A Day in the Life of a Third-Year PhD Candidate.
I am Alba, a third-year PhD candidate in the Department of Earth and Planetary sciences working with Mike Oskin. My PhD work combines field methods, landscape analysis, remote sensing, and finite element modeling to address a variety of problems in earthquake and fault mechanics. Some of the questions my research addresses include “How often and under what conditions do earthquakes transfer to neighboring faults?” and “How much deformation from earthquakes builds up away from faults over long timescales?”.
At this point of my PhD, most of my time is devoted to research, though I still take a class here and there when something relevant to my work pops up. This quarter, I am taking a physics class in order of magnitude estimates, which is all about developing the ability to make "quick and dirty" calculations. The class only meets twice a week for 100 minutes but we also get problem sets that take a few hours to complete throughout the week. The kind of questions in these problem sets include “what mass of food does a whale consume per day?”, “how many neutron stars can you fit into a teaspoon?”, or “can the Gulf Stream power the entire US?”. I have found these questions so fun to work on.
In the research realm, I am currently working on wrapping up a manuscript for publication so I have been spending the bulk of my time finalizing the data analysis and writing it up. At the earlier stages of projects though, my time is mostly spent writing code or preparing data in QGIS. I love collaborating with undergraduate students that are excited about earthquakes. This quarter, I am mentoring two students and we meet weekly to chat about their projects, work on our programming and mapping skills, or simply catch up. In between research, classes, and service, my day is filled with big cups of coffee with soy milk and a splash of maple syrup.
As much as I love spending my days thinking about earthquakes and fractures (or really, about how things break in general), I also very much look forward to social and outdoor activities at the end of the day. These days, I go rock climbing at the local gym 3-4 times per week and like to go mountain or road biking a couple of times per week. During the weekend, both of these activities are often followed by a trip to a local brewery to catch up with friends.
A Day in the Life of a Second-Year PhD Student.
Hi! I’m Hannah. I’m a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Earth and Planetary
Sciences at UCD, and I’m co-advised by Drs. David Gold and Sandy Carlson. For my
dissertation I’m studying bivalve shell formation and ways to protect shellfish against climate
change. As a second-year student, my “typical” day usually involves a mix of teaching and
researching. Fortunately, I was able to get most of my required coursework done during my first
year, so I am only taking one class this quarter. Thus far that has not required more than ~6
hours of work each week.
Right now, “research” varies day-by-day. Part of my work has to be done at the Bodega Marine
Lab, so I sporadically head that direction for ~ a week or so to do some work with clams. Just
last week, I worked with experts in shellfish husbandry to make a set of littleneck clams spawn.
That involved a few days of being in the hatchery for ~6-8 hours each day. When I’m in Davis, I
usually spend at least part of my day reading scientific papers, and part of it writing
grant/fellowship proposals. As a second-year, my advisers have really encouraged me to seek
external funding opportunities to support my research, and applying for these things takes a lot
of time and effort. On some days I head into the office to do some basic microscope work for a
couple of hours. The rest of my day I usually spend grading, teaching, or working on
extracurricular activities. For example, I’m a member of the Conservation Paleobiology Network
Student and Working Groups Panels. This coming summer will be when I start to run my
experiments and gather a lot of data. When I started at UCD, I did not have a PhD project
planned. So, my first year (and part of my second) was largely focused on reading, classwork,
and developing my dissertation plans. This is not the case for all students when they enter
graduate school, and is something you should discuss with potential advisers if you choose to
pursue a graduate degree.
In writing this, I’m realizing how there really is no such thing as a “typical” day during the second
year. Things change and new things come up each week, and I try my best to adjust. If
graduate school has taught me anything (besides a lot about shells)...it’s that I need to be
flexible, take breaks, and not get down on myself when I don’t understand something. You go to
graduate school to learn--and nobody should expect you to understand everything right away!
A Day in the Life of a Fourth-Year PhD Student.
Hi! My name is Veronica and I’m a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Earth and
Planetary Sciences at UCD, and I’m co-advised by Drs. Tessa Hill and Sandy Carlson. I’m
based on the UCD campus at the Earth and Physical Science Building, where I share an office
with other graduate students. (Although throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve worked
entirely from home.) Occasionally, I drive out to Bodega Marine Laboratory on the Sonoma
Coast for field work.
