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"One day he would have to go home. And one day he would have to make a home to go back to. He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or it was something that you found in the end, if you simply waited and willed it long enough."
I have collected and counted 31,785 thrips on 472 3x5" sticky card traps since July 19th of last year. My research thrips of interest, Scirtothrips dorsalis, accounts for 84.04% of all captures. The next two species that account for the largest proportion of thrips collected during the year are Frankliniella schultzei, at 3.59% of all captures, and Gynaikothrips uzeli, who account for another 3.05% of all thrips trapped. I would suggest that this implies that S. dorsalis represents the predominant thrips species on my two host plots throughout the year.
Next week I will collect my final traps for this project, and with sixty weekly sampling periods, this experiment will be complete.
Obviously this project would have been improved if I had access to larger and more field plots from which to sample. This project could have been further improved if these additional sample plots had been from a broader geographic distribution both in south Florida and across the state. It might also have been more informative had it included samples taken from around additional host plants, and had it included an additional variable - measuring captures on traps at an increasing distance from certain host plots.
Officially, this was my "back-burner" project. I did not receive support or encouragement to continue or expand this project during its first three months, and once officially endorsed, it was suggested that I direct my enthusiasm for improving this experiment elsewhere. I was discouraged from modifying the experiment in order to achieve the improvements I have mentioned above.
This experiment is now one of the fundamental planks of my thesis.
Graduate school is all about realizing that you are in charge, and perhaps more fundamentally, that you probably do know what you are doing and where you should be going. Cast off self-doubt, and pursue reasonable research goals that are endorsed by your peers. Follow your heart. Most important of all?
"Time alone - oh, time will tell: ya think you're in heaven, but ya living in hell."
- Bob Marley, Time will Tell
So the news is this: I will not be graduating in December.
Members of my committee feel that I could stand to repeat two of my experiments by expanding the number of treatments, and by increasing the number of repetitions within those experiments. I will collect data on these experiments for another two months, which will put me two weeks from the departmental deadline for thesis defense, and it is extremely unlikely that I would be able to complete my analysis and writing while dealing with the obstacles of bureaucracy at the University of Florida. As such, I will most probably defend in January, and graduate in May of next year.
I am of mixed feelings on this subject.
While I rather wish that they had reached these conclusions before approving and endorsing the experiments in the first place so that I would do it right the first time, this is also the first time in two years that I have had clear objectives and a deadline. I know exactly what I need to do in order to finish.