Back to PhD

I have returned from my internship in Sydney and am now back to research. I had a fantastic time. I personally think I had the best project to work on out of all the other interns. It tied in perfectly with my data mining interest. There was a slight administrative hurdle that we never got over (just around) but I completed the project and was even able to produce a demo for my final presentation. This would not have happened without the help and support of my mentor and development team. It was a fantastic learning experience and I'm glad I had the opportunity to be involved on such a fun project with such a cool team. I was even offered supportive feedback after the project, which was helpful and sincere.

In terms of infrastructure, the code base was well documented and maintained, with high visibility within the company. It was easy to access tools and find assistance. The focus felt like it was on creating functional and innovative products, making the big G an enjoyable environment to work in.

However, even after this experience, I am still uncertain about the direction I wish to follow after my PhD. Both academia and industry are equally appealing. Luckily I still have a couple of years to decide. In the mean time, it is back to my PhD and my research topic. I'll take a while to get back into things but I'm sure I'll get there in the end. I'm currently looking at the code that I was working on 6 months ago. I'm glad I wrote comments but I am still more confused than anything else.

The toughest thing about being away from the research is coming back to realise the new and recent developments have made some of my work invalid. That's a shame. I guess the next step is to try and catch up with where the research area has progressed to and carry on from there. Time to do a lot of reading!