Goals post for February 2026.

Goals when I need something “easy” to do:

Organize multispecies repository!

  1. Rename files to be more clear and helpful
  2. Remove files that are not needed
  3. Update readme.md files in directories

Goal is to have it be easily navigable for collaborators (and for my future self years from now if I need to know what I did)

Chapter 1 – submit to a journal

The paper that I submitted to Philosophical Transactions B was rejected, and so myself and coauthors are going to be coming up with a new plan and identifying a new target journal. Get that to a journal this month.

Qualifying Exam Studying

I have received some reading lists (primarily academic papers, and one book) and have been thinking about a study plan for a while. I am now starting to implement the process!

I am using Zotero to read the papers and am highlighting according to a color coding system where I highlight Yellow: main ideas/ takeaways; Green: Definitions, methodology, technical terms; Pink: Important supporting details, evidence, statistics; Blue: citations or quotes - references that need to be followed up; Red: Controversial points, crucial questions, critical results.

I am taking notes in Zotero and will be linking papers to connect broader themes (there’s a way to link papers using notes in the Zotero app).

I will soon also be setting aside writing practice time. I’ll write another notebook post later this month detailing the study and preparation methods that seem to be working best as I go along.

My qualifying exam is going to be March 16-20th. One question/day for 5 days.

Multi-species

I’m currently working on cleaning up the repository. I did it last quarter for a while, but I still know I have far too many things in there and I also didn’t get to the data directory because I was a a bit overwhelmed by it. As I clean it up, I’ll try to focus extra on what I would want it to look like if I were to send to a collaborator who hasn’t seen the repo before and have it be clear.

I also want to finish my draft that I’ve been working on so I have it ready to share sometime this quarter to get feedback.