JUNE 2019 Where to begin. It’s pretty much June now and whilst writing this it’s the first time that I’ve realised that I’ve been involved in research for 6 months now. I started postgraduate research in January and from the first week it has been manic. I think if I’m to do all my experiences justice, I need to dedicate a post to each of them. But overall, these 6 months have been incredible. Tough, yes. Rewarding, most certainly. But overall, I feel like I’ve been able to learn more than a few lessons that will hold me in good stead for the rest of the year at the very least. In any case, looking back and thinking about how much I’ve learnt makes me feel like I’ve aged about 5 years, when in reality it’s been only 6 months.
One of the biggest learning curves was that there’s always learning curves. Programs need to be established, built and then constantly refined. Skills need to be developed and then maintained. As do relationships. Most importantly though, knowledge will always be growing faster than we can learn. When I was first introduced to scientific journals by my supervisor, V.C. introduced me to a table of contents subscription service that allow free access to the titles and associated abstracts of papers in all journals. Therefore, for the past 6 months, emails have been flooding my inbox, as all sorts of papers are published. In particular at the start of the month, publication emails pile on in. Through this mass of information I sort to find what I’m looking for, anything related to environmental science and its relation to exercise performance. As I do so, I skip over published papers, which are all scientific experiments, planned, conducted and written by either a student like me or an academic who has dedicated their life to solving the unanswered questions in the world. That being said, I only subscribe to sport physiology papers. I haven’t even scratched the surface of technical and tactical skills, sport biomechanics and skill acquisition. Knowing the amount of papers that I skip over to find that single paper that I can use in my studies reminds me of the nature of information. It’s everywhere and all consuming. This means that being overwhelmed is a constant state of being for the research world. As I write this, I know that I’ve just emerged from a period of information overload that occurred through the confirmation process. However, what I’ve realised is that whilst the information may be confusing and at the time is challenging, once you’re through the other side you’re all good. You just need to work hard to get there. It’s stuff like that that keeps me going, knowing that eventually I’ll emerge and know a lot more about the world around me by observing how sportspeople work on a day to day basis and working with them to help them get to their goals.
The other component that stands out for me is the support of the people around me and the way they’ve encouraged me to pursue my own interests and learn concepts on my own. I’ve been extremely lucky to have two extremely good supervisors which have helped me get to where I am in the timeframe that was set which was very very quick relative to a lot of other people. In addition, the HDR students who work around me are always offering advice and pursuing excellence in their own field which is reassuring as I try to make my own way into the field that I want to go into. They’ve helped me refine my ideas and worked with me to develop the outputs I’ve had to create in such a short amount of time. Overall, the support of these people has helped me get to where I am and without it, the road would have been a lot lonelier, a lot harder and a lot longer I’m sure.
Over the next few months hopefully I’ll add to this little post with more and more posts about what I’m learning and observing. For now though, I think that the year so far has taught me those two things – you always learn and you always need quality people around you to get quality output. We’ll see what other lessons the rest of the year teach me.
JANUARY 2021 Those two lessons still stand as the most important – the only one I’d add is stay calm under pressure and focus on the task at hand when you’re in the moment. Refining those skills helps keeps the distractions at bay and prevent the whole overwhelmed feeling.
Figuring out Sport 