For my dissertation, I’m studying shell growth in mussels over various time scales. I’m
interested in how their shell growth features might change over short periods of time (like
seasonally, or over a couple of years) or over much longer periods of time (over decades,
centuries, and millennia). By “growth features”, I mean shell microstructure, growth band
patterns (like rings of a tree!), and shell chemistry. I was interested in climate change, marine
shells, and “recent” geologic history (the past ~12,000 years), so I combined these things into a
PhD project.
Being able to develop my own PhD project and have autonomy over what I study on a day-to-
day basis is now my favorite element of grad school, but it did take a lot of time, labor, and
(some) frustration to develop my project and get myself up-to-date on what to do and how to do
it. You learn by trial-and-error A LOT in graduate school, and it takes a lot to make incremental
progress. But even the tiny tiny victories (like finally writing a perfect sentence in a grant
proposal, or figuring out how to get your code to work correctly) are major milestones!
As a fourth-year student with a research fellowship and no more coursework, I currently don’t
have any TA duties or class assignments, so my “typical day” is very unstructured. This is nice
because my schedule is very flexible, but I really have to use this time wisely to get my
dissertation chapters written and my data collection finished up. I have bi-weekly meetings with
my advisors to “check-in” and so I set deadlines for myself to keep up with work. I like to have
things to show them (like a graph or some PowerPoint slides) to get their feedback on each time
I meet with them. These days, I mostly analyze data (in R coding language) and write it up as
dissertation chapters.
I’m hoping to finish my PhD within the next year or so, so this is “crunch time”. To make this
manageable for myself, I try to work from 9am to 5pm Mondays through Fridays, and
occasionally I’ll do some paper-reading or chapter editing after dinner. While I have a lot to get
done, my schedule is very flexible and I can adapt easily if something comes up, whether it’s
personal or professional. For example, I always have time for an impromptu meeting with a
colleague or the opportunity to take an afternoon off to enjoy nice weather. Things like this really
help keep the work enjoyable, which is so important since graduate school can be very rigorous!
I am Alba, a third-year PhD candidate in the Department of Earth and Planetary sciences working with Mike Oskin. My PhD work combines field methods, landscape analysis, remote sensing, and finite element modeling to address a variety of problems in earthquake and fault mechanics. Some of the questions my research addresses include “How often and under what conditions do earthquakes transfer to neighboring faults?” and “How much deformation from earthquakes builds up away from faults over long timescales?”.
At this point of my PhD, most of my time is devoted to research, though I still take a class here and there when something relevant to my work pops up. This quarter, I am taking a physics class in order of magnitude estimates, which is all about developing the ability to make "quick and dirty" calculations. The class only meets twice a week for 100 minutes but we also get problem sets that take a few hours to complete throughout the week. The kind of questions in these problem sets include “what mass of food does a whale consume per day?”, “how many neutron stars can you fit into a teaspoon?”, or “can the Gulf Stream power the entire US?”. I have found these questions so fun to work on.
In the research realm, I am currently working on wrapping up a manuscript for publication so I have been spending the bulk of my time finalizing the data analysis and writing it up. At the earlier stages of projects though, my time is mostly spent writing code or preparing data in QGIS. I love collaborating with undergraduate students that are excited about earthquakes. This quarter, I am mentoring two students and we meet weekly to chat about their projects, work on our programming and mapping skills, or simply catch up. In between research, classes, and service, my day is filled with big cups of coffee with soy milk and a splash of maple syrup.
As much as I love spending my days thinking about earthquakes and fractures (or really, about how things break in general), I also very much look forward to social and outdoor activities at the end of the day. These days, I go rock climbing at the local gym 3-4 times per week and like to go mountain or road biking a couple of times per week. During the weekend, both of these activities are often followed by a trip to a local brewery to catch up with friends.
A Day in the Life of a Second-Year PhD Student.
Hi! I’m Hannah. I’m a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Earth and Planetary
Sciences at UCD, and I’m co-advised by Drs. David Gold and Sandy Carlson. For my
dissertation I’m studying bivalve shell formation and ways to protect shellfish against climate
change. As a second-year student, my “typical” day usually involves a mix of teaching and
researching. Fortunately, I was able to get most of my required coursework done during my first
year, so I am only taking one class this quarter. Thus far that has not required more than ~6
hours of work each week.
