BLOG - PhD Gathering - Day 1 review

After a great day, the four of us reflected on what we considered to be our top 'take-home' messages.

We tried to limit our key messages to just 3 or 4, but there were just too many to choose from! For us, there were key take-home messages in each session.

Session One:

Following two friendly welcomes from Alastair McAlpine and Serena Pattaro, we all enjoyed the fun ice-breaker bingo game, organised by Silvia Behrens. It certainly encouraged us all to get up on our feet and find others who have done similar trips, liked the same foods or were using the same datasets! For some of us, it was the first time attending an ADR gathering, and Mridhula felt it really helped to calm her nerves and allowed her to relax and enjoy connecting with other researchers working on the same dataset. 

We all enjoyed hearing about alternative employment opportunities outside of academia for when we finish our PhD. It was really interesting to hear from Anja-Maaike Green and Dr Roisin Laing, of the opportunities available in the civil service or the third sector, as well as hearing about their own career journeys, and that there are many opportunities available to people with our skills and knowledge, as they are highly sought after.

Session Two:

Everyone found the Q&A session after Session One to be really helpful, and we were delighted to have the opportunity to speak with those experts in the Breakout Groups -  where we were encouraged to share our research for 2-3 minutes. Yusuff, found it beneficial to present his research outputs and receive feedback from his peers and representatives from the Scottish Government and Academics. This also helped us all learn about the progress other students were making with their work. 

Session Three:

After two great morning sessions, the afternoon programme had a lot to live up to! Thankfully, the coding session with Jan Savinc was very useful, sharing best practice, and together with the workshop activity led by Michelle Jamieson, Ana Morales and Jan Savinc, it really helped us reflect on our own practice and consider how to improve our own analysis.

Session Four: 

The mix of presenters for the final session meant that we got to hear from a wide variety of careers, in both private and public organisations. Both Beth and Richmond thought that one of the big take-home messages from 'planning your next steps' was that sometimes “life happens”. Reminding everyone that it is sometimes difficult to plan exactly where your career will take you when you have finished your PhD, but it's important for us not to put too much pressure on ourselves, with Dr Mark Bell and Sarah Thomson reminding us all that we need to be aware of our own work-life balance.

Building on similar advice from session one, the Q&A session reminded us all to take hold of opportunities that present themselves to us - remembering that the path to a permanent role might be through a fixed-term or short-term role initially, so not to shy away from making compromises in our job search. The final take-home message was to remember that getting a PhD doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to explore a career in academia. There are lots of other interesting opportunities out there, and keeping our options open enables us to enjoy a varied career, which will provide us with a good work-life balance.

Together we are all heading off to enjoy refreshments and canapes, whilst connecting with those we haven't had time to meet earlier in the day.

We have all found the first day of the PhD Gathering both insightful and inspiring....and look forward to Day 2 tomorrow.