Friday 15 July 2011

How quickly we fall back into good habits

Working on my PhD project necessitated developing a number of good habits with regard to work patterns. Although it has been two full years (and a week or three) since I finished my thesis and got on a plane to start my first post doc position it turns out that some of my work habits from here are tied to the town, not just the house in which I lived then. Now that I am back in Tasmania I am finding it easy to pick up the pieces of that project and get back into "thesis mode", breaking the list of things that need to be done into tiny bits and working on them. Taking breaks to exercise, get food, and catch up with friends I have not seen in a couple of years, but still being way more productive than I have been in the past six months since that post-doc position ended, when I was on what is better described "vacation mode".

While it was a delightful vacation, I find that I am enjoying working on this project once again. Today I looked at thin sections of my samples in the microscope. The first thin sections I have seen in person since leaving (I had plenty of microprobe time analysing the experiments I did, but no actual rocks to play with). I would say that I had forgotten how pretty they are, but, really, I hadn't. I do have plenty of photos (and good ones!) of these samples, but there is something nice about being to rotate the stage and see the colours change.

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