October 29, 2015, by Lisa Chin
Coffee and Cake Session: SWIRL – So What’s It Really Like?
A Coffee and Cake Session was held on Wednesday, 28th October 2015. The session featured a forum called So What’s It Really Like?, better known as SWIRL. It was a platform for an informal forum for all new and old postgraduate students to find out about life at The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC) from current postgraduate students. A panel of three current postgraduate students were invited – Maysoun A. Mustafa, Abba Lawan and Eliasu Mumuni.
The session started off with a presentation by Maysoun entitled “PhD” which denotes Patience, Hardwork and Determination. Maysoun provided an overview of her three years PhD journey and she highlighted the works she did at each stage of her PhD studies. She also shared some very useful tips on how to overcome the many challenges PhD life has to offer and amidst all that, how to keep motivated.
Maysoun A. Mustafa is the Manager for Crops for the Future – UNMC Doctoral Training Programme (CFF-UNMC DTP). Her PhD is in Biosciences and she is waiting for her viva at the moment. She has research experience in postharvest biology and nutraceutical value of tropical fruits. Nutraceutical is a combination of the words “nutrition” and “pharmaceutical”. She has earned a BSc (Hons) in Plant Biotechnology from UNMC. Among her working experiences are on the projects for enhancing smallholders’ livelihoods throughout Southeast Asia (smallholders are people who have a piece of land fro growing plants and/or animals) but it’s smaller than a farm but bigger than an allotment/garden). Some of the things she did for smallholder livelihood enhancement are planning and management programmes for best farming practices and promoting knowledge-sharing through information and communications technology (ICT) platforms.
The session continued on with an informative sharing by Abba where he addressed some of the key aspects of managing PhD studies. He stressed the importance of reading and writing. Reading lots of papers (inside and outside of the boarders of your research topic) is essential to get a clear overview of the research field and keep track of new developments. Writing early and regularly is essential to develop and maintain the writing skills for when the time comes to write a full-fledged paper. He further pointed out one crucial tip – don’t compare yourself to others. Everyone has different research projects, work in different ways and progress at different rates for different reasons. As such, stop comparing as it is not worth the hassle!
Abba Lawan is in the second going to third year of his PhD in Computer Science. He is the co-founder and steering committee member of the Sustainability Research Network (SRN). His expertise is mainly in the research and development of ontologies and relevant semantics technologies. He has a BSc (Hons) in Business Computing and IT from the University of Wales, MSc in Information Technology from UNMC. He has quite an extensive amount of work experience including Field Maintenance Engineer and Project Manager.
“Experience is the first and basic level of knowledge. All knowledge begins with experience and all knowledge begins with the senses.” – Aristotle, 384-322 B.C.
Eliasu, on the other hand, began his presentation with the above quote and took a very interesting approach in sharing his experience as an international student undertaking PhD in a foreign country. He wittily talked about the many and varied difficulties and problems in undertaking a PhD and at the same time, shared some key points of advice on how to manage and overcome those challenges.
Eliasu Mumuni is currently in the second year of his PhD and his project is very multidisciplinary with supervisors from the Faculty of Engineering and Business School (NUBS). His project aims to develop a framework to enhance the quality of cross-disciplinary communication in agricultural research organisations that are multifaceted. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Agricultural Engineering and a Masters in Environmental Science and Management from Ghana with an MBA in Strategic and Project Management from Paris, France. He also schooled in Japan and South Africa for other postgraduate courses. He has 11 years of working experience in agricultural development and policy related issues.
In summary, the panel gave some advice that – in retrospect – they would have found useful when starting out with their PhD studies a few years ago. PhD can be a great experience despite the stress, worry, trials and tribulations. Your PhD is what you make it – so make it fabulous!
We hope that the session was an enjoyable and enlightening one and we further hope that the advice shared during the session was useful.
*Special thanks goes to the panel: Maysoun A. Mustafa, Abba Lawan and Eliasu Mumuni as well as those who attended the session.
-
Post a comment
