Bio

Details: 27, from Reading, UK

Imperial Course: PhD Experimental Neuroscience

Optional Modules: Attributes and Aspirations

Previous Education: BSc Medical Biosciences, Imperial College London, 1st

MRes Experimental Neuroscience, Imperial College London – Distinction

Clubs and Societies: Netball

Job: Tutor at The Brilliant Club

Tags: Home, PGR, FoM, Brains

Motivations and Frustrations

Motivations

Jennifer wants to get recognition for her academic ability through publishing papers, presenting at conferences, and building a professional network to collaborate with in the future. Her long-term goal is to be a PI in her own lab. Jennifer also enjoys being part of the academic community and helping people and would like to give herself more time to allow for this.

Frustrations

Having done very well previously Jennifer has found the change to a PhD very challenging and is consequently struggling with her self-esteem. She is worried that her supervisor is now going to doubt her ability. This has made her start to question her lifelong goal of moving into Academia. Her friends are all working and have more time to socialise, and she sometimes feels left out.

Documents

Click on the links below to acces the documents relevant to Jennifer

AA Journey

Jennifer uses Attributes and Aspirations for PhD the sections in bold refer to the units she takes.

While studying Jennifer is also thinking about the future and in AA3 for PhD – About Imperial College she visits the Careers Service and attends the Life and Health Sciences careers fair to help her decide if she wants to move into a PhD or an industry job. Then in IAS1 for PhD - Your Academic Development while planning how to make the most of her time she decides that she would like to improve her academic writing so she can publish. She enjoys writing and while writing project work Jennifer uses Strict Workflow to help increase her concentration she learns about this and other productivity tools in EE5 for MED – Practical Tools and she then makes use of the Inclusive Technology webpages.

Jennifer is looking to complement her PhD by doing some tutoring work and sees an advert for The Brilliant Club. CVA2 - Dissecting Advertisements helps her explore how the advert is constructed to enable her to apply for the role. While she is working on the application for this role, even though it doesn’t need a CV, she decides to start working on hers. In CVA4 for PhD CVs Jennifer starts to work on her CV and discovers the idea of a database CV. By identifying the similarities between different types of CV and what needs to be different she is able to write three for different types of role. These are linked in her bio above.

In CP2 for PhD – Making Career Decisions Jennifer is questioning her choice to do a PhD. Her supervisor from her undergraduate placement at Astra Zeneca suggested a research assistant role to her. She looks at strategies for exploring her options by using her network and asking for further details. She also looks at appropriate communication with different parties involved in the process.  To help her work out what is important she looks at EE1 for PhD – Managing Your Time and thinks about how much time she can/should spend on different aspects of her life and in EE3 for PhD – Organisation and Prioritisation she uses the Eisenhower priorities matrix to help her fit in a last-minute tutoring job. Her time management become more complicated when her older brother breaks his leg and she has to adapt her schedule in order to spend more time with her family. This unit uses methods of prioritisation to help her make the most of her time.