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Ph Do What!?

A  First Hand Prospective Case Study (n=1) of the Process of Obtaining a PhD


Good day everyone, and welcome to Ph Do What!?, a blog detailing my experience going through a PhD program of study at a top United States research university.  Although I will be talking about the details of the science I'm working on, the main focus of the blog is the real personal experience, the challenges, the triumphs, and the much much more numerous failures.

Who is this blog for?  I'm glad you asked.  This blog NOT aimed at my fellow scientists, at least not in the context of a professional, peer reviewed and academically rigorous depiction of experiments and data and results.  This blog is aimed at anyone who is undertaking a PhD, who is considering doing so, or who knows and loves anyone currently pursuing a PhD.  To those who are not academics, and have never been to graduate school but have children or siblings or lovers who are, I hope this blog will give you some insight into what your loved one faces, and that you can begin to appreciate how graduate school really is more than just 4-6 (or more) extra years of college.  To any undergraduates, or professionals looking to return to school to advance their career, I hope this blog will give you the information and tools to make an informed decision, and if you choose to follow this path, will help you walk into it with open eyes and realistic expectations.  To my fellows inmates in graduate school purgatory , I hope that this blog serves a reminder that you are not alone in your struggles.  Let us laugh, weep and celebrate together over our ridiculous mistakes, crushing rejections, and ultimate (I hope) triumphant successes.  

 Now for a bit about me: I am a first year PhD student in an interdisciplinary biomedical research program.  I'm coming into this program with a Master of Science degree, so I do have so previous graduate research experience.  Before anyone asks, I will NOT be detailing on this blog which university I work at, nor will I actually name the type of program I am in, since there only a a few programs of this specific type in the country.  My background is in physiology1 and my particular interest is in cardiac physiology and ischemia-reperfusion injury2.  My program requires 3 research rotations through different labs, and the work that I will be doing for the first year of this program will not necessarily be the work I do my dissertation on.  I will make clear in each post whether what I am talking about is rotational work, or my eventual permanent lab, but there may be some overlap, and there are always side projects and collaborations.  
My goal is that this blog should be accessible to anyone and everyone. To that end, when I discuss must experiments, ideas, and other more technical aspects of my work, I will try to explain in as straightforward a way as possible what they are, and if I do not do so in the body of the text, I plan to include footnotes with quick definitions to various jargon.  If there is something I don't explain, please feel free to let me know in the comments.  I don't want y'all to have to go to google just to understand what I'm writing about.  Your feedback will help me tune my writing.  You feedback will also help me know what you find interesting and want to hear more about, so please speak up and let me know.  

 My plan at the moment is to update this blog on a monthly basis for now.  As I get more comfortable as a writer and more settled into my lab schedule, I may update that.  That's it for now, because I have a meeting to get to (Rule #1: there's always another meeting).

 Be well, and always look at the data,
Faxe MacAran
Twitter: @TheMacAran
1) Physiology is the study of the normal function of living organisms.  Not just anatomy, but the function and mechanisms behind how organs and tissues and cells do what they do.  Interacts with a wide range of specific biological disciplines.

 2) Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury is a type of injury that occurs when a tissue has been cut off from blood flow (like happens in a stroke or heart attack) and then that blood flow is restored.  This injury is actually beyond just the injury that occurs from the ischemia, or lack of bloodflow.  

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