How to PhD Podcast

Who works at MIT Lincoln Lab?

MIT Lincoln Laboratory employs a diverse workforce of scientists, engineers, and support staff. The laboratory offers a wide range of job opportunities for individuals with backgrounds in engineering, mathematics, computer science, physics, and other related fields. Some of the typical job titles at MIT Lincoln Laboratory include research scientist, engineer, software developer, and program manager. The laboratory also offers internships and co-op positions for students who are interested in gaining hands-on experience in research and development.

In addition to its research and development activities, MIT Lincoln Laboratory is also involved in outreach and education initiatives. The laboratory offers a variety of programs designed to inspire and educate the next generation of scientists and engineers. These programs include summer camps, workshops, and internships for students of all ages.

I have been told by multiple employers that my resume using this template is the best resume they had ever seen! I always got the interview if not the job! I have also helped many friends successfully use this template and give their careers huge makeovers!! So now it is YOUR turn. 

Please don’t hate me, but this resume template is in LaTeX. If you are not familiar with that, now is a great time to learn and that is exactly what I go over here in this episode! You can Google LaTeX and get lots of help. Also, this template will allow you to hit the road running. LaTeX is fully customizable which makes it awesome to use once you get the hang of it. 

This template is now extendable to two or more pages. You will see. It can accommodate more than one page and is highly customizable. However, if you are early in your career, you should try to stick to one page!

This is my talk given on Nov 19, 2021, at the University of Mount Union at the Department of Biochemistry, Chemistry, and Physics!

I cover my Ph.D. thesis which is in the field of particle astrophysics. I also go through content from my books, and blog to help students succeed in academia, industry, and government!

I have experience in all three worlds now (academia, industry, and government) so anything I can share to help students and young professionals to navigate challenges in these fields, I am happy to! 

The journey from Ph.D. candidate to government scientist is worth sharing for those who feel the same uncertainties that I used to feel when I was in graduate school. It IS possible and this is how.

Excerpt from my blog on how to finish your Ph.D. in a timely manner:

If you have been keeping good notes, putting your thesis together should not take more than a couple of months.

Do not put off writing.

Basically, if you are a good graduate student, that’s great, but also, it won’t be easy.

You will be working really hard till the last minute.

You are fully capable of getting the work done, though. That’s WHY you are a good graduate student.

So, what do you need to do to finish?

• Finish your projects
  
• Finish writing your thesis
  
• Find/train your replacement graduate student(s)
  
• Find a job that your advisor/committee will approve of (good postdoc or top industry job)

Full blog post:

When asked salary expectations, say you will consider all reasonable offers

• It is hard to give a salary number because things like benefits, PTO, sick leave, all make up the offer and these would need to be considered as well
• It is hard to give a number because things like location would affect it and adjust for the cost of living
• I will consider all reasonable offers (yes, you are applying to multiple places and may have multiple offers, let people chase you)

These will make you seem like a reasonable and balanced person who is not easily fooled. Also, if you currently have a job, then you are in no real rush and you can leverage that fact to make yourself more attractive. More leverage you have, the better offer you can get. Without leverage, and without looking like a catch, you will end up with a worse offer.

If you must absolutely give a number for salary expectation, go for 10-20k higher than what you would settle for. Don’t give a range. If you say 100-120k, they will just give you 100k. Companies will pay you what they can get away with paying you, not what you actually deserve. So keep that in mind. Remember that although your salary is just one of many things in an offer, it does lock you to that number for not just this job and its incremental raises based on that salary figure, but for your next job as well. So even though you are playing it cool about salary not being everything (at first), it is actually very important! That is why you are playing this game to win! Not to get a low-ball salary that will affect what you make for years to come.

