Finishing My Draft Thesis Review: Some Thoughts

This past Wednesday (the 23rd) I had my Draft Thesis Review, the final of the three annual reviews for PhD students at Swinburne. This review is for students to show off the culmination of their efforts to date, and also where students who still need some time to finish up can request an extension of six months, which is what I've done. (It's also what the vast majority of students do, at least in astrophysics; while Australian PhDs are nominally three years, in practice most people end up going over that time.) My project is progressing well, I just need a few more months to finish up the analysis of my results and publish; at this point the plan is to publish two papers together covering pretty much everything I've done for the past three years.

It's been pretty hectic the past month, writing the report for my panel along with work on the aforementioned papers, which will constitute most of the science chapters for my thesis as well. This is the first weekend I haven't worked in at least that long, and it was sorely needed. At least now I have a chance to catch my breath slightly before the final push over the next few months.

Now that the review is past, it's also time to start looking to the future. I'm still sorting out what I want to do after this at this point; my first preference would be to get a job back in Hawaii (probably with an observatory, given my prior experiences there), but after this past year I'm finding myself more amenable to the possibility of putting my skills to work in the medical industry somehow, perhaps for a few years, to do some good in the world. Maybe. Who knows! I've learned an absolute ton about programming over the past few years, so I've got some very broadly applicable skills, it just remains to see what's out there. But for now, I've got a timeline to write for my Finalization Plan to submit to the university, and then some analysis to get into! A hui hou!