Comparing my job 5 years ago and now
I was recently thinking about how my work and daily tasks have changed over time. To make this more specific, I looked at my agenda from five years ago (one of the advantages of using a digital calendar; I can…
How to excel as a researcher – according to ChatGPT
I'm continuing my conversations with AI in today's post. I now asked ChatGPT how to excel as a researcher. You can find the reply of the AI in italic and my comments on this in regular. To excel as a…
How much time am I spending in meetings?
In my weekly template, I typically only reserve time for my teaching and my recurring meetings. However, there are many additional meetings that come up all the time. Lately, I feel that I don't have enough buffer on my weekly…
One of my writing pet peeves
As an editor and reviewer, I have a few pet peeves related to academic writing. One of my main pet peeves is this: Authors who use the same sentence length throughout their writing. Seriously, academic writers: varying sentence length improves…
PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer – Seven best practices for Assistant Professors
This post is part of the series PhD Talk for AcademicTransfer: posts written for the Dutch academic career network AcademicTransfer, your go-to resource for all research positions in the Netherlands. These posts are sponsored by AcademicTransfer, and tailored to those…
How to excel as a professor – according to ChatGPT
Of course, we are all wasting our time these days playing around with ChatGPT, so a number of my posts are now my commentary on things ChatGPT writes. I asked ChatGPT how to excel as a professor, and you can…
A day in the life of a professor – according to ChatGPT
I recently asked ChatGPT what the best schedule for a professor looks like, and this is what I got: A professor's workday may look a little different than other professionals, given the nature of their role. Here's a sample timeline…
What did not work for me in 2022
Just like I did the exercise last week on reflecting on what worked for me in the previous time period, I'm today reflecting on what did not work for me in the past year-ish. Since I am critical of myself,…
What worked for me in 2022
Here's an additional reflection exercise to do every now and then: looking back at the previous period of time (I'm taking 2022 as a reference) and making a list of what worked for you. I hadn't done this exercise in…
Defenses around the world: a defense in Denmark
I recently attended a defense in Denmark, as one of my cosupervised PhD candidates defended. I wanted to travel to be present in person, but my passport renewal is