PhD life

Are you doing a PhD (thesis)? Do you know someone who is doing it? Most of them work for a little salary, in a precarious situation for many years but they seem happy to do it (most of the time). They work at strange hours, some days they rest at work ‘till 23 pm and other days they can ‘work’ at home. They travel quite a lot to go to courses, meetings and to do stays abroad in other universities … In 3, 4 or more (even 7 or 8!) years they have to do an original research work in one field of expertise, something very concrete, like ‘The sexual conduct of vinegar fly (Drosophila melanogaster)with full moon’ and defend it in front of a tribunal.
At the end, you are supposed to become a doctor, so a specialist person on your topic. The thing is that the way to the end is sometimes difficult because of problems of funding, supervisors, experiments do not work …
Moreover than these little negative things, to do a PhD is a very exciting challenge! You can contribute with a little grain of sand to the common knowledge, or at least you try to do it! As you would have guess, I’m doing a PhD and I have found a web page that is just for laugh about it all (PhD Comics).
I post you one of the most popular comic strips of this web page about the graduate student work output during a week. I would say that it is quite realistic!

Procrastinators, leaders of tomorrow

Hi there!

There is long time since my last post. Why? Because I am procrastinator person. Do you know the concept? A friend of mine explained me what it is and I feel identified at once.
Procrastination is the tendency to the deferment (to postpone) of actions or tasks to a later time. Procrastinators have difficulties to put themselves at work, most of all if there is not an immediate gratification.
It is a psychological mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. The word comes from the Latin pro = forward and crastinus = of tomorrow. If it is chronic may be a sign of a psychological or physiological disorder (fortunately is not my case!)
The interesting thing is that most of the people affected by procrastination are also ‘perfectionists’. As it is nearly impossible to do things perfectly, afraid of doing something imperfect, they don’t do anything. On the contrary, they can start doing many activities frenetically, just if they have any relation with the difficult task If you are interested inknowing more, there are good definitions in Wikipedia.
Now that you all know what procrastinate is, don't you find the Tshirt funny (haha)??

Do you recognise yourself in the description? No? Good for you! Yes? Welcome to the club!

Squeezing the planet

I think the photo is quite illustrative: we are squeezing our planet!

It comes from an article in the magazine ‘Scientific American’ named Facing the Freshwater Crisis and I have found it interesting.

The author explains that, for example, people living in New Delhi, one of the richest cities in India, wakes in the morning with the announce that freshwater will only be available for the next hour, so they have to stock water to last the day. This occurs because water managers decided to divert large amounts of water to irrigate crops.

At the opposite end, in Phoenix, in the middle of the Sonora Desert, there is nearly an unlimited water supply with suburban lawns and golf courses. Politicians have allowed the use of water from farming operations to cities and suburbs and recycled water is used for landscaping and other nonpotable applications.

These are only two examples about the great power of policymakers on water resources. The demand for freshwater is overtaking the supply in many places. Today one out of six people suffer inadequate access to safe freshwater. By midcentury three quarters of the earth population (!) could experience scarcities of freshwater. Water scarcity is thought to become more common because human population is rising, many people are getting richer, so expanding demand, a lot of water sources are threatened by pollutants or water salinization …

But he says that technologies and tools needed to conserve existing freshwater are known. So ‘what is needed now is action’! Governments and authorities have to execute plans for implementing measures, but in my opinion the civil society has also to act. I think that we have more power than we think and with little changes in our daily lives we can save lots of water. For example, at home I take the water that comes out of the shower before it is hot in a bucket and I use it for the WC. I save 5 L each time, is not too much but in total it makes a not scorn quantity.

One solution that he proposes is to setting higher prices for water, but is it a good solution? What do you think about?

I will finish with an old saying from American West: “Water usually runs downhill, but it always runs uphill to money”.

Presentation

Welcome to this blog! I want it to be a space for me to post some articles, mainly about travels and nature. But I would also like to talk about cinema or literature and to report things I do not agree with. I hope you will enjoy reading it and feel free to write comments!

My name is magnolia. Magnolia trees (in the photo) are special because they belong to an ancient genus and their flowers are gorgeous! I also like its name because it is an international word being the same almost in English, French, Italian, Spanish and Catalan.

Enjoy it!