Thursday, January 15, 2015

September 2015

Thirty-Nine months ago, I started my PhD.  As I look back through logbooks, half written papers and the accumulated file lint that clutters my desktop, I wonder where that time has gone.  But this is no time for reflection.  From here on out, my eyes are set firmly on September 2015.  They must be, if I hope to finish my PhD.

Over the coming nine months I hope to achieve all of the following goals:
  1. Finish off some experiments using machine learning to rank substitutions in different contexts. 
  2. Write up and submit this work to the main track at ACL-IJCNLP 2015.
  3. Design and implement an experiment looking at the effects of simplification for people with aphasia.
  4. Compose my thesis.
  5. Find a job.

All in all, I think that this is manageable.  I would really like to go to ACL this year, but my fate will be left to the hands of the reviewers.  I haven't formally started writing my thesis yet, but I do have lots of material written up, so I intend to start with this and work from that point.  The aphasia experiments will be interesting, but I'll write more about them at a later point.  Lots to do, so best get started.