T-One Year until Thesis
One year. That is all the time that I have left to finish up my research and write 35,000 words about it all. That is it.
It is very intimidating to think that two and a half years have passed since I started my PhD. Back in 2023 I was fresh out of graduation from my masters degree in physics with space science, this still feels like yesterday. Looking back fills me with happiness, stress, and utter amazement about how much I have achieved and how much has also gone very wrong.
My PhD is very experimental. I spend hours in labs, working with vacuum systems, detectors, power supplies, electronics, software, hardware and everything in between; all of which can go wrong. Just last week we were working on some tests for some x-ray optics, everything was going swimmingly, then the next day one of the vacuum pumps simply stopped working. We have to be a very low pressure to be able to use the detector. We need the detector so that we can run these tests. Even after hours of planning and running other experiments for weeks before, we had to stop. We couldn't plan for this. And something that I've learned during my PhD that is more valuable than anything else is patience. Patience with myself, patience with those around me, patience with equipment and patience when there's nothing else you can do.
It is a privilege to have gotten this far in research, space science, and instrumentation and I'm grateful for everyone who has been involved and guided me along the way. I hope to come back to this blog post in years time with a full thesis written and submitted and the feeling of pride. All that's left to do is finish up the research, try not to lose that valuable patience and continue being my biggest supporter... oh, and 35,000 words of a thesis! How hard can it be?
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