There are fundamental skill sets that will make you a more productive oceanographer and better scientist. Many of these are transferable, meaning they apply to circumstances well beyond the lab group or OSU. You will not be able to gain most of these skills from classes alone. The list below outlines some useful resources.
Good communication is critical to everything in life.
The book Eloquent Science is generally pretty good. There is also a blog associated with the book. There are probably better books.
Form a writing group with friends and colleagues. Try meeting for regularly each week together with the goal of writing.
Schedule writing time into your calendar app.
For prioritising tasks, you can try the Eisenhower matrix.
Practise crafting SMART goals, where SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound.
Having these tools at your finger tips will increase your productivity hugely. The learning curve can be steep, but is well worth the effort.
You MUST learn to program well.
Python is a general open-source language for programming with many incredibly useful packages for geoscience data analysis.
Learn the fundamentals first:
Then learn the cutting edge tools:
Working with instruments, servers, and code necessarily requires familiarity with command line interfaces.
The UNIX shell: https://swcarpentry.github.io/shell-novice/
Learn about git and GitHub.
This becomes essential if you want to build and share new software tools.
Documenting code and proceedures is a critical component of our work (the reason we have a wiki!)
A basic understanding of linux system concepts is fundamental to our work:
During fieldwork, develop a habit of recording metadata for every important event. Important events include:
Important metadata include: