… successfully, of course. Now we just have to turn it into a publication. I always give a short speech during the celebrations afterwards, and the theme was what Brittany, her personality, brought to the research project (Ryan Gregory’s great standard question). She was much too modest when she answered this during her defence, so I answered it for her:
- her organizational talents (keeping track of the extensive experiments and field observations, all at the same time)
- her efficient and hard work (she counted more than 600 samples one summer, compared to my 90+ samples for my entire PhD)
- her intellectual contributions to her thesis, which looks very straightforward afterward, but it took us many iterations to understand and explain it this clearly
- knowing how to handle me (important one!)
- her willingness to work in Churchill, given the remoteness and sometimes dangerous nature of the field work there
And the polar bear situation in Churchill was the source of my present for Brittany:
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| Colour-coordinated accessories ;-) |
