The Science PhD Experience: My Life is a Series of Home Improvement Stores

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Note: The following content has been cross-posted from my personal science blog, Wanderlust.

Never when I signed up for this whole PhD "thing", did I think that further down along the line I would wander down the aisles of countless formless and faceless Home Depots and Lowes, familiarizing myself with PVC epoxies, pipe cutters, types of quick-pour concrete, and erratically color-coded lengths of rebar. While I am in the very last throes of the natural science component of my dissertation, for stretches within the last year, nary a week would pass without at least one, if not several, trips searching for the miscellanea one needs to make a bare-bones scientific project happen.