By John-Michael Stuart, Janine Kuehs and Natasha Tay.
So we are not going to sugar-coat it, anyone who has done a PhD will tell you it is always an ongoing challenge to avoid the temptation to procrastinate and stay on track with your research. Especially this time of year when research fatigue sets in and it feels like you are coming down from a sugar high. So last week when the School of Veterinary and Life Sciences – Murdoch University organised the inaugural ‘BAKE YOUR THESIS’ competition it was like we were served up a legitimate school-endorsed excuse to procrastinate or as we like to say ‘procrasti-bake’.
Baking your thesis is a different way of disseminating research and it has given us the opportunity to get out of the office and labs, meet other people, talk about our research. It’s also the opportunity to present our research a completely different way – in cake form! We are not going to lie, for us it was having our cake and eating it too!
We are not sure when ‘BAKE YOUR THESIS’ competitions started, but in recent years it has been adopted by a number of Universities around the world and grown to become a bit of a social media sensation under the #bakeyourthesis and #bakeyourphd hashtags. It is fair to say the first annual Murdoch University competition was a delicious success with 15 cake entries including a number from WesternWEB researchers.
The icing on the cake was that two WesternWEB’ers, Janine Kuehs and John-Michael Stuart, tied first place for the ‘Eater’s Choice’ award and took out the runner’s up and first place ‘Judges Choice’ awards. A somewhat controversial decision as it turns out that as well as being a PhD student, John-Michael was also previously a qualified pastry cook and baker. A big thank you to the organisers of the School of Veterinary and Life Sciences – Murdoch University Bake you thesis competition.
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