Recently, I read a blog post on how Spotify makes buying music obsolete. While I enjoy streaming music (as long as I don't have to pay for it) and online radio, I do think there are still reasons for buying records and/or music. In my case, I don't buy music through iTunes or any other digital service, but I buy the physical albums (either online or in a music store) and I pride myself very much in my music collection. Now filling two CD cupboards, my music collection has been quite an investment during my studies and now as a poor graduate student - and a weight and volume of stuff that I have moving along with me (except for the year I spent in the US, and along with my cat Pasha (and friends and family, admittedly), my CD collection is what I missed most having around me). Why would I still stick to buying entire albums, on a real CD?
1. The artwork and lyrics
I love artwork - and I think it provides an additional dimension to the music you are listening to. Can you imagine, for example, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon without its artwork? Moreover, I enjoy flipping through the booklet while reading the lyrics.
2. The collection element
Because music is important for me, collecting CDs feels very natural to me, just like buying merchandise of bands I like. And then there is the real collectors urge in there to "complete" series and own the entire discography of a certain artist - all these neatly arranged together by artist, and for every artist arranged in chronological order.
3. A library of my past and current taste in music
While I sometimes forget about an artist that I used to like very much for a certain period of time, having the albums out there and visible makes it easy to rediscover artist that you haven't listened to in a while.
4. A little project
For over a year now, I've been listening to all my CDs by starting at the very beginning of my collection (Abba's "18 hits") to the very end ("Woodstock 40"), and at the moment I am at the artists starting with "R" (Renaissance - Day of the Dreamer). So far, it's been a fun little project that made me discover past likes, but also made me listen to entire discographies of artists and thus discover new lines in their music. I'm now at the letter "R", with 2 more shelves to go until the end of my collection.
Ten great blogs for PhD students
on Thursday, June 28, 2012
Since I started reading blogs at 6 months into my PhD program, I've gained some valuable insights from my favorite blogs.
An exhaustive list would only lure you into getting more clutter into your information stream - so here are my 10 favorites (in no particular order)
1. Happy Science
Cheek-in-tongue blog on science, social media, and pharma-research. If the thought of seeing your make-up under a microscope makes you giggle, don't hesitate and head to Happy Science.
2. Peoplegogy
This blog reads like a magazine, with a wide range of topics that I enjoy reading very much. You particularly might like the "Doctoral Confessions" series.
3. The Dutch PhD Coach
I was planning to drop the link to Arjenne's "Louter Promoveren" blog in Dutch when I discovered there is now an English offspring too. Great content - these articles might as well come from a book with advice on the PhD process.
4. Only a model
A website and blog by a fellow PhD student in Structural Engineering. Interesting posts on finite element modeling, workflow processes and academic teaching.
5. Dr Sustainable
Only about a month old, this blog has managed to provide some great content and a lively forum with comments. I have high expectations of seeing more interesting content coming up here.
6. Get a life, PhD
Combining a career in academia with a family, and still finding time for yourself? I enjoy reading this blog while wondering how my future self will relate to these issues.
7. Gradhacker
Life- and studyhacking for graduate students - with contributions from a large authorship.
8. Matt Might's blog
While the computer science in there is all Greek to me, the articles on graduate school and productivity are very much worth reading.
9. PhD2Published
With a wealth of wisdom on academic writing in its archives, this blog also provides a Weekly Wisdom sections on Everything You Wanted to Know in Academia.
10. Thesis Whisperer
We don't need to introduce this one, right?
An exhaustive list would only lure you into getting more clutter into your information stream - so here are my 10 favorites (in no particular order)
1. Happy Science
Cheek-in-tongue blog on science, social media, and pharma-research. If the thought of seeing your make-up under a microscope makes you giggle, don't hesitate and head to Happy Science.
2. Peoplegogy
This blog reads like a magazine, with a wide range of topics that I enjoy reading very much. You particularly might like the "Doctoral Confessions" series.
3. The Dutch PhD Coach
I was planning to drop the link to Arjenne's "Louter Promoveren" blog in Dutch when I discovered there is now an English offspring too. Great content - these articles might as well come from a book with advice on the PhD process.
4. Only a model
A website and blog by a fellow PhD student in Structural Engineering. Interesting posts on finite element modeling, workflow processes and academic teaching.
5. Dr Sustainable
Only about a month old, this blog has managed to provide some great content and a lively forum with comments. I have high expectations of seeing more interesting content coming up here.
6. Get a life, PhD
Combining a career in academia with a family, and still finding time for yourself? I enjoy reading this blog while wondering how my future self will relate to these issues.
7. Gradhacker
Life- and studyhacking for graduate students - with contributions from a large authorship.
8. Matt Might's blog
While the computer science in there is all Greek to me, the articles on graduate school and productivity are very much worth reading.
9. PhD2Published
With a wealth of wisdom on academic writing in its archives, this blog also provides a Weekly Wisdom sections on Everything You Wanted to Know in Academia.
10. Thesis Whisperer
We don't need to introduce this one, right?
Giving a poster presentation for the first time
on Monday, June 25, 2012
As I wrote in a previous post that I gave a poster presentation at a conference recently, I will be explaining more here on what I learned from giving a poster presentation, and what I can improve next time.
Lessons learned from giving a poster presentation:
1. More personal interaction is possible
A poster presentation allows you to interact directly with your audience. In my case, I had mostly one-on-one interaction with an interested person (or someone I could convince to come over and have a look at my poster). In this way, I could learn from the experience of practicing engineers on slab bridges.
2. It's sometimes hard to bring people to your poster
As there were technical sessions at the same time as the poster session, most people were passing through the poster space on their way towards the exhibition, the coffee or a technical session. At moments, I experiences it as rather awkward to stare at / start talking to people rushing by to go somewhere else. It felt as if I didn't really know how to "sell my product" and get the attention to start a conversation.
3. Figures work
I had 8 figures on my poster, and I've used these extensively to point at and explain ideas while I was talking to people. I didn't refer much to the text on my poster, but I do think the text mattered for the time I was not with my poster to explain it, and for the print of the poster in the proceedings.
Points of improvement:
1. Have material available
I brought my poster, but not much more than that. I did pin some business cards to my board as well, but I regret not printing handouts of the poster or one of my recent papers as additional information. Moreover, I could have added a QR code to my poster to provide more information.
2. Overall layout
I tried a layout based on a flowchart approach, to see how I went from the problem of the existing bridges, by means of the experiments and a database from the literature towards the analysis from statistics and experiments, resulting in recommendations and theoretical knowledge on slabs. I still think I could make this logic more visually appealing by taking this approach one step further - but I don't know exactly how. Practice makes perfect?
Lessons learned from giving a poster presentation:
1. More personal interaction is possible
A poster presentation allows you to interact directly with your audience. In my case, I had mostly one-on-one interaction with an interested person (or someone I could convince to come over and have a look at my poster). In this way, I could learn from the experience of practicing engineers on slab bridges.
2. It's sometimes hard to bring people to your poster
As there were technical sessions at the same time as the poster session, most people were passing through the poster space on their way towards the exhibition, the coffee or a technical session. At moments, I experiences it as rather awkward to stare at / start talking to people rushing by to go somewhere else. It felt as if I didn't really know how to "sell my product" and get the attention to start a conversation.
3. Figures work
I had 8 figures on my poster, and I've used these extensively to point at and explain ideas while I was talking to people. I didn't refer much to the text on my poster, but I do think the text mattered for the time I was not with my poster to explain it, and for the print of the poster in the proceedings.
Points of improvement:
1. Have material available
I brought my poster, but not much more than that. I did pin some business cards to my board as well, but I regret not printing handouts of the poster or one of my recent papers as additional information. Moreover, I could have added a QR code to my poster to provide more information.
2. Overall layout
I tried a layout based on a flowchart approach, to see how I went from the problem of the existing bridges, by means of the experiments and a database from the literature towards the analysis from statistics and experiments, resulting in recommendations and theoretical knowledge on slabs. I still think I could make this logic more visually appealing by taking this approach one step further - but I don't know exactly how. Practice makes perfect?
International Bridge Conference 2012
on Sunday, June 24, 2012
On Monday, I returned to Delft from the International Bridge Conference 2012.
In two poster sessions, I've presented the poster which you can see here, and that was the very first time I gave a poster presentation (I'll be blogging about that experience shortly).
The International Bridge Conference is held yearly in Pittsburgh, the city of bridges. The website describes the conference as follows:
"Sponsored by the Engineers’ Society of Western Pennsylvania, the IBC annually attracts over 1,600 bridge owners and engineers, senior policy makers, government officials, bridge designers, construction executives, and suppliers from throughout the United States and abroad."
I indeed very much enjoyed the combination of bridge owners, practicing engineers from structural engineering firms, researchers and construction companies. With a 160 exhibitors at the conference, there is plenty of information from practitioners to gather - I didn't have enough eyes and ears.
As can be seen in this overview, the conference offers 3 technical sessions at a time, workshops, poster presentations, exhibits and (at an additional cost) seminars. I've attended 2 workshops, presentations at the technical sessions, visited the grand majority of all booths at the exhibit and presented my poster twice - a very packed schedule indeed.
What I've enjoyed most about this conference is the link to practice, and the impressive new bridge projects that are shown. Moreover, I've had the opportunity to talk to practicing engineers from the USA about slab bridges, and I've learned more about the way slab bridges are built in North-American practice. However, I'm still looking for some example cross-sections of reinforced concrete slab bridges from North America to compare to the cases I am studying from the Netherlands.
If possible (thesis-planning-wise), I'll try to go back to this conference next year, hopefully to present in one of the technical sessions.
If you're planning to attend IBC in 2013, the abstracts will be due (I expect) in early fall 2012.
My time management system
on Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Previously, I have been writing about different tools and approaches I use to manage my time. Today's post aims at bringing this information together, and showing you the system I use. Hopefully, you can find some elements in here to help you better manage your time.
1. Tools for planning
As a PhD research project requires 4 years of time to plan, I have geared most of my efforts towards optimizing my planning tools. I split up my planning from the general overview, down to the daily task lists:
- The general overview
Now that I'm writing up my thesis, I need the right tools to plan for this.
I am keeping the general overview in a Google Calender document which I titled "Roadmap to thesis defense", marking in which week I should be working on which chapter.
- To Do lists
I keep different lists: a list with research ideas, a list with deadlines, and monthly and weekly to dos. All these are saved in Word documents. Every Friday, I plan out the next week (and month, when the time is there). That precise moment also serves as a moment to reflect on my progress and to ask myself why or why not I met my goals for this week; a method inspired by the monthly progress monitor.
- Daily appointments
Rather old-fashioned, but I keep my day-to-day appointments in a paper-and-pen type of planner. (It's bound in red leather with a pattern of roses on it, if that explains why I can't switch to a digital version). I write down my most important task(s) for the day, and have all my appointments written down and planned. Also, I write down my To Do list for the evening at the very bottom of the day page.
2. Tools for tracking
In the first months of my research, I was surprised to discover how much time was slipping away and how little net worth can be left of the 40 hours I'm supposed to have allotted for research. Therefore, I started tracking, and I discovered that -in the days when I was working on my experiments- I would easily spend an hour to go help a hand in the lab, or to arrange things or move around objectives in my planning. Also, I started tracking how I spend my time on the computer, confirming that I was not spending my time optimally. The tools I use for this are ManicTime and RescueTime.
When I have a lot on my mind, I tend to click away the minutes on the internet - nowadays, I have Leechblock on my office computer to keep me from social networking sites during 8:30am and 5pm (I still use my phone for these though).
3. Tools for reminding
This part still needs some improvement. I keep an overview of paper deadlines in a simple Word file, and I write these down in my paper planner. If I need to remind myself of something small, I just place a reminder in my phone. Even though I don't really need reminders (I typically remember things naturally), I do think that improving this part of my system would free some space in my head.
What does your time management system look like? Do you use a system at all, or do you prefer to work randomly?
1. Tools for planning
As a PhD research project requires 4 years of time to plan, I have geared most of my efforts towards optimizing my planning tools. I split up my planning from the general overview, down to the daily task lists:
- The general overview
Now that I'm writing up my thesis, I need the right tools to plan for this.
I am keeping the general overview in a Google Calender document which I titled "Roadmap to thesis defense", marking in which week I should be working on which chapter.
- To Do lists
I keep different lists: a list with research ideas, a list with deadlines, and monthly and weekly to dos. All these are saved in Word documents. Every Friday, I plan out the next week (and month, when the time is there). That precise moment also serves as a moment to reflect on my progress and to ask myself why or why not I met my goals for this week; a method inspired by the monthly progress monitor.
- Daily appointments
Rather old-fashioned, but I keep my day-to-day appointments in a paper-and-pen type of planner. (It's bound in red leather with a pattern of roses on it, if that explains why I can't switch to a digital version). I write down my most important task(s) for the day, and have all my appointments written down and planned. Also, I write down my To Do list for the evening at the very bottom of the day page.
2. Tools for tracking
In the first months of my research, I was surprised to discover how much time was slipping away and how little net worth can be left of the 40 hours I'm supposed to have allotted for research. Therefore, I started tracking, and I discovered that -in the days when I was working on my experiments- I would easily spend an hour to go help a hand in the lab, or to arrange things or move around objectives in my planning. Also, I started tracking how I spend my time on the computer, confirming that I was not spending my time optimally. The tools I use for this are ManicTime and RescueTime.
When I have a lot on my mind, I tend to click away the minutes on the internet - nowadays, I have Leechblock on my office computer to keep me from social networking sites during 8:30am and 5pm (I still use my phone for these though).
3. Tools for reminding
This part still needs some improvement. I keep an overview of paper deadlines in a simple Word file, and I write these down in my paper planner. If I need to remind myself of something small, I just place a reminder in my phone. Even though I don't really need reminders (I typically remember things naturally), I do think that improving this part of my system would free some space in my head.
What does your time management system look like? Do you use a system at all, or do you prefer to work randomly?
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