A couple of months ago I was having my occasional freak out about what I’m doing with my life and what on earth I should be doing with myself after my PhD contract ends. It’s terrifying because academia just doens’t sound particularly appealing with all the bad press it’s getting these days; chances of making […]
Questions I had when I started supervising student projects
Supervising student projects has been one of the most rewarding but also one of the hardest things I’ve done during my PhD. It was hard, because I had no previous experience and little guidance. There is this general sense in (Dutch) academia that you just gotta figure it out. Perhaps not the most effective approach, […]
From data to draft: my messy pre-writing process
Although people often think I am very organised, my writing process is complete chaos, and it doesn’t at all match the neat, stepwise process writing is often presented to be. In the spirit of academic writing month, and also in the spirit of me currently drafting up three papers (at the same time… see? chaos!), […]
5 things I learned from PhDing in China
My home institution is in the Netherlands, but since we don’t have mangroves back home I spend quite some time in China to run experiments and field campaigns. When I’m here, I work on a campus in Zhuhai, a “small” city located close to Hong Kong and Macao. Right now I’m here for two months […]