Full blog post:

• Work on getting referred formally or informally for the job you are applying to!
• Apply through the referral link if you are getting referred, don't rush and apply through the general link
• Work on updating your LinkedIn profile BEFORE applying because that could be the first impression they get of you - your online presence is important 
• Updating your LinkedIn profile is working on your PERSONAL BRAND - this is critical to your SUCCESS
• CHECK FOR SPELLING AND GRAMMAR ERRORS - I do this with Grammarly which is a free plugin with Google Chrome and this makes everything much more typo-free! Don't misspell your major, it does not look good!
• Make a professional headline that says who you are, not just your job title or something like "Student at ..." - Show off who you are using this space! Mine says: Physics PhD ⚛️ Research Physicist at Department of the Air Force 👩‍💻 Bestselling Author ✍️ Content creator 🎙️📺🙌 so I am separating my roles with emojis. You can also use this character: | to separate the roles and have things like "Avid Reader," "Travel Enthusiast," "Foodie," etc. Most importantly, you need to put "Open to Relocate" in your headline if you are looking to move!!!! This will help with getting found in searches by recruiters on LinkedIn. The information you put on LinkedIn has real consequences like being more searchable, so leverage it as the TOOL that it really is!!!
• Update your profile picture to a professional headshot taken outdoors with natural lighting. Wear work clothes, smile big, and remember the pic is important!! DO NOT use a pic from a wedding or a casual hangout with friends!! We can tell!
• Don't just put the job titles and company names, actually write out the description of the work you do and what your contributions are under each job position and roles where you have served - this will be much more impressive and help you STAND OUT
• Write down all your awards and recognitions under the Awards Recognition: if you got promoted, that goes in there. If you got scholarships, that goes in there. If you got tuition awarded and/or stipends paid in graduate school, that goes in there. 
• If you have publications, firstly, put them on LinkedIn under the Publications section, and second, LINK TO THEM, so we can find and read your publications! If they are papers published in a journal, try to link to the FREE preprints of the papers, if possible. If you don't have the paper somewhere online, write an article on LinkedIn with information from the paper and there you have a publication!
• The more content you post on LinkedIn, the better! It will all help with BRANDING. Post articles, normal posts, pictures, stories, etc. Be active on LinkedIn, the platform will reward you accordingly. 

One-page technical resume template

It seems most employers want their employees back in the office I cannot speak for all of you, so chime in with your comments, but from what leadership I interact with, it is clear that employers want us to go back in. I also know that plenty of employees would like to go back in and regain the option of keeping work at work. 

In my experience, though, these are folks who are parents and have been struggling with doing work at home. Not us child-free folks. But, in general, a lot of us would be in that category: I would prefer not to. It’s simple. We were flexible and took work home when you needed us to, employers. Then we designed our entire lives around doing work from home and set everything up, made good progress. We delivered during a pandemic. And now you want us to change our lives again? I say, let’s take a breath. 

Employers are not generally involved in the nitty-gritty of what day-to-day work looks like for us employees. Now that we are expected to come back in again, I am finding that I have to justify and make a case for why and when I would need to work from home. It seems we can’t just say, because, that’s what we do now! So, even though it might not make sense to have to rejustify this setup, I would recommend preparing to do so if you would like to keep working from home partially or completely. 

After working from home, either partially or completely, for so long, for one, you might be more set up to do stuff from home than at the office. There might be projects that you are better off doing from home because they require more concentration and less interruption. I am doing projects at home using tools, for example, that are more (or even only) accessible at home, not at work. So… of course, I can’t do them as well at work, so in order to continue them I need to have some days at home. Be prepared to explain, in detail, what things need to be done at home, on which days, and what things need to be done at work, on which days. If you want to go hybrid, like me. It can be annoying but, trust me, if you present a case, that will be more acceptable than if you expect bosses to read your mind. What I am finding is that employers want to regularly or, at least, semi-regularly see your face. 

The reasons they give mainly for wanting to do this is making sure we are not disconnected from what is going on, and for collaboration purposes. I would say that if a person did not take initiative to know what is going on, then even coming in, they might be in the dark. So by working from home successfully we actually demonstrate that we have a lot of initiative and don’t need supervision. It is the people who need supervision that would need to come in more. 

