It's been a while...

Clearly a lot has happened since July. For example, the fall semester. Much of this time was spent pouring over the loads of data I've been collecting for the past four years and trying to make sense of it in order to write a cohesive doctoral dissertation improvement grant (DDIG) proposal. Although I didn't apply for one this year, this is the format of the second scary exam you have to take as a PhD student in our department: alternatively referred to as the "5th Semester Exam," or more commonly "Comps", short for comprehensive exam. For this one, all your committee members (5 faculty members) are present and you basically spend 3 hours discussing the written proposal, what you've done thus far, and what you will do to finish up your dissertation. Fortunately, I passed, and as of about 12pm December 13th, I am now a PhD Candidate! Woot!

Since the beginning of this semester, my collaborator and good friend, Hakan, came for 3 weeks to bring a second year of blood and feather samples from Turkey, which he collected largely by himself last summer and help with DNA extraction and the start of paternity analyses for our two years of data from that population. I also submitted a couple grant applications, am working on a review with my advisor, Becca, and a professor from Oxford, Nat Seddon, and we are already starting to get geared up for the field season. One of the main take homes from my Comps Meeting was that I should repeat the experiment I did last year in Colorado to achieve a bigger sample size. We have also added a lot more field sites, thanks to the efforts of Amanda Hund, our newest PhD student, so we are interviewing a lot of undergrad field assistant candidates and helping them write grants for summer funding...the search for money is never ending. And that's the long and short of it.

Cheers,
Matt