduled this full draft to be sent to both my primary and secondary supervisors. Once I receive these final edits, I can finally incorporate them in and get ready to submit.
It’s rather weird to be this close to finishing. It’s exciting, sure, but also terrifying. This has been my life for the last five years (including Honours), so now that I’m getting ready to move on, it’s quite scary!
Most people in my position don’t really know what they want to do afterwards. The general progression is to become a Post-Doctoral Researcher, which is essentially a research position with a little more independence but still with your own projects. You’ll still report to a Lab Head, but you’re essentially supposed to orchestrate your own project and come up with your own ideas on how to do things.
But… I’m actually not interested in pursuing those positions. I’ve had my time in the lab, but experiments are… hard. Most of the time, things don’t work, and it does get to you, mentally. The times where I’ve felt most confident or productive have been when I write up my work (whether it be for publications or for theses), or when I’m teaching people how to science. So, basically I’m hoping to transition out of lab-based work into something else- ideally something that can let me use all the knowledge I’ve gained throughout my degree, but also something that lets me keep on learning.
Anyway- for now, I’ll celebrate having compiled the full Ph. D thesis. Writing it is still enjoyable, but bloody hell, the formatting… If my housemate hadn’t gone through this process about a month ago, I would be lost. I’m glad I dedicated time to sort all that out.
Categories: Ph D posts
ABugsLife
A Ph. D graduate in Microbiology, residing in Victoria, Australia. Currently working in multiple locations but still in the STEM field. 👀 🦠 🧫 🧬
A Bug's Life 
I really, really wish I could understand what you talk about. I am so in awe of what you are doing. And I love the cartoon.
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I might do a basics of DNA, protein, and bacterial transformation (process of putting DNA into bacteria) post soon. 😅
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And you can always do something of Malaria!
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Might be a chance to learn more about it!
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