Once they are set up and know what they are doing more, they can decide what makes the best sense. The employee themself would know best about what needs to be done, not a supervisor, especially when it is about the details of how the work gets done. Same for collaboration. If you don’t deliberately collaborate, you might miss a lot of collaboration opportunities even coming in. Now, if you are new in the job, it might take more interaction initially to solidify the connections that you might leverage later on to get things done. To me, it is all about doing what is best and also whatever works best. If there is no reason to go in, one should not be forced to go in. We can avoid traffic, rush hour, and stress. 

Full blog post: 

• If you do not know the name of the professor who is hiring then stop right here and find that out! It’s about what you know and who you know. If you don’t know them already, chances are low for getting an interview.
• The cover letter should be no more than a few powerful paragraphs. Don’t make any paragraph too big a block of text.
• In the very first sentence, you should say what you are writing them for, that is, to apply for a position. Be specific. Say which position with what project.
• Then say who you are.
• Follow this up with when you will be graduating and when you can start the position.
• Finish the first paragraph with a strong statement about why you are more than perfect for the job.
• The next paragraph is all about elaborating on why you are perfect for the role. Elaborate away but as succinctly as you can. Any experience you speak about should be relevant to the particular role you are applying for. Keyword: relevant. No one cares about the other stuff you know.
• The professor(s) will KNOW if you are just sending them a generic cover letter that you send to every other school just with the school’s name changed. Trust me, they know. It takes work and time to make sure each cover letter is perfect for that particular role.

People thought that was crazy. But I got interviews for ALL but one of them. That is a high success rate for applying to postdocs.

If you are not writing a cover letter specifically for a given role – you should really ask yourself if you even care enough to bother applying for that role. This is what I did and ended up applying to so few places.

By the time you are applying for postdocs, it is not cute to like everything anymore. You want to be highly skilled, choosy, passionate, opinionated, and annoyingly specific, in order to make a strong case.

For the cover letter sample provided here, I was selling my background in a particle astrophysics balloon-payload experiment in Antarctica to apply for a job doing a different particle astrophysics balloon-payload experiment in Antarctica. The detection methods (RF antennas vs Si(Li) detectors) and science questions (ultra-high-energy neutrinos vs dark matter detection) addressed by each experiment were actually quite distinct from each other, however, there was enough in common between them (broadly, both were in the field of particle astrophysics, both balloon payloads, both in Antarctica) to make a case for the postdoc.

• The third paragraph should be like a very short research statement – packed with strong statements about what it is you’d like to do and why the role is well-aligned with your goals. Mention achievements that are, again, relevant to the position.
• It is nice to put a big achievement near the end so you are leaving them with a reminder that you are an absolute goddess.
• I always end by asking them to kindly consider the application and that I look forward to hearing from them – which is pretty standard.

Full blog post:

Should you stay longer and make sure your paper gets published?  I address this question from a Ph.D. student. Here are the details of the question:

I want to transition to the industry as a research scientist.

I have one protocol paper accepted, one second-author paper, and one first-author paper that is not yet submitted.

I am worried as my advisor wants to add more data to the first-author paper before submitting it, and it keeps getting delayed.

Now he wants me to stay as a postdoc to finish it.

My advisor knows I want to transition to the industry.

My agony aunt response:

Your situation sounds to me like your advisor wants to keep you forever. Because you are good!

You usually end up doing other people’s jobs as well… maybe he needs to employ more people who can help to finish the paper if he wants a LOT more changes.

Sadly (or not, if you don’t care,) you might have to step down from the first-author status in that case, but I come from a field that has embraced the alphabet for better or for worse, so that’s up to you. I bet you could still claim a lot of ownership for the parts that you have done already. It won’t matter in the industry, not like in academia.

