Question: If you could start your research over again, what would you change?

Asked by oliviak to Nathan, Kate on 23 Jun 2011.

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  1. Photo: Kate PattersonKate Patterson
    answered on 23 Jun 2011:

    Hi Oliviak,

    I see now what you meant in the chat today – this is the question I suggested!! yay.

    Well… I didn’t think that through very well did I – because here we are and I actually have to answer the question.

    When I said that I was thinking about how much time I spend during the start of my PhD doing SO MANY experiments. I tried to stuff as many experiments as I could into a day, to try to get as many answers as I could. If I had my time again I would – pause – breathe – and THINK more about the types of experiments I should be doing and in particular what positive and negative controls I should use – THAT might have saves me about 18 months of time 🙂

    Thansk for asking 😉

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  2. Photo: Kate PattersonKate Patterson
    answered on 23 Jun 2011:

    Hi Oliviak,

    I see now what you meant in the chat today – this is the question I suggested!! yay.

    Well… I didn’t think that through very well did I – because here we are and I actually have to answer the question.

    When I said that I was thinking about how much time I spend during the start of my PhD doing SO MANY experiments. I tried to stuff as many experiments as I could into a day, to try to get as many answers as I could. If I had my time again I would – pause – breathe – and THINK more about the types of experiments I should be doing and in particular what positive and negative controls I should use – THAT might have saves me about 18 months of time 🙂

    Thanks for asking 😉

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  3. Photo: Nathan O'CallaghanNathan O'Callaghan
    answered on 23 Jun 2011:

    Nothing!
    I think I am very lucky to be able to be working on something that i enjoy doing – not everyone can say that about their jobs!
    so even though there has been some good times and bad – all these experiences have added together to put me where i am today!
    ……and i am only at the beginning of my career, it is exciting to imagine what the future brings!

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Comments

  1. Photo: KateKate
    commented on 23 Jun 2011:

    oooh – lucky you – looks like word press posted this twice – doubly important 🙂

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  2. Photo: EdwardEdward
    commented on 23 Jun 2011:

    Hi oliviak and Kate,

    I had a similar experience to Kate, in that I COULD have saved time if I had done something different in my first year of PhD.

    None of the work that I did in my first year gave useful enough results to be published (or even to put in my thesis)! The tricky thing is that there is no way that I could have known this before I had done the work.

    So I’m afraid that dead ends are part of science — and until someone goes down the dead-end street, nobody else can know that it IS a dead end street!

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  3. Photo: oliviakoliviak
    commented on 24 Jun 2011:

    Thanks for your answers. I really appreciate it and look forward to seeing who’s going to win the $1000. Thanks for all the chat time as well. Cya 🙂

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