Is spring ever coming?

Like the weather today (see picture below), I wonder if I will ever start really working on making my work blossom. It seems so far away, even though the season is right! I have started all pieces to my thesis, but I am struggling to make real progress and turn parts in. In some ways I know we all tend to leave the hardest pieces for last  and that is why it takes a while. But, I must admit, I think I am mentally putting serious “digging in” off because I don’t know what is coming next, and I want to stay where I am because I am lucky to work with great people. I am only 5 months away from giving in my thesis and I know I need to seriously be moving my butt, but I feel paralyzed. I am trying to break tasks up in to smaller and smaller chunks, hoping that constant progress will get me to the finish line, but I don’t always succeed. Tomorrow is another day though and I will start bright and early and try and make some serious progress on another manuscript.

In more inspiring news, I am in the process of working on a series of posts on the ecosystem process nutrient cycling in cities and this video by Ensia does a really great job doing a general view of it at the very beginning (and then getting in to the circular economy). I have also came across a few good examples (not related to my work however) of using visualization and art in the science of understanding human impacts on the environment (a multimedia presentation on the great barrier reef, a study of past sunset paintings to understand the atmosphere, and using old trophy fishing pictures to study changing baselines (with one of my old advisors!)).

A friend shared another resource for preparing good talks. I already have a small list of sources (in this post) to help me improve posters and presentation, but this new source is a pretty nice one-stop shop. I will be presenting an 8 minute talk next week on the process of my interdisciplinary collaboration in the Substance P + Atomic #15, and I will also be giving my practice final seminar talk to my lab so I am happy I came across this resource to help me review my power points and structure of my talks.