If you're at the beginning of your PhD journey, half way through, looking back fondly or even curious to know what a PhD is like, hopefully you'll get a glimpse of my experience by looking at some of the joys and regrets from my PhD.
Tag: phd
Making the grass greener with Sara Middleton
Today we're meeting PhD student Sara Middleton from the University of Oxford, who's studying the effect of drought on a UK calcareous grassland. Sara's love for plants spreads across all aspects of her life and she runs an outreach project, YouTube channel and is also working on a documentary to get other's involved too.
Publishing my first paper
On Tuesday 30th June 2020, my first first-author paper was published in Ecology letters. The journey from idea to publication was long, complicated and a dramatic learning curve. In this post, I'll break my journey down into five milestones and five pieces of advice I wish I could go back and tell myself.
Common Columbine
Recently on the blog, we looked at English bluebells, so this week it seemed only fitting to move on to American bluebells. With an incredibly long history in a variety of cultures, Columbine is a treasured flower in the wild and in gardens. Its shape teaches an important lesson about evolution, and its symbolism has conflicting naughty and nice origins.
The Ecosystem of Humanity
In 2017, I was invited back to my secondary school as a guest speaker for an annual diversity and inclusivity event. This speech was a milestone in my career as a plant scientist and I am excited to share it with you.
Plant science in heavy metal
Arabidopsis cleaning up bomb sites? Carrots mining for gold? Black Sabbath encouraging bigger blooms in lilies? This might seem like the stuff of science fiction, but in this blog post, I'm going to be talking you through all three.
Fronds with Benefits 