To understand the content of my supervisor's journal article, 'Umbilic Lines in Orientational Order'.

I managed to get someway through the article, with moderate success. However I decided to change the route I would take in order reach the project's goal, since I was not able to adapt the results from the paper into the theory that has been established already.

The problem that I was having was that my supervisor's article concerned umbilic points in real space, where as an electron's wavefunction is in spin space. Hence, whilst it looked at first as if my goal would be simple plain sailing it began to get obfuscated once I appreciated the importance of the electron spin (a much harder task to do than to type, especially in such a novel environment).

I did not really achieve the goal I specified earlier sadly. Instead I have reached the aim of this project via alternate means, and I know that they have been achieved since they match up with the already established theory, and my supervisor was still very happy with the results.

This goal has taught me that it is okay to make mistakes, and that it if often better to swallow one's pride (I would say that I have an adamantine stubbornness, so this is important for me) in order to make efficient progress.

I would probably have chosen a more general Development Goal, since I said specifically that I would achieve this one by a particular method. Instead I achieved it via another method, but only after I had used up a lot of my time.