After Research Proposal is Sent

After I graduated from Texas A&M University after my Master’s degree, I couldn’t get into the PhD program in same department due to funding problems and that my advisor was leaving the University to become director of another research institute. This caught me very unorganized since I was so sure I would get in, I mean why wouldn’t they hire their own student who is adopted to the university system, school and environment. I had no other choice but to start working in an industry job. I wasn’t feeling too bad about this either. On one side of my head I always wanted make sure I am going into Academia because I don’t prefer to work in an industry job and this could be a chance to learn how a job in civil industry works. Besides that, I could always look for PhD and quit my job if I didn’t like it. Since last February I’ve been in industry and it is going a lot better than I thought. I am currently in my second job and just in 9-10 months I can see the benefits of taking take of before deciding for academia (I will write a detailed post on this soon). Even though it is a great experience, I realized that I feel a little behind on research. Even though I am going with the flow for some time now, I know eventually I want to have a PhD part time or full time. Best way to get this plan in action is staying involved somehow.

Besides my full time industry job I am conducting part-time research with professors from Celal Bayar University (where I pursued my Bachelor’s Degree). I have been seeing them once in a year since I graduated and we are in touch through social media. I informed them that I want to get involved in some research project to stay active. My timing was perfect, they were preparing to submit a proposal and they needed a PhD student to work on that. And besides perfect timing, it was on a topic parallel to my master’s research topic. Of course this was a great chance for me and I ask them to send me the proposal.

As soon as I had a copy of the proposal I read how much information they provided, what else can be added and what other factors can increase our chances. After a month we had meeting and they were very satisfied with the amount of work I’ve done in such a short period of time. Of course I needed to do more writing and improve the literature review section but we had plenty of time to complete that.

After a month of hard work I finally completed and sent the draft of the proposal to my project members, they probably will have some comments and corrections which is acceptable. The relaxation after I sent the proposal was priceless. If approved this project will open the door of PhD and some funding for me. I can’t wait to hear the results in a few months.

Now that I am done with the proposal here is what I will do. I will go through all references we used for the proposal in details and expand my knowledge on not so related details for this project. I already have a few ideas of what is missing in literature and some paper solutions to fill up this gap.

If this project doesn’t get approved, I am ready to re-send it to other research institutes or look for external funding to conduct experimental work.