Reverb10 – Day 1: One word
I have just discovered reverb10. Even though I am a few days too late to start in time with this challenge, I decided I would like to give it a go. I might not be able to keep up with…
Evaluation of my presentation
Time to reflect on yesterday's presentation....Something interesting happened during my presentation, which tells me a lot about myself. Even though I was well prepared and put a lot of effort into making drawings for my presentation as well as stating…
Tomorrow’s presentation
Tomorrow I will be presenting again at the same symposium where I had my first presentation about my research one year ago. Last year, my presentation wasn't bad, but there was a lot of room for improvement. I've corrected some…
How to learn from your supervisor
When you are in a PhD program like mine, in which virtually no course work is involved and you are supposed to spend 40 hours a week in your little room with your stack of papers and a computer, you…
A few lessons from the lab
The past year, I've been conducting an enormous amount of large-scale experiments (my funder is quite generous). Tomorrow I'll have finished large-scale test number 98, and I will have tested 14 slabs (half-scale slab bridges) and 9 wide beams/slab strips.…
Social Media and Academics
Today, I attended a workshop on Online Networking and Social Media by Floor Drees at the PhD Event 2010. One of the most striking observations was the reluctance of young academics to social media. I was surprised to see that…
Branding Fail
Today, I was reading an article on an online newssite. The article was about a company that offers training courses to demotivated and burnt out employees. I thought that sounded interesting (I enjoy reading about personal leadership and development), and…
The work-life balance thing
My first blog post here was all about writing down my new academic year's resolutions and making them public and thus pushing myself to actually do something about it.One of the "problems" I wanted to tackle is that my work-life…
How a few software tools created several hours per week…
One day, about half a year ago, I was browsing around on the internet during my workhours, and reading the news of the day. One of the articles of the day was about time management software. I read the description…
Friday already?
Before last February, I used to feel a sort of panic on Friday afternoons, thinking: "Oh no, this is the end of the week, and I have done so little!"What I changed last February is that I started to make…