The questions posed should be reflective of your goals and should appeal to a large audience. Committees always want to know your potential and if you can convey your ideas effectively. Before starting, find out what most interest you, not you advisor nor anyone else. If no ideas come to mind, refer back to previous studies for ideas. Develop your questions, and don’t be obsessed about perfection; a lot of factors in field work are out your control, so try several experiments at once, and work with what is most promising. There are two ways to picking a project, you can start with your scientific question or start with the natural system, and it make sure to meet the criteria either way. Not everything has been solved—keep this in mind! The
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Hiring helps/research assistants can help you get the job done when you can’t be there, but a shortcoming of it is that they are less invested in the quality of the work and may not have the expertise and intuition for it. To prevent this, work with the helpers and research assistants. This allows for more quality control and also develops critical intuition. Effective communication is a skill not to be underestimated with the people around you. The ultimate goal in Ecology, to get noticed in the field, is achieved by choosing the best place to publish where you will reach the largest and most appropriate audience. Presenting talks and writing papers allows you to find out what you know, what you don’t and can spark more ideas. Using an outline, makes you more efficient in the long run and aids in a more organized paper. After each field season, write up your results. This makes writing a paper less intimidating and allows colleagues to provide feedback if you can show them what you have instead of telling them what you think you found. The writing process consists of four steps: figuring out what you have to say, organizing your thoughts, putting down the words that make your argument and crafting your writing that it makes your points concise and convincing. It should all tell a logical story and good argument from start to
Hiring helps/research assistants can help you get the job done when you can’t be there, but a shortcoming of it is that they are less invested in the quality of the work and may not have the expertise and intuition for it. To prevent this, work with the helpers and research assistants. This allows for more quality control and also develops critical intuition. Effective communication is a skill not to be underestimated with the people around you. The ultimate goal in Ecology, to get noticed in the field, is achieved by choosing the best place to publish where you will reach the largest and most appropriate audience. Presenting talks and writing papers allows you to find out what you know, what you don’t and can spark more ideas. Using an outline, makes you more efficient in the long run and aids in a more organized paper. After each field season, write up your results. This makes writing a paper less intimidating and allows colleagues to provide feedback if you can show them what you have instead of telling them what you think you found. The writing process consists of four steps: figuring out what you have to say, organizing your thoughts, putting down the words that make your argument and crafting your writing that it makes your points concise and convincing. It should all tell a logical story and good argument from start to