Keep in mind that your advisor knows you are going to the industry – HE has nothing to lose if you give more of your time to this paper. If you lined up an academic job, I bet he would be much less inclined to keep you longer. Because then it would matter to him. If you are in a field where producing postdocs/academics is important to the CV of an academic (which is true for many fields) your professor would care about this. On the other hand, if you are going to industry, YOU are the only one in a position to lose from staying longer.

In this situation, do what you need to do to graduate with your degree. And, ONLY that. Your advisor could want many things – but YOU need to do what will get you out ASAP. That is likely NOT working more and more on the paper. Write your thesis, finish up whatever is going into your thesis.

Sometimes getting a paper accepted by a journal is a requirement to graduate but that is clearly not the case here as he wants you to stay as a postdoc to finish the paper. So, don’t let anyone emotionally blackmail you into staying longer. That’s toxic, and all the more reason to leave.

Full blog post: 

Learning to not take criticism personally is one of the most liberating and productive things you can do for yourself and your career.

In graduate school, I learned how to take criticism for what it is and it really helped me to succeed.

Sure, I didn’t know something. That was about me. But, they really, really wanted to point it out, for whatever reasons.

Once I realized that people really do rather love giving feedback, it was very productive to take advantage of it.

I realized that getting a bunch of feedback from people did not mean that they thought I was stupid.

People don’t even have time to think that many thoughts about you. They want to say what they have to say and get on with their day. You just made them feel better, probably.

Even if people did think I was stupid, my main goal was to learn the material which I was doing way faster with their help.

If you don’t give talks or show drafts of something, your collaborators can’t give you any feedback.

They don’t have a chance to go on a long rant about something that you are wrong about or missed.

A long rant from a knowledgeable person in the group could teach you lots of things! Especially, when you are new.

So, taking it as a personal attack, even if it IS a personal attack which it rarely is, does you no good. You don’t have time for that.

Forget about the rest and don’t spend precious time and mental energy over-analyzing things.

You are in charge and you can get anything done. You are the only one that needs to believe in you.

Once you understand that that’s all there is to it, life is really rather simple and productive.

Full blog post: 

To get started with data science using Python, the recommendation from experts is to get Anaconda. The Python programming language is a powerful tool whose true potential is only harnessed with the right packages and libraries.

An Anaconda installation will give you those in one fell swoop rather than have to add things one by one.

Abstract

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most luminous transient events in the observed Universe. However, there is no direct observational evidence for what exactly drives a GRB. The most widely accepted model for these cosmic events is the fireball model where it is thought that a substantial fraction of the kinetic energy of the source is converted to gamma-radiation by shock accelerated electrons emitting synchrotron and inverse-Compton radiation. The acceleration of protons in the gamma-ray emitting region of the GRB has been hypothesized as well. In this hadronic acceleration model, it is predicted that protons may interact with gamma-ray photons to produce a burst of neutrinos at energy ∼10^14 eV during prompt emission and energy ∼10^18 eV during afterglow emission. Several experimental searches for these high energy neutrinos have been conducted and no GRB neutrinos have yet been found. The analytical prediction for neutrino flux has been replaced with a more thorough numerical prediction for neutrino flux. The neutron model of GRBs, where only neutrons can escape the GRB and reach Earth as cosmic rays, has been ruled out by the experimental work of IceCube and ANTARES. Upgraded versions of current experiments such as IceCube, ANTARES, ANITA and ARA, as well as new experiments such as KM3NeT, are preparing to probe and further constrain the fireball paradigm of GRB neutrino production.

This review includes:

1. Introduction
2. Early theoretical predictions for neutrino fluences due to GRBs
3. Overview of high energy neutrino experiments and related physics
4. Experimental searches for high energy neutrinos from GRBs
5. Prospects for detection of high energy neutrinos from GRBs

High Energy Neutrinos from Gamma Ray Bursts: Theoretical Predictions, Experimental Searches, and Prospects for Detection was originally written as a review submitted for my Ph.D. candidacy paper on Nov 23, 2015.