Right now, “research” varies day-by-day. Part of my work has to be done at the Bodega Marine
Lab, so I sporadically head that direction for ~ a week or so to do some work with clams. Just
last week, I worked with experts in shellfish husbandry to make a set of littleneck clams spawn.
That involved a few days of being in the hatchery for ~6-8 hours each day. When I’m in Davis, I
usually spend at least part of my day reading scientific papers, and part of it writing
grant/fellowship proposals. As a second-year, my advisers have really encouraged me to seek
external funding opportunities to support my research, and applying for these things takes a lot
of time and effort. On some days I head into the office to do some basic microscope work for a
couple of hours. The rest of my day I usually spend grading, teaching, or working on
extracurricular activities. For example, I’m a member of the Conservation Paleobiology Network
Student and Working Groups Panels. This coming summer will be when I start to run my
experiments and gather a lot of data. When I started at UCD, I did not have a PhD project
planned. So, my first year (and part of my second) was largely focused on reading, classwork,
and developing my dissertation plans. This is not the case for all students when they enter
graduate school, and is something you should discuss with potential advisers if you choose to
pursue a graduate degree.
In writing this, I’m realizing how there really is no such thing as a “typical” day during the second
year. Things change and new things come up each week, and I try my best to adjust. If
graduate school has taught me anything (besides a lot about shells)...it’s that I need to be
flexible, take breaks, and not get down on myself when I don’t understand something. You go to
graduate school to learn--and nobody should expect you to understand everything right away!
A Day in the Life of a Fourth-Year PhD Student.
Hi! My name is Veronica and I’m a fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Earth and
Planetary Sciences at UCD, and I’m co-advised by Drs. Tessa Hill and Sandy Carlson. I’m
based on the UCD campus at the Earth and Physical Science Building, where I share an office
with other graduate students. (Although throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve worked
entirely from home.) Occasionally, I drive out to Bodega Marine Laboratory on the Sonoma
Coast for field work.
For my dissertation, I’m studying shell growth in mussels over various time scales. I’m
interested in how their shell growth features might change over short periods of time (like
seasonally, or over a couple of years) or over much longer periods of time (over decades,
centuries, and millennia). By “growth features”, I mean shell microstructure, growth band
patterns (like rings of a tree!), and shell chemistry. I was interested in climate change, marine
shells, and “recent” geologic history (the past ~12,000 years), so I combined these things into a
PhD project.
Being able to develop my own PhD project and have autonomy over what I study on a day-to-
day basis is now my favorite element of grad school, but it did take a lot of time, labor, and
(some) frustration to develop my project and get myself up-to-date on what to do and how to do
it. You learn by trial-and-error A LOT in graduate school, and it takes a lot to make incremental
progress. But even the tiny tiny victories (like finally writing a perfect sentence in a grant
proposal, or figuring out how to get your code to work correctly) are major milestones!
As a fourth-year student with a research fellowship and no more coursework, I currently don’t
have any TA duties or class assignments, so my “typical day” is very unstructured. This is nice
because my schedule is very flexible, but I really have to use this time wisely to get my
dissertation chapters written and my data collection finished up. I have bi-weekly meetings with
my advisors to “check-in” and so I set deadlines for myself to keep up with work. I like to have
things to show them (like a graph or some PowerPoint slides) to get their feedback on each time
I meet with them. These days, I mostly analyze data (in R coding language) and write it up as
dissertation chapters.
I’m hoping to finish my PhD within the next year or so, so this is “crunch time”. To make this
manageable for myself, I try to work from 9am to 5pm Mondays through Fridays, and
occasionally I’ll do some paper-reading or chapter editing after dinner. While I have a lot to get
done, my schedule is very flexible and I can adapt easily if something comes up, whether it’s
personal or professional. For example, I always have time for an impromptu meeting with a
colleague or the opportunity to take an afternoon off to enjoy nice weather. Things like this really
help keep the work enjoyable, which is so important since graduate school can be very rigorous!