(1) Useful resources
(a) I'm often awed by the decades-long (or longer) zeal and motivation undertaken by the authors while writing books. The question I am forced to ask myself is how I can bring about such long-term regularity for my own self. Our timetables change from one phase of life to another. Yet, may be, it is possible to find a more-or-less consistent time slot to undertake things that are important in that phase of life. I find that maintaining that time slot, and increasing your productivity during that particular time slot through sleeping well before, coffee, turning off electronics, makes a huge difference - or atleast it makes me feel I'm productive, reducing any possible guilt. It's a "You have literally done your best, there's nothing more you could have done, so let's try to accept life as it unfolds."
(b) While I'm not sure about the correctness of the book, I had come across Peter Feibelman's A PhD Is Not Enough: A Guide to Survival in Science. I think reflecting on it and discussing with others might be another thing worth doing. I haven't read it end-to-end either, so I'll be more motivated to do it if someone else would be too :).
(2) Questions
(a) I'm currently still in the process of reading the literature, finding the research gaps, and pinning down my hypotheses. The question I have is: once one has their hypotheses nailed down, how long (in weeks or number of hours) does it take to set up, run demonstrations, and debug one's experiment before they are in a position to run your pilot? I ask this in response to Barbara's suggestion to explore the labs in-person.
- A related question is: How transferable is the knowledge obtained from the details and experience of one methodology to another [in the context of CDC or Kiko lab]?
- Especially, as a first year student undertaking courses and not having their hypotheses, I have this worry of spreading myself too thin. If I spend time in both the literature survey as well as the in-person lab environments, I worry I might not develop a good understanding of either of them. I understand it won't be a worry during vacations or once the courses are over. But until then, what would be a good suggestion to plan my subsequent weeks or months? I'm thinking - work on the literature and hypotheses development for a month or two, then once I have some idea, dedicate to the lab visits for a few weeks, then get back again to the literature.
(b) To me, the amount of time required to do the studies is also a bit puzzling. Let's say you need 100 participants for one study, including the attrition rate and all. Let's assume 1 participant per day, so that's 100 days. In a year, we have 365 days, which seem more than enough to run the pilots and debug whatever problems that arise. And presumably one might also be designing their next study even while the previous study is in progress. Then why might 3 years be insufficient for 3 studies? Could someone elaborate a bit on the average-case vs worst-case timeline of a study?
(c) The issue of becoming comfortable with softwares came up in both the interviews with Anna as well as Laura. Not being comfortable with computer technicalities and programming has also been a concern with my previous department. On one hand, I do think programming should be as important as learning english*. On the other hand, it is a fact that programming education in school has still lagged behind english and literature education. The question then is how useful might it be to have "software assistants" in the lab, similar to the way there are "research assistants"? To what extent do you think it might help to easen or speed up the stages from reading the literature to running the pilot experiment?
*There's little you can do by solely knowing english or solely knowing programming. Both need to be augmented with domain knowledge to do anything useful with them.