WRONG.
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I’m in a PhD program, and I dipped my toe in the job pool earlier this year. FWIW no one I talked to cared why I would be leaving early. Everyone knows someone who opted out before they finished whatever degree, IME it’s assumed you’re just looking to make more money. It’s easy to forget this when you’ve been in school for years, but most of the world doesn’t really care how many publications you have.
Anyhow, I’m not saying you should look for industry jobs tomorrow or anything but I just wanted to address that one little point. You won’t have a blank spot on your resume, you will be able to present yourself well for non-phd jobs if that’s what you end up doing.
Just some random thoughts. Hope the rest of the week goes a little better.
Ogre,
So sorry for your continuing travails, especially after journeying up to Cornell with no breakthrough. I’m a horticulturist, not a botanist, so am responding to the problem of your being able to gather more plant material before it goes dormant. Could you do that this week, before predicted freeze on Saturday, and grow the plants in a greenhouse for another try at getting another sample? Even if there is a frost, the plants wouldn’tbe knocked back that hard, and could grow if taken in.
I realize that if it’s an outcrop endemic, there may be collection permits involved. I’m also curious about which plants you’re studying, love the odd outlier plants.
If I can help you to figure out how to grow out the plants to gather more material for another sample, let me know; I have a good network of native plant experts that could help in that respect.
Sorry for zoning out on this. It’s been a busy week. Trying to finish up two papers and a presentation for my phylogenetics class, and I have my oral quals next week.
That would very cool, actually. I’d be happy to have any help I can get. I’ll try to start something this week, but if not, I’ll have it up after quals.
And yeah, I’ve tried CTAB. I’ve tried sarcosine. I’ve tried sarcosine, then CTAB. I’ve tried chloroform extraction, phenol extraction, the Qiagen Plant Easy (or whatever) kit, the Promega Wizard kit (along with about a dozen tweaks of this procedure), the MicroLysis Plus protocol, etc. I’ve tried grinding, sonicating, bead beaters, garnet sand, you name it.
I sincerely appreciate the vote of confidence. I’ll find my feet again. I actually just got a very good piece of news yesterday. It turns out that my funding cut-off is not as soon as I thought. I may be able to get one more field season in, if I am very conscientious and work quickly. That doesn’t mean that I’m waiting, of course. I’ll be in the lab almost constantly until then, especially after this semester, and all the time-hogging distractions I’ve been having (written quals, oral quals, a difficult class, teaching two classes, a seminar presentation, etc.)
I’m hoping to get it all, of course. I really want my PhD. I want that credential. I want to be able to say that I had to drag myself sideways through deep water, but I was ultimately successful.
A good friend of mine just defended his dissertation this week. Professionally, I have a lot of respect for him. He’s a hardcore Antarctic ecologist, and he’s done really amazingly good work in very difficult habitats. He both flattered me and gave me a substantial challenge to meet, after his defense. Apparently, nobody’s been terribly impressed with the quality of the dissertations coming out of my major professor’s lab for some time (with one exception). My friend turned to me and told me that, when I defend, he’ll fly in from wherever he is to see it, because “I just KNOW that you’re going to be the one who sets the bar back where it ought to be for that lab.”
Geez. No pressure! :eek:
Thank you kindly! It actually did get a bit better. one of my problems was that I had nearly 100 poorly-written undergraduate lab reports (8-10 pages, written in scientific-paper format) on my desk that had to be graded. Man, that kind of stuff just kills your research time.
Wow, elelle! I knew you were awesome, but this is really over the top. I literally had no time to go out this past week to tr to gather plants, but if they are still alive out there this coming week, I will DEFINITELY take you up on that, if you’re willing. I’ll see what TNC says on Monday. They own the land (thank God).
I’ll contact you by email about the specific plants.
Just a humble forestry policy Ph.D. here, so forgive me if what works in “soft science” won’t work in “hard science” but…
In my mind the whole point of the Ph.D. study is to prove to your committee that you (1) can identify an area to meaningfully apply science to generate knowledge discovery; (2) that you can conduct the original research that is required to achieve item 1; and (3) that you have mastered the skills sets necessary to achieve items 1 and 2. Note that none of the three requires a successful experiment.
The suggestions you’ve received since bumping this thread are all very good ones, and in addition to implementing them I also think you should also get with your committee members and develop an exit strategy **that includes their commitment to passing you **given the potential outcomes of your next working steps. If you do get the DNA, agree that you will complete x, y, and z and complete the dissertation. If you do not, but get Result A, then you will do j, k, and l and complete the dissertation; if Result B, then you will do d, e, and f and complete the dissertation.
IMO, based on your OP, you have proven yourself highly capable of doing 1, 2, and 3. You have demonstrated that you have the chops to be a highly successful scientist. You just had the misfortune of getting an uncooperative subject that needs longer than is reasonable for a doctoral candidate to manage given the time and financial constraints of graduate study.
Just one guy’s humble two-cent’s worth, for what it’s worth. YMMV and all that; standard disclaimers apply.
If you soldier on and perfect your DNA extraction procedure, would your modifications to the existing procedures be sufficiently novel so as to be publishable in and of itself? If you’re having so much trouble with your extractions I assume that A) It’s hard and B) No one has done it already. IME methods papers that explain how to do something hard and novel often rack up citations, which might help get funding and attract competent committee members. Maybe forget about your lost samples, focus on troubleshooting your procedures, and possibly publishing it when you get it nailed down (no trivial feat, I know)? Being able to say that you have a paper under review for a method you developed may go a long way in convincing the powers that be to give you extra time.
Thank you all very much! I passed! I rocked pretty much everything (except some basic botany and plant phys stuff…blame it on the fact that I haven’t had a class in that stuff in 15 years. :smack:).
The committee obviously had a lot of concern about my project, as do I still.
But yeah, man. This hoop has been jumped through. It’s PhD Candidate Ogre now!
Is the function of a dissertation to prove something or demonstrate the technical skill and knowledge of the process? I would think understanding the problems involved is as good or better than the actual product.
