tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024Wed, 26 Oct 2011 09:21:44 +0000GISbirdingapplicationschallengereading and writingresolutionslessonssocial interactionscareer prospectsstatscontroversybackgroundreassuranceposterfieldworkcommunicationconferencetrainingchangesA PhD is not a good thing to start on the wrong foot. This is my search for the right one.http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)Blogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-6063577444066652728Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:42:00 +00002011-03-03T17:58:04.728Zreassuranceconferencelessonscommunicationcareer prospectsLooking back on the last few weeks, I am aware of how much time I spent thinking about my future. I haven't actually sat down to think about it or talk to anyone about it at any length. Just little glimmers of thought coming up in my mind, only staying there for a couple of seconds at a time. So what have I been doing in the past few weeks? Well, I spent a lot of my time helping to organise thehttp://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2011/03/presenting-research.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-8644461466525742431Tue, 01 Mar 2011 11:01:00 +00002011-03-01T11:16:32.828Zsocial interactionsconferencetrainingLast week was the 11th Annual Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation (CEEC) Rebellion Conference at the University of East Anglia (UEA). The Rebellion is a student conference that aims to be a platform for the showcase of CEEC PhD student research and, more importantly, an occassion to bring together ecologists and evolutionary biologists that are normally scattered in various departmentshttp://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2011/03/2011-uea-ceec-rebellion.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-8472277511271129150Thu, 20 Jan 2011 16:40:00 +00002011-03-01T11:15:48.322Zreading and writingchallengestatslessonsHow is it nearly February already?! And why does it feel like Christmas holidays never happened? Last term was really tough. It started off with a not so great experience at the BES Annual Meeting, swiftly followed by a thesis plan. It was quite useful to look at how we can package all these data into self-contained chapters/papers. I am always amazed at how brilliant my supervisors are at http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2011/01/ieronymidou-et-al-in-prep.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-7269406930985663322Tue, 09 Nov 2010 12:59:00 +00002011-03-03T17:43:32.188Zsocial interactionsconferencecareer prospectsMy poster for the British Ecological Society Annual Meeting turned out pretty good in the end (pic finally here). I got lots of compliments, which was nice, but obviously mainly from people I know. What wasn't nice was my experience of the conference. Don't get me wrong, it was fantastic to be there, and there were some very good talks that I enjoyed, and it was an amazing opportunity to catch http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2010/11/third-year.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-4017108718827506831Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:22:00 +00002010-07-19T18:52:28.610+01:00posterconferencelessonstrainingcommunicationBet you didn't notice coz it's been such a long time since this blog did anything interesting. It's still a ready-to-use blogger template, so I suppose it isn't actually interesting. But things may change yet again in the near future! I've been playing with a lovely piece of image editing software called the GIMP, and I might just design myself a pretty background for Survival. Or I might not. http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2010/07/survival-has-had-facelift.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-9042997082846310619Wed, 28 Apr 2010 11:45:00 +00002010-04-29T11:48:28.607+01:00social interactionsGISlessonsapplicationsWell it's been quite the month! Although I like to save the best for last, I can't hold this one in for very long so:  I'm engaged!!! =D I'll spare you the lovey-dovey bits, but let me just say that my feet have hardly touched the ground since my fiancé put the most beautiful ring on my finger *elation*.This opens up some very interesting points for discussion, which, to do them justice, I will http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2010/04/ever-present-data-and-its-analysis.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-3564338189792090321Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:32:00 +00002010-03-10T19:33:35.773ZGISfieldworkstatschangesI've been back in the UK for five weeks exactly, and it's already feeling like a lifetime! I have to admit I've not really been concentrating on work for most of this past month and a bit. Apart from the expected post-fieldwork brain-scatter, I've also been grappling with a ridiculously complicated moving situation. I won't get into it now, let's just say that it won't actually be fully sorted http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2010/03/drowning-in-data.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-5605068357202270390Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:00:00 +00002010-01-27T14:01:23.200ZfieldworkchangesI am happy to report the completion of 199 out of 202 surveys! The last 3 will be taken care of with the help of my BirdLife Cyprus friend on Saturday morning, and then we can all have a party and celebrate the end of a super efficient winter fieldwork season! This winter's work has actually gone very well. