It's the 100th day of my PhD! How do I know this? I'm tweeting my way through my PhD, one day at a time.
Hashtags are all the rage on Twitter, so I thought I'd jump on board and use one too for my own little project (or big project if you consider it as part of the PhD itself). Documenting my highs and lows in a concise way (oh I love you Twitter) will hopefully give me something to look back on in the future and engage with others who are going through, or have had, the same experiences as me in my PhD.
#TweetmyPhD Day 49: Felt like part of a family in my research group today. Have also been planning new experiments, exciting times ahead!
— Emily James (@emilyreacts) March 27, 2014
I'm hoping that grouping all of the relevant tweets together using the #TweetmyPhD hashtag and numbering them by day will keep the tweets easy to find and time line easy to follow. (Although, I've already mixed up the numbering on a few of the days - I usually tweet at the end of the day, when I'm tired and my proof-reading skills slip!)
The numbering follows the simple rule that if I spend a considerable amount of time working or thinking about my PhD, it gets a tweet using the hashtag. Hence I foresee that most weeks will have five #TweetmyPhD tweets (Mon-Fri) and some will extend to six or seven. I'm aiming to stick to working Mon-Fri only, but we will see what happens further into my PhD.
#TweetmyPhD day87: Busy #cheltscifest day learning about serial killer math, infinity & sports anatomy. Rounded off by #FameLab & networking
— Emily James (@emilyreacts) June 9, 2014
Is anyone else out there tweeting their way through their PhD? I'd love to hear from you! As for celebrating my 100th day, I think I will enjoy a few cocktails later. After all, it is a Friday!
chemdiary
Thank you:) The hashtag and especially the blog posts (hopefully) will help me to track what and how many papers I will have read. I really want to read some organic chemistry papers, but as you can tell it's my weakest subject. So, I am afraid of not understanding the syntheses. But, I will read and share one for you:) Except the inorganic papers that I don't share, I like reading bioinorganic and other biology related papers.
chemdiary
Congratulations! I am following your "tweetmyphd" hashtag as much as I can and I really like it. I started my ph.d. 5 weeks ago and I hope I could do something like you do. But, I thought I can't really find any new things to say every day (I am probably wrong). Actually, in the first 3-4 weeks; I was learning a new technique, instrument etc. almost every day. So, I could have done something like that. Anyway, I hope you keep writing about your own experience. I enjoy reading them.
I do have a similar "challenge" using "#chempaperaday" hashtag though. I try to read/tweet/post an article every day on my blog. In the end, I'd like to see how many articles in fields other than inorganic chemistry (sometimes inorganic chemistry as well). I will read by the end of the year. It's going slower than I expected so far. I do read tens of inorganic chemistry articles very often. But, (as you can guess why) I don't want to share what I always read.
emilyreacts
Post authorThank you! It's nice to hear that someone is following the hashtag. Congratulations on the PhD! I am sure you would have lots of things to talk about if you wanted to do something similar, I also thought that I might not have things to talk about everyday when I first started - but there is always something to comment on, no matter how small! The character limit of a tweet makes it very easy.
Your #chempaperaday is very impressive, sometimes I don't even have time to read a paper in my own field a day! It's a great idea though, I'll be following your hashtag to see what you're reading - maybe try some natural products papers next? 😀