For quite a while, I was dealing with email by sorting emails in folders, and then addressing the emails in the various folders during various pre-assigned timeslots during the week (research emails, writing emails, admin, contacts & appointments, teaching emails,…
As I shared my template for the first meeting with a new MSc thesis student with you, and used this to develop an onboarding checklist for my new postdoc, I figured out that I could as well develop an onboarding…
I recently looked up my old template for a first meeting with a new MSc student with a specific purpose: we just hired a new postdoc whom I will be supervising, and I wanted to have an appropriate onboarding checklist…
Just as in Summer 2022, I will not be using a weekly template for Summer 2023. My reasons are similar to last summer, but with some changes. Here's why using a weekly template does not make sense for me in…
As always, at the beginning of a new semester I sit down and go through a number of steps: I check in with my projects to see what I have ongoing and upcoming, I check my calendar for upcoming major…
This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those…
Another semester is past, so let's have a look at how I did in terms of my semester goals: Submit 4 papers. Yes! One paper has one of my PhD candidates as first author, two papers have a postdoc as…
I don't like falling behind. Most of the time, I'm very organized and keep all plates spinning. But sometimes, things get derailed. Recently, we were coping with the death of a family member, additional doctor's appointments, and lots of cardiologist…
As always at the end of the semester, I have evaluated how I spent my time in the past semester. The good news is, I'm slowly reducing my tendency to overwork. My longest weeks have been of 55 hours -…
We recently looked at why the middle part of the PhD can be so difficult for many students. I wouldn’t be here, spouting random advice to the interwebz, without attempting to provide you a solution for the second year dip.…
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