Acknowledgements

My (very professional) thank you card

Hands down, this was my favourite part of my thesis writing. 
My official acknowledgements had to include a lot of official thank-yous about funding and was only slightly self indulgent. My fabulous sister wisely told me to reign in some of the gushing, but this is prime cheese territory and a totally self indulgent blog. 

You can not do a PhD alone, obviously, your supervisors are critical (even though they sometimes ignore you completely) but that's not what I am talking about (nor am I at all bitter - can you tell :) and at least I had three supervisors.)

Given that this is a blog about how to survive a PhD - let's be clear - I would not have survived (or at least finished the thing - twice) without my support network. Without a doubt all my family and friends kept me sane or at least made allowances for my insanity. They have made sure I would eat real food when funding was low or when I was just too busy to deal with that myself, and they did it without making me feel bad, they would just subtly invite me (frequently!) to dinner or donate their excess Harvest of Hope (a cool initiative) veggies to me. And one special person put together an especially fabulous care package of food to get me through printing and final edits on the day before thesis hand-in #1!

Yes, I took the cable car!!

My friends have also patiently guided me through statistics and R (even late at night in the last minute) or avoided their own (substantial) piles of work helping me figure out elliptical Fourier analysis (which I feel awful about because I didn't end up putting it in the thesis) and elephant-eating theory. They have read chapters and pretended that my topic was interesting when I blabbed on about it incessantly. And on the flip side of that, they avoided talking about too, which is sometimes also required and appreciated. They have given me hugs and not judged me for my ugly cries and forgiven me for missing out many social activities in the frequent (recurring) PhD lock-down periods. 

If you want to survive your PhD, don't take these gems in your life for granted, and I hope that all of my friends know how much I appreciate them. If you are new in town when you are starting your PhD, I really recommend that you are brave and put yourself out there. There is at least one nerdy friendly person in each department that will invite you to social gatherings where you can meet people. 

Hopefully your department has communal tea time or social gatherings (particularly useful if there is free wine), or if not, suggest it (frequently - or offer to organise it and then people will definitely get to know you!) I hate having to mingle and make small talk, but trust me, you will be grateful that you have friends to do crazy things like offer to read chapters or listen to your rants or get you out of your office and computer-hunched posture by suggesting a random walk to the other end of campus and back. They will also make sure that you are alive and haven't been eaten by Alsatians if you haven't been in the office a couple of days or will send you home if you haven't left the office in a couple of days. 

I am not going to even mention how awesome and supportive and generous and wonderful my family are (because obviously I have the best family in the world) but I am going to say (again) that when I handed in my PhD, I was just overwhelmed by the number of people that sent me well-wishes. I realised how many people were supporting me and it kind of made all the work worth it... almost... the red cape will do the rest!!! :) 

Happy Dance

I'm not going to lie, I was expecting the worst. I was picturing how I'd have to spend years explaining that, no, in fact, I do not have a PhD. I was trying to imagine how to put a positive spin on it in my CV. I've even had whiny conversations about: "what if" to which my sister replied "you won't be the first person in the world not to get their PhD". This is true. And I know that the people that love me, would love me the same amount with or without a PhD after my name, and I would after all still have an MSc, and those that know me, know I worked hard and no one can take that away from me...

And then, on the lucky 7th of October, I got an email that meant I wouldn't have to delete myself from social media and become a hermit in some cold country where no one would think to look for me! (Because even when you know that people will still love you, the sympathetic head tilts can still make you want to run away). 

I got my PhD!!!!!!

To set the scene: We had just finishing the first haul of the crab trap for the day, and I checked my phone for the time and saw that there was email. It was from the DDB (who should really write happy emails in pink and rainbows not with big bold bits highlighted in red as though I am in trouble!) I literally folded on to the side of the jetty and when my colleague asked how the catch had been I started to cry! I sent a Whatsapp to my family and my mom called in tears, and then my sister called in tears, and then I posted it to Facebook and had this sudden attack of doubt - did I misunderstand the email? I sent it to my sister for confirmation and luckily I hadn't just embarrassed myself in a horribly public way! 

I've had such an overwhelming outpouring of love and support and tears and relief that I'm just, well, overwhelmed and a tiny bit shell shocked. I'm so grateful for how genuinely supportive so many people have been about my grumpiness, stress, wine and whining. You know who you are and you are rock stars of my heart - all of you!!! (An "acknowledgements" blog is in pipeline). My phone's battery has not been up to the challenge of coping with the messages, Facebook posts and phone calls. 