It has been edited for a "Short Read" on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing in Oct 2020. It is a public domain work.

Special thanks to the Connolly group at Ohio State University (OSU) and the physics and astronomy departments at OSU. Moreover, I am grateful for the contribution of each and every scientist and author listed in the "References" section of this review. This review would not be possible without their published science and hard work.

Please let me know if you find any mistakes or problems, I will fix them. My email is oindreeb@gmail.com. I am happy for this to be a living document. I am anxious to improve it but feel that it needs to be out at this point before that can happen.

Addressing question I got on LinkedIn about how I ended up in the Air Force after starting out as an international student in the United States ❣️ I came to this country after high school and it has been a journey leading to this point now when I'm a civilian employee. Mostly not planned and just doing my best 🙌

Answering this question I got on LinkedIn: 

Thanks, Oindree for connecting. So, I see you came to the US for BS and now you are working for the Air Force. I worked in the past for the federal govt. I was wondering what pathway did you use to enter the Air Force? My understanding is that apart from the Dept of HHS, other Agencies do not have pathways for permanent positions. Are you a US citizen now? From your blog/book I figured out that you were international/non-US at that time. Not that I want to join the Air Force, but little curious. By the way, your story during your Ph.D. application resonates well with my struggles also applying to grad school here. Free food from seminars during my Ph.D. and postdoc was awesome.  Hope the video helps! Any more questions let me know on my blog!!  

Awareness of the problem can help you to deal with it. Which brings me to the last point.

Make a plan and follow it.

Each day, at the end of the day, write down what you’d like to (need to) accomplish the next day. It should be only two or three things.

You might end up doing more things but keep this list short.

This is your list to get STARTED with your day.

So that you don’t sit there feeling terrible and also unable to shake it off as you don’t know how to get started with the day’s work.

An item in your list could be something like:

Implement the next step in troubleshooting to figure out what the hell is the bug that your code is currently suffering from.

Then, come in the next morning and do the things on your (short) list no matter what.

I used to have a daily morning meeting in graduate school where I basically heard that I couldn’t graduate. Not yet. And what felt like, maybe not ever.

It was really hard to do work right after that. I was so demoralized. I wished my day wouldn’t start like that but I had no choice.

My mind would be clouded by negative things and when working on hard problems, you kind of need to be all there. You need to shake off negativity and get the work DONE.

It helped to acknowledge that I found the meeting demoralizing and then come up with a plan to fight that feeling.

I would have a few things planned out to start doing right after the meeting.

Things that would add up and ultimately lead to graduating no matter how much it felt like that was an impossibility. It’s all about chipping away at it.

So, don’t let any demoralizing forces stop you from chipping away at your goal.

If you detect demoralization, take steps to fight it first, and then continue working.

Full blog post:

I don’t mean that you should suddenly know everyone and have this huge network overnight.

Start to build relationships and have meaningful connections.

This could be in the form of reconnecting with your old friends that you have forgotten due to graduate school.

Maybe it is time to be a good friend again.

I had become so focused on work in graduate school that I had trouble remembering who my friends were.

I barely ever saw them.

So, literally, get up and get outside of the lab.

Get some sunlight.

Go for a walk. Go to a friend’s house.

Don’t think of networking as this really difficult and unnatural thing that you have to do.

Full blog post:

Worrying about your Ph.D. candidacy exam (prelim)?

Been there, and here to help!

I will cover everything from what candidacy is and what a first-year grad student should focus on, to what to do on the day of your oral exam.

It’s an exam. Get ready to study!

Make sure to visit your school’s official website and look up the candidacy requirements for your specific graduate program.

Here, I share my personal experience and guideline, having completed my Ph.D. candidacy in Physics at Ohio State University.

