Discussion topics and updates that I’ll go over with Steven tomorrow in our weekly meeting. I’ll be posting agenda items every two weeks. See post for details.

April Goals - see this post.

What I’d like to focus on in the meeting:

Paper revision comments and a plan on addressing them.

Current Work

Sea Star

Multi-species

  • Taking a little bit of backburner - but I have all the files needed to get count matrices for the three species - just need to do it

Chapter 1 paper revisions: HIGH PRIORITY

The paper I submitted to the special issue was “unsubmitted”, and I was given revision requests, and then the opportunity to resubmit, which is great! This is all a great learning opportunity and will allow me to become a better writer. I have a new due date to the journal of May 23rd, but there will be two weeks (April 26-May 10th) where I’ll be very busy with experiments, so I need to get going on these revisions ASAP.

Eelgrass Work

Experiment is all set to go at Friday Harbor, and I’ll be up there April 26-May 10th.

Lots of planning, meetings, emails, and writing has gone into planning this, so it has taken up quite a bit of my time these past few weeks, but it’s really paid off! I think it should go pretty smoothly, and I’m really looking forward to it!

Degree Milestones

PhD Proposal

  • Draft going – will make more time for it now that eelgrass permits and big planning tasks are complete

    Qualifying exams/related milestons

    Here’s what I’m thinking for my timeline on this:

    1. Proposal outline to committee this quarter (Spring 2025)
    2. Get reading lists and schedule qualifying exam for end of summer/early fall
    3. Summer - studying for quals (reading) in addition to continuing research
    4. Late summer/early Fall: qualifying exams (written)
    5. Fall quarter - submit more fleshed out proposal after getting feedback from spring and summer and quals

From what I have learned, it seems that the proposal outline is meant to be sent earlier to get feedback from committee members. Then the reading lists and questions for quals are meant to get me the knowledge needed to improve my proposal and degree goals, then I can finish the proposal and have it be more fleshed out after all the knowledge and guidance gained from the process of studying for and doing the qualifying exams.

Upcoming

  1. Need to find grants to apply to for travel to conferences!
  2. Have some funding for more RNAseq for the multi-species project. Need to find time to extract RNA after Friday Harbor experiment (Mid- late May).