The view from here

I realised that most of my posts this year has been about my research or PhD-related! lol Thanks for reading all the nerdiness as I enter the final stages of being a glorified student. Really, special thanks to you my family and close friends who are forever supportive, encouraging and generally putting up with my babblings on the awesomeness of NBB4.
The last 3 months has been like a dream, I'm just amazed at the progress of my research. Those many late nights in the lab was worth it yielding lots of thesis and publication worthy data. I know all this is only possible by the grace of God, so praise Him! Research is so unpredictable, you can be stuck in a doldrum for months and then be hit with waves upon waves of data. You can say I am on a data high at the moment lol. I still have a few more experiments to do for my last chapter (transconjugants) and tie up some loose ends (metabolites) before I can fully concentrate on writing my thesis. I have started writing nonetheless (the view above is from my home office where I've been writing). I've decided to dedicate at least one day a week to writing. That way I'll be able to ease into it while experiments are dying down.
As for my paper, I finished writing the first draft back in early April and handed it in to my supervisor. I was quite nervous about it so I asked him to be kind since this is my first paper. We are currently in the process of editing the final manuscript before submitting it to the journal. So exciting! I hope it gets accepted before I submit my thesis. Also exciting is that a part of my work will be in a major publication currently being written up by my associate supervisor.
Apart from experiments and writing, I'll be attending a conference in August in Seattle, USA!!! So excited as I'll be taking a break and doing some travelling with Tan while I'm there as well. This will be my incentive for finishing up my PhD. Until then keep me accountable with the thesis writing ok?