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. My car has proved itself on slippy muddyhttp://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-year-same-birds.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-8260815834011906118Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:30:00 +00002009-12-13T17:32:39.304ZchallengefieldworkstatstrainingI can’t say that my stats results so far are particularly groundbreaking. My supervisor and I basically came to the conclusion that the multivariate methods I’ve been using so far are too coarse to pick up the subtle differences in the habitat requirements of the various bird species. So the next steps are to look at individual species, instead of the big amalgam I was using up to this point. http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/12/much-more-statistical-analysis-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-1014663842063447812Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:49:00 +00002009-09-23T21:55:20.358+01:00reassurancestats Over the last three weeks or so I've been working pretty hard with my data. All the data on bird registrations have been entered in my database and I've been analysing them a bit. It's pretty crude still because the only habitat data I've entered so far are overall habitat types. This is a gross over-simplification, because in Cyprus we still have this wonderful landscape where there will be http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/09/data-entry-and-preliminary-stats.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-7581729657845276556Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:56:00 +00002009-09-10T22:19:07.371+01:00challengefieldworkchanges My mood swings have been phenomenal recently. From the highest highs when I'm with my boyfriend away from the office, to the lowest lows when I come home after a day of doing so much less than I know I should have. Over the course of a few days I went back to the mindset I had before starting the fieldwork: why am I doing this, I'm not cut out to do a PhD, I've wasted my entire life fighting forhttp://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/09/depression-must-stop.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-1105310217583148719Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:57:00 +00002009-09-10T22:20:24.410+01:00challenge1 Minute Log: Four Pillars of a PhD Note the comments under that post. They span more than three years. And prove that I'm not the only person who googles "phd depression." Less than a week ago everything seemed pretty optimistic. I don't know what happened, but it's all bleak again and the guilt is eating away at me.http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/09/im-not-only-one.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-4722060151873893185Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:49:00 +00002009-09-07T10:51:23.889+01:00social interactionsreassurancelessons It has taken me a while, and I still feel a bit on the slow end of the productivity scale, but I'm feeling like I'm making progress! My database is all set up and is gradually being filled up with information, the first steps at making use of GIS have been taken, and practically all the housekeeping has been taken care of. What these things effectively mean is that data analysis, and hence the http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/09/brain-in-gear.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-6571782928390447026Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:49:00 +00002009-08-26T09:26:36.579+01:00fieldworkchangesWhen I first began my fieldwork I was faced with making some pretty major adjustments to my life. For one thing, I was going to spend the largest continuous period of time in Cyprus since I left for university five years ago. I was also faced with spending a huge amount of time driving around unfamiliar places, often off road, and living a bit like a nomad. My circadian rhythm also had to be http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/08/gathering-brainwaves.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-7307182942902292998Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:19:00 +00002009-08-24T16:58:14.006+01:00challengefieldworkI'm back!I have been missing in action doing fieldwork since March and now I am back at my office in Norwich. It's pretty claustrophobic and quite a transition. I've been starting slow and steady trying to focus again.Fieldwork was not so hard in the end. It was long and repetitive, but I now have 202 sites' worth of data on birds and habitat. I ended up being pretty good at bird identification, http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/08/fieldwork-roundup.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-7328237159794213812Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:14:00 +00002009-03-27T05:20:37.317ZchallengeI must apologise for disappearing for weeks!Those of you who follow me on Twitter or by other means will know that I've had a major PhD crisis, nearly quit, but was brought back to my senses by my supervisor who came to visit me for a few days. Initially I was so distressed I couldn't sleep or eat, let alone write a blog entry. And then when my supervisor arrived, it was five 12 - 14hr days of http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/03/apologies-yet-again.