• The 6-week formal exam required by the graduate school
  
• Advisor/committee chooses a topic
  
• Typically not something you have worked on
  
• But good for you to know
  

You do a literature review, some calculations and become a mini-expert on the assigned topic

Deliverables: 20 page paper (at the end of 4 weeks) + Talk (at the end of 6 weeks)

The talk / oral exam makes students nervous because they can be asked any question from the assigned topic and in-context Physics during the talk.

In my program, this talk is given only to the candidacy committee. In other programs, the talk may even be open to the public.

Focus on finding a good Ph.D. advisor

Professor with whom you feel relatively comfortable

To interact with regularly and ask questions

Has research money OR ability to get TA support

Has project ideas that interest you

Yes, in that order

Full blog post:

Here are 26 tips on giving a successful job talk. You can use this list as a guide when working on creating your research presentation for an academic position or research-based role.

1. Good to have pretty pictures on the title slide.
2. A “quick orientation” slide quickly provides information to the audience on what to expect. It has helped me to deliver my talks. Here, you give basic info on you and your project immediately after the title slide.
3. It is very important to show knowledge of the field as a whole and acknowledge other work. Do this for your research early on in the talk.
4. In a “background slide,” you can expect questions where understanding what is being asked is critical. Get clarification on the question.
5. It is important to tell the audience why they should care early on so that you can keep their attention throughout the talk.
6. Break down confusing things into bite-sized chunks.
7. Spend enough time explaining everything in a heavy slide. If there is quite a lot going on you could lose your audience.

Full blog post:

In my humble (and biased!) opinion, the grad school experience is not worth going through unless you have found an advisor/group/research combination that clicks for you.

You need to be filled with much-needed motivation to return to school day after day, maybe night after night, for several years (5.5 years average in the US), to work the hardest you have ever worked on something.

What to do with your current group? Well, most importantly, again:

You might want to switch for a number of reasons. I hope it is something like: you don’t feel passionate about the research or that you don’t like the particular advising style.

Hopefully, it is not more traumatic than that.. although, it can be sometimes and in that case, I am sorry and I hope you get help.

Actually, whatever the situation, get help! Talk to someone – seniors, classmates, administrators that you trust, other professors, counselors.

Read the full blog post:

1. Be selective and apply to specific positions that excite you and where you can make a strong case for yourself.
2. Know the name of the person who would be hiring you and do your research on them. Don’t send out generic applications just to send out applications. It’s not worth your time and you probably won’t get interview calls. Make two good applications rather than 20 generic ones.
3. It’s who you know and what you did. Use your network to find opportunities and get referred for them, but also focus on finding positions that are a good fit for you based on the work you did. Having a strong network will help to get you the leads and put you in a better position for getting interviewed, but if what you did is not going to make you a strong candidate for what they want you to do next, then you will be passed over for someone else.
4. Everything you have done already should make you the perfect candidate for the perfect role. In your research statement, talk about the things you have already done that make you a particularly strong candidate for that specific position. That will work to at least get you an interview, from my experience.

Full blog post:

As a senior graduate student, you might face a situation where your advisor is not on the same page as you about graduation. The recommended approach, in this case, would be to tackle the problem step by step, and not all at once.

It may very well be that the last person to get on the same page is your advisor. In this case, please know that yours isn’t the first or the last professor to be a pain in the ass when it comes to graduating. It is a well-known phenomenon. If this is your biggest hurdle, you are not alone.

In fact, that is the best advice I can give.

Blog post:

The “And Then There Were None” technique of graduating with a Ph.D. is to be deployed when you have the ultimate advisor problem.

In fact, that could be your downfall, and we need to avoid that at all costs. Avoid becoming isolated and as a Ph.D. student, you have to work hard to make sure of that.

In this post, I share the research statement I wrote to become a finalist in a prestigious postdoctoral fellowship competition called the Owen Chamberlain Postdoctoral Fellowship at Berkeley Lab.

At the time of the application, I did not have any main-author papers published yet but some in the pipeline.