And soon, I will get to wear that silly pouffy hat and awesome red cape and the drink the bottle of fancy wine I have been saving "just in case" for far too long, and maybe I'll have to drink some bubbles while in a whimsical frame of mind because (with a few extra wrinkles)...

 I SURVIVED!!!!!!

(I do have some few corrections to make that have to be done before the 24th November so I can graduate on the 20th December this year - eekkkkkkk graduation excitement!!!!! - but I think they are totally manageable and actually there are only 5 things I have to change, 4 of which could be done in less than an hour. One is the slightly ridiculous typo of "tichness" instead of "richness" - one has to wonder how these typos sneak in)

Phew...

So, it has been just short of a month since I handed in my PhD... I am not going to lie, I have no overriding feelings of relief, euphoria or freedom. My most overwhelming feeling is one of exhaustion, STILL. I have also had a busy couple of weeks and on Thursday I caught a cold which went to my ears so, now, even though I am sitting at a very still desk, I haven't shaken the wobbly feeling of the floating jetty I was working on at Hout Bay Harbour today. I have also been slack with my blog, job and funding applications. Limbo... not so much fun. So, this is just to let you know that I am still alive, still catching crabs and will be writing a proper blog soon - once the multivitamins kick in! 

Bunny hugger

Let's be clear, I do what I do because I want to contribute positively to the world, to environmental and conservation issues (and increasingly, sustainability and fisheries issues).

However, not in a bunny-hugger, tree-hugger, penguin or dolphin (or insert fluffy creature of choice) -hugger way. I believe in science, rational thinking, logical, clear arguments that lead to a decisive plan of action (admittedly this almost never actually happens in science). Some might call me an idealist.  I believe firmly in science,  I have faith in facts - which is funny in a way because of how inconclusive most of my science has been.

I have done what I do because I believe it is making a contribution both to the environment (through management objectives) and to the body of human knowledge... But... I'm not going to lie, I'm so sick of killing things! I did not become a scientist to kill animals! At all! I know rationally that the crabs don't belong in the ecosystem, that the indigenous species will do better in the absence of the crabs (this is especially noticeable in the areas where there's hardly ever bycatch so the crabs are completely dominating that area) but I still feel bad for the poor things. Don't get me wrong, some of them make me less sad to kill than others - blood has been spilled, my blood - but, as a whole, the sheer number of crabs I'm responsible for killing is starting to get me down. I knew that the sardines, anchovy and redeye would have died during the survey with or without my work (in order to reliably set a catch limit for the fishery and form part of a 30+ year data set) but I still felt sad (I actually cried - but don't tell anyone because science is still somewhat of a man's world) when I saw the number of sardines and anchovy they bring up in the nets and them all dying en masse. And my colleagues shook their heads at my wanting to release the bycatch (once recorded) into the sea (it's a multi-storey drop but I had to try!) 

Trouble is, some of them are really quite cute and pretty

I've mentioned this to some of my colleagues, and can tell by the way that they look at me askance that they think I'm being sentimental. Yet, this is not actually a part of me I want to harden (there are parts of me that need to toughen up - like the parts of me that feel sad when the minions don't like me).

On the other hand, I've had fishermen who have asked me what we'll do with the crabs look horrified when I say we'll kill (I say "euthanase") them - fisherman!!! On a good day I'll explain that we can't return crabs that have been in South African waters to Europe because of their exposure to different pathogens and parasites (never mind the expense), but on the one less-than-fabulous day I couldn't help exclaiming: "but you're a fisherman!" It is a bit crazy that my job at the moment is literally to kill off every last individual of a species in Hout Bay Harbour... And because we haven't quite managed to kill them all off yet, we are going to carry on trying for another four weeks. Of course successfully eradicating an invasive marine species in an area would be an amazing achievement and hopefully good for the local crabs, rock lobsters, klipvis and shy sharks that are brave enough to call Hour Bay Harbour home (but not so good for the individual crabs we "euthanase") but I can't help thinking that maybe cleaning up the litter, plastic, oil, diesel etc might actually be more helpful? 

So, keep an eye out for work that will pay me but that doesn't involve killing things and let me know!