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-213179536470639751Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:11:00 +00002009-03-06T22:36:40.132Zreassurancereading and writingchallengelessonsThe weather has been improving, which is lovely news. The swallows have properly settled in and are bringing their friends and family along. I saw lots of kestrels hunting in cereal fields, and also a Crested Lark (pic). Lovely stuff.The project proposal has been completed. At least, this latest draft is. So far the comments have been encouraging. I had a good chat with one of my supervisors http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/03/smells-of-spring.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-1758929412414604997Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:21:00 +00002009-03-04T06:46:44.019ZchallengeJust a quick one this morning as I need to get back to work and finish my project proposal today. This document has brought me so much grief, but I have little hope of putting it behind me any time soon, as every time I think I'm done it turns out my supervisors are not happy with it. It's horrible to hear someone tell you they thought your last draft was excellent but now that they read it http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/03/slow-going.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-4187441558716781240Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:40:00 +00002009-03-01T12:12:23.529ZbirdingOn Wednesday I went in the field with a friend from BirdLife Cyprus, to look at birds and landscapes on the way to Kritou Terra, where I have permission to use a visiting researcher's flat. Kritou Terra is a small village in the Paphos District on the West of the island (map), with 90 permanent residents and two shops. The place is quiet and cosy. But the flat has no heating. Hopefully I should http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/02/kritou-terra.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-2974541463385130627Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:49:00 +00002009-02-23T16:10:41.946ZcontroversyWhile in the fields on Sunday I actually caught a glimpse of a blackcap (αμπελοπούλλι). I could hear it clicking nearby but they tend to be so elusive that I didn't really expect to see it, and I just trusted my uncle's experience of its call. I saw a bird-shaped shadow among some reeds, but when you're looking for birds you see bird-shaped shadows everywhere that turn out to be leaves or clumps http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/02/ampelopoullia.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-7349388767433653091Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:25:00 +00002009-02-22T18:29:08.159ZbirdingI was supposed to be working on my project proposal today, but my uncle turned up in the morning looking for company to go to his fields at Lefkara to do some work. Weekend farming is very popular in Cyprus. It's usually people who originate from villages and move to the city and keep the family land and tend it over the weekends. I quite like the system. It keeps people close to the land and thehttp://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/02/i-was-supposed-to-be-working-on-my.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-2951399891608863980Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:11:00 +00002009-02-21T21:11:20.848ZbirdingIt's colder here than I expected. I guess I'm too used to coming to Cyprus when it's hot. When I came in November it was t-shirt weather! Well, I've had to invest in a couple of new turtle neck jumpers, especially because I've managed to get a chest infection. I imported it from London.I've been making a few contacts here and there, and so far it's all been quite positive. The only reason I have http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/02/shopping-therapy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-6257860272883929078Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:16:00 +00002009-02-17T21:25:34.285ZchallengeI am now back in Cyprus; here to stay for the longest continuous period of time since before moving to London for university. I haven't seen Cyprus in early Spring in years. It's actually a bit green. And it's raining, which is wonderful!What's not wonderful is my mindset. I had a big meeting with both my supervisors on Friday afternoon, which went on for twice as long as it should have, and http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/02/its-raining-in-cyprus.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-5811336043471966250Thu, 12 Feb 2009 07:21:00 +00002009-02-12T07:45:57.487ZreassuranceI had a long meeting with my supervisor yesterday evening and left from it feeling a good deal better about this whole fieldwork thing. And about other things as well.We spoke about the two people in the research group who thought my PhD was about re-inventing the wheel. My supervisor thinks that they just didn't get it. It's a problem with these "lab-chats", because there's not enough time to http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/02/happy-200th-birthday-charles-r-darwin.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5070854450656050024.post-3580231736330104276Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:06:00 +00002009-02-10T23:16:00.208ZchallengeGISI'm not feeling very good about myself at the moment. Haven't really been feeling pleased with myself and my progress at all since my supervisor left for Cambodia three weeks ago. He's back now and bumping into him on Friday afternoon has triggerred some self-guilt-tripping. I probably deserve it.As you may have realised, my struggles with GIS eventually led to abandonment of effort. While http://cieronymidou.blogspot.com/2009/02/still-playing-with-maps.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Christina Ieronymidou)0