Insomnia is an old friend of mine. As a child, I would get out of bed in the middle of the night and knock my parents' bedroom door to let them know that I couldn't sleep. (And typically my mom…
Often, when people look at my experiments and my test setup, they are confused when I tell them that I am studying a bridge under traffic loads. How can a little steel plate of 300mm x 300mm or 200mm x…
Even though I have frequently seen #phdchat community members mentioning how useful they find 750words, I never really gave it a try. I thought it would be totally the same as writing longhand in a diary, which I try to…
The idea I used to have of a PhD student, is of someone who spends endless hours behind his computer, focused on one single task. The reality turned out to be rather different for me: hardly ever I get to…
Last week, I went to visit two companies where the concept of "a new world of work" (het nieuwe werken in Dutch) has been implemented. Although I am always eager to try out new ways of working and new productivity…
I'm often confronted with the question what a PhD actually is: is it going to school or is it having a research job? Explaining people that it is somewhere in between both seems to be a rather unsatisfying answer, while…
For the report which holds all my experimental data, I've started to add the chapter title (that is, the specimen name in my case) to the header.If you use header 1, 2,... for your titles, there is a quick and…
Has it happened to you that at a large family gathering, your relatives ask what you are actually working on, and you end up mumbling some code language? Or that you tried to explain a friend what your research is…
Previously, I've described which system I use to keep track of what needs to be done per week and per month.Up to now, I haven't gone into detail of how I try to keep the ultimate goal (The Defense) in…
Last Wednesday, I gave a presentation about my research. Usually, I follow the same consecutive steps in my presentation (overview - background/ literature review - experiments - results - conclusions), just as I would build up a paper.This time, however,…
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