MEarthSci Part 5: Project Done

So its been a hot minute since I was on here, and in my defence I have been rather preoccupied by a mixture prepping for both my final exams and the final cheerleading competitions of the season. One of those is in fact a little more enjoyable than the other but that'll leave that up to you to determine... All of that, however, is not what this post is about. I'm here to discuss the finalisation and handing in of my master's thesis. A year in the making I am happy to say I'm pretty proud of the work I have done and how much I have learnt through doing it, but before I get more into that, let me fill you in from where we left of last time.

Me outside the RadCam after finishing my final exam - degree complete!

Did I get everything written up over the holidays like I said I would? Nope. But I did get it done in time and that's all that matters. The writing process itself went pretty smoothly, the cutting down process to hit the 8000 word word count was a little more painful. I ended up having to appendix decent chunk of my results. Granted they were results that ended up not being that relevant to my thesis, but even so it was upsetting to relegate them out of the main body. I can't remember if I've been over this before or not but I had an issue with my first set of XRD results in that the pyrite I was looking for in the samples was not being detected. I then went about the hours of test tube shaking it took to decarbonate my samples in the hope that the decarbonation would enable the pyrite to show up better on the XRD but that was in fact not the case. This did essentially mean I decarbonated the samples (and did the 5 hours of safety training needed to allow me in to the wetlab to be able to decarbonate them) for no actual benefit to my thesis. However, I did then put the decarbonated samples back in the mercury analyser and got some interesting results which I have shared with a PhD student who has some similar results to include in a paper he is writing so it was not an entirely pointless endeavour. Also, as was brought up in my viva, a lot of science is doing things to see ig they will work and quite often they don't so really it was just an authentic science experience. It also allowed em to gain experience using both the XRD and with decarbonation technique and wetlab skills which will be beneficial if I do find myself in a lab setting in the future. There has also been some preliminary talk about getting the results from my thesis written up and published which would be very exciting but its early doors and I don't know how involved with this I would actually be.

I can't really share what actually went into my thesis (as I guess thats probs not allowed prior to me getting any results back or anything being published) but overall I ended up handing in a body of work i'm very proud of myself for producing. There was a lot of confusion and self doubt along the way but I'm very lucky to have had brilliant supervisors and a project that was very well thought out. Even if the work doesn't end up being something I use in the future (don't even get me started on my plans post graduation, that's a topic for a whole different post), I learnt a lot of transferable skills. Time management, lab work, communicating with supervisors, tackling complex problems, and even just pushing through and doing things when I'm overwhelmed and have no idea what is going on. It was initially very weird that it was all over and handed in, and that I would not have to think about sedimentary mercury again for a long time, if ever. But since then I have revised for and sat all of my final exams so now it's just weird that my undergraduate degree is over and in 2 months time I am going to have graduated with a Masters degree in the Earth Sciences (or become a 'master of the Earth' as my course mates like to put it).

The final part of the maters was my viva. For Earth Sciences this is a bit more chill than other subjects and we don't have to do a presentation. It was basically a 30 minute chat with the tow professors that were marking my project about the project and my results. I was the first person in the year to do their viva which was kinda scary as I had no idea what I was in for (and after my viva i was very kind as to share with my course mates the vibe of the questions being asked and what kinda to expect). It was, however, very chill and just a little chat about the science. We went through the scientific concepts underpin my research, my methods and what went well/what I would do differently, and then talked through my results and some of the figures. I believe it went well (lol if it actually didn't) and although I had to go first it was nice to get it over and done with so I could focus on revision. There's a chance I might have to do another viva with the external examiner in about a weeks time (I think they only chose a random handful of students to do this so I'm not sure exactly how it works), but other than that that is my master's project, and degree, over and done with. Time to move on to the next chapter...