If you are wondering what do you even write in a research statement, I am totally with you.

I felt the same way.

What do I say?

Then I learned that what you mainly say in a research statement is what you have done already and how that makes you great.

Listen to the audio to hear this discussion.

Associated Blog post:

If you got into multiple graduate schools and can’t decide which one to go to, congratulations, and also, I understand the stress. Here are 4 ways to help you decide which graduate school to choose out of the options you have.

Listen to the audio to hear this discussion.

Associated Blog post:

Lots of people who are NOT on the ANITA collaboration are talking about this topic of how “NASA scientists may have uncovered a parallel universe.” Well, as someone who is actually on the collaboration and also deeply interested in making science communication more accessible, I figured I will blog about the SCIENCE that is getting twisted around to make tabloids.

I will not be sharing links to any of the tabloids because those clickbait articles have already made enough money off of misinforming the public and creating sensation without actually educating anyone about science.

Here I talk about how to make a case for graduation with a Ph.D. including some techniques you can deploy towards that end.

If you are starting off as a blogger or website owner, you might first want to know how much it will cost. So how much does blogging or having a website cost? I will give you the breakdown for this site. There are three aspects to consider: platform, hosting, and domain. All three potentially cost money.

I use WordPress now, but that is not how I started…

In my young days of blogging, I was on Blogger, hosted by Google! Google owns it and it is the simplest to set up. It was just a place for me to start, and so I did. In those days, my domain used to be with Google Domains for $12. Blogger, of course, was free.

However, as I grew a little older and wanted my site to not look like ass, excuse my French, I moved on to WordPress.

I considered Squarespace but may have found that it was not free. Currently, I only pay for the hosting & domain, not the platform. I also did a transfer from Blogger to WP, and the WP community helped me to do that for free.

Whoever helps me with painful things, I go with them, yo.

Listen to the audio to hear this discussion.

Associated Blog post:

If you are new to audio like I am, you might be interested in the least expensive and challenging way to get started with recording audio. I share how to get started with a podcast by using just your phone and Macbook. Specifically, you will need a free app on your phone and a free app on your Macbook.

Uploaded the audio file following the methods discussed in this post to Anchor now, added a Transition to the beginning, that is all. 

Listen to the audio to hear this discussion.

Associated Blog post:

The COVID-19 Pandemic Might Just Be The Best Thing That Ever Happened To You. Pandemic-proof your income to pursue your ultimate dream and be set for life. This post brings together several posts I have been writing to encourage people to follow their dream while also pandemic-proofing their life and income.

Let’s start living the life we have always wanted to because there is no excuse not to do that anymore. Change is not only coming, but it is also upon us, and Nature is forcing us to follow our pandemic-proof dreams.

Listen to the audio to hear this discussion.

Associated Blog post:

------NOT SPONSORED BY CHEEKY SCIENTIST ASSOCIATION-----

The moment before joining Cheeky Scientist, I was sitting in the dark in my bathroom. It was late one night in November 2017.

I was worried about my future.

Listen to the audio to hear this discussion.

Associated Blog post:

Your relationship with time in graduate school will determine whether you achieve more rather than less, so have a respectful attitude towards time. Don’t let time get away from you and don’t take time for granted.

Five years is not long if you want to achieve more rather than less

Listen to the audio to hear this discussion.

Associated Blog post:

A Ph.D. defense is one of those things that one can never feel prepared enough for because usually, it is the first time one is doing it! In this post, I paint a picture of how to successfully defend your Ph.D. thesis including how to make the slides for your defense talk.

Associated blog post:

In this post, I talk about the dangers of a Ph.D. taking too long to finish and to point out the resources available to you to combat that.

A Ph.D. that is much longer than five to six years is a poor return on investment. Whatever the reason, there are two big problems with staying in a Ph.D. program for too long:

• Lack of productivity
• Decreasing employability

Listen to the audio to hear this discussion.

Associated Blog post: