I am back!!!

Hello everyone!

I had lost my password for more than seven years!
I'm so happy to be back again!

Happy Christmas to everyone!

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Within the last month, two people I have never met before requested my thesis.

Oh boy!

I had a bad day! Oh boy oh boy! I ended up screaming and sobbing lying on the kitchen floor. I guess I'm totally exhausted. The bad thing is I don't really know what made me so upset. But the degree was unbearable. Right now I'm so fucking tired I guess I just go to bed. So no research for today. This makes me sad. Being too tired to do some academic work. Unfortunately, this is not the first day this happened to me. Sob.

Welcome back

Hello boys and girls,

it has been quite some time since I have written my last entry here. Well, I just openend up my thesis and started going through my editor's comments. I'm gonna be published! I hope that I will keep on working, and that I might pick up blogging again. It helps at times when the isolation gets too bad.

See you!

Blogging for teaching?

I am very dissatisfied with the eLearning facility that my university provides. It is not easy to use. There is no trial mode.

I thought of, why don't I use blogging for my teaching? I will give some reading assignments, but I wanted to pose some crucial questions while they are reading. And I wanted to have the students discuss their questions, ideas and suggestions electronically.

I could set up a blog for my course where I will post questions, assignments, hints and links at various points. The students should then participate by commenting or by writing blog entries themselves.

This idea could be extended, as the students will have to write a lab diary for another course. So, they could all have their own blogs for their diaries, so all people in the program can see what is going on. As this is an interdisciplinary program and the faculty do not really know each other, this would be a good way to learn each other's research goals.

But of course, the big thing is illusionary. But as a start, I could do my own lecture blog. However, I guess I want to have it password protected, so that only the students (and maybe my colleagues) can read it, but not the whole world.

News from match.com

I am currently chatting via email with four nice guys from my local match.com. I am somehow a lazy replier sending no more than 2 or 3 messages per week, but it keeps going. Most important: I am trying to see the good parts of the guys.

My First Class!

This fall, I will teach my first class entirely on my own. (Some great possibility appeared - a lecturer was missing, so I got the chance; this is how my Head of Department reacted that I quit being his T.A. - he suggested that I should give this course; so it was good that I stood up!). Right now I am in the process of preparing the plan for the term. I will have five sessions, two full hour each. Up to now, I have decided to have a main topic for each session. Then, I split up every meeting into four units of 30 mins each. I thought of spending 30 mins discussing a reading assignment with given questions, 2x 30 mins of traditional lecturing, and maybe another 30 mins of doing some exercises with the class. Thus, there will be no more as 30 mins of nonstop talking.

I am thinking of how to use the elearning facility. I thought of giving bonus points to those participating in the online discussion: students should add links (with comments) to class related topics [I think of information collecting as one of the most important skill that an ongoing researcher should learn] and should discuss theoretical matters from their specific background.

Boyfriend

I am now trying my local find-a-mate.com seriously, I am definitely looking for a relationship. In the last two years, I spent 120% of my time with my academic work, so now I want to focus on another aspect of human life.

One question doesn't get out of my mind: what if I fall in love with someone over here and I have to leave for a postdoc? What if I have to move to Another Country for the next three years? Somehow this insecurity seems to contradict a private life. In particular, I do not know at the moment where I will be going to in the next couple of weeks.

The Job Market

Refreshed from a nice summer holiday, I am prepared to jump into my next adventure. I need a new job. Soon.

I did my very best to figure out what I want, but I have not arrived at a solution yet. It is a bit scary to admit, but I am likely to quit the academic world. I don't think I love my subject so much that I can bear it to continue to sit in a room alone for the next three years writing some more papers who nobody really is interested in. I don't want to move into a foreign country. I don't want to have the same problems again in three years, i.e., that I will be running out of funding. I am sick of all the people who keep envying me because I am sucessful. Right now, I just don't know why I should go on.

The alternative is that I will pick up some job in the industry (not related to my PhD subject). Maybe I'll find some researchy thing to work for, but not as academic as the university. This would give fixed working hours, money and vacation.

The thing I am not sure about right now is: is it a pitty that I give up my scientific career because I am good at it and I should fight for my position? I should care less and move to another country (but then, at some point, I will need a tenured position and there is none around my home town).