Today another happy post about work.
In Freiburg, things were basically like this:
3rd of January 2006: "Wilkommen Frau Nina! Here is the research proposal for your PhD. Good luck, and we’ll see you in 3 years for your defense.”
Ok, maybe not that bad, and if you read the acknowledgements in my thesis there sure were tons of people helping me out, but in terms of guidance and supervision and advise, it was pretty meager. Although I think I took the right approach to it and whenever I felt I needed it I would just walk into prof’s office and ask for guidance. Not sure if that is typically Dutch, or if the opposite is typically German, but I always felt I was the only one who dared to just do that.
However, I loved the freedom. I really did whatever I wanted those 3 years. I only felt responsibility towards myself, which was clearly more than enough. I chose my experimental set-ups. I chose what conferences I would go to. I chose what time I would be at work and how long I would work. I chose the structure of my thesis.
So being used to do my own thing, I was a bit worried I would now have to either do as I was told by Ian, or discuss every little detail with him. I feared he would check up on me every day to see I was doing the right thing and I was afraid he might want me to stick to some insane time schedule.
And yes the first few months (oh isn’t it weird I can say that already? It’s been nearly 5 months!) it was a little bit like that. It was his project and he seemed really anxious to get it going really well. Although at the same time he did give me freedom but perhaps more due to the fact that he was travelling a lot, and he would always give me a to-do list.
That also more or less happened end of July as he was going away to visit family and attend a conference. And in those 4 weeks I accomplished a lot of things and I completely fell back into my Freiburg habits of doing things in my time and on my terms. (which also meant I did most things the last week before Ian got back…)
Since then we’ve had 2 meetings. When he just got back he seemed impressed with everything I had been doing. And just today he said “well, you seem to have things running smoothly!” with a tone implying “I’ll just sit back and wait for papers to appear”. And I didn’t even tell him all the things that I am working on at the moment.
The nice thing is, I do feel in control too. I know what I am doing, I’ve found the right people to help me and things are running. And I realized I did totally learn all these organizing/planning/structuring skills during my PhD.
In Freiburg, things were basically like this:
3rd of January 2006: "Wilkommen Frau Nina! Here is the research proposal for your PhD. Good luck, and we’ll see you in 3 years for your defense.”
Ok, maybe not that bad, and if you read the acknowledgements in my thesis there sure were tons of people helping me out, but in terms of guidance and supervision and advise, it was pretty meager. Although I think I took the right approach to it and whenever I felt I needed it I would just walk into prof’s office and ask for guidance. Not sure if that is typically Dutch, or if the opposite is typically German, but I always felt I was the only one who dared to just do that.
However, I loved the freedom. I really did whatever I wanted those 3 years. I only felt responsibility towards myself, which was clearly more than enough. I chose my experimental set-ups. I chose what conferences I would go to. I chose what time I would be at work and how long I would work. I chose the structure of my thesis.
So being used to do my own thing, I was a bit worried I would now have to either do as I was told by Ian, or discuss every little detail with him. I feared he would check up on me every day to see I was doing the right thing and I was afraid he might want me to stick to some insane time schedule.
And yes the first few months (oh isn’t it weird I can say that already? It’s been nearly 5 months!) it was a little bit like that. It was his project and he seemed really anxious to get it going really well. Although at the same time he did give me freedom but perhaps more due to the fact that he was travelling a lot, and he would always give me a to-do list.
That also more or less happened end of July as he was going away to visit family and attend a conference. And in those 4 weeks I accomplished a lot of things and I completely fell back into my Freiburg habits of doing things in my time and on my terms. (which also meant I did most things the last week before Ian got back…)
Since then we’ve had 2 meetings. When he just got back he seemed impressed with everything I had been doing. And just today he said “well, you seem to have things running smoothly!” with a tone implying “I’ll just sit back and wait for papers to appear”. And I didn’t even tell him all the things that I am working on at the moment.
The nice thing is, I do feel in control too. I know what I am doing, I’ve found the right people to help me and things are running. And I realized I did totally learn all these organizing/planning/structuring skills during my PhD.
