MEarthSci Pt3: Progress Update

I left off my last master's project update just before Christmas when I was in the midst of writing my eight page progress report to hand in to my supervisors in the new year and show them what I had been up to so far. I did indeed get this finished before Christmas and after a quick proof read by my mum it was handed in to my supervisors. They were incredibly speedy with their feedback and less than a week later it was returned to me with an abundance of comments from all three of them which I am very grateful for. When I first got it back the shear volume of comments, corrections, and suggestions on my work was a little disheartening (taking criticism, even when constructive, is not always my strong point) but after a moment to get over my ego the stuff they have told me to restructure or research, the papers I have been guided to read, and the points of view I have been advised to consider are actually so useful and I'm very lucky to get such in depth feedback and guidance with my project, as I know not everyone does. In a meeting when discussing my feedback one of them told me that, "Sometimes the better pieces of work get more feedback and comments" which was a nice little ego boost and also a very valid point. I know there was a strong foundation in my initial draft to build on and the writing of my thesis is now ticking away nicely. I have restructured my introduction as advised, and began reading some of the suggested papers to add in parts of the existing literature I have missed.

A quick lab x0.5 selfie on my last day of running samples in the mercury analyser

While that has been going on I've also been in the lab collecting my data. I finished the mercury analysis on my last 200 samples which means I now have a full 800 sample data set to play with. After a brief attempt at trying to get excel to format graphs the way I wanted it to I gave in and faced my fears of coding the graphs in R. As it turns out, there was no need to be afraid as ChatGPT has held my hand along the way. AI has its time and place, and getting the code to do something specific is one of them. I am actually building confidence in coding by myself purely through doing this and learning as I go. I'm pretty happy with the plots I have made so far. I've also been meeting regularly with my supervisors to discuss the graphs I'm making, what the results show, and what I could do next. At the start of the project I was a bit intimidated by the thought of having to figure everything out on my own, but truly its been a collaborative process and this, as I have come to find out, is how academia works. Bouncing ideas off each other, and bringing in various points of views and expertise to decide what things could show and how to proceed with th study. Its a great process and I'm lovjng getting to see how research works.

Actually being in the lab and doing the 'experiments' is one of my favourite parts. So, when it was suggested that I could possibly use the XRD machine to look at the different minerals present in my samples I was very keen and it was quickly arranged for me to be taught how to prep and load my samples, and subsequently how to process and interpret the data. If I'm being honest I wasn't quite sure what XRD was going into it. All my prior knowledge had come from my boyfriend who is doing his master's in materials science. He uses XRD in his lab so its been interesting to compare results between the nice and neat XRD results of a metal alloy that contains only two metals and the chaos that is the XRD graph produced by the many different minerals present in my samples. Its also cool to see how the same analytical technique can be applied across different sciences. I've been having fun learning how to use the XRD and getting familiar with diffraction and spectroscopy based techniques which is not something I've had the chance to do much of before.

XRD sample prep and analysis

It is now, however, the 4th week of term, and that means I only have 4 weeks left of term time project work (I do then have a 6 week vac to write it up) before the project is complete. I am conscious I need to make the most of my time in the lab and with my supervisors to ensure I'm in the best position possible going into the writing process. Once again I'm not entirely sure how the project is going to evolve. Next steps are to gather all the results form the XRD and begin to combine them with my existing mercury data. Then hopefully I will start to be able to answer some of the questions I have and begin to formulate a good thesis. But so far so good, I think? We'll see what I have to say about that in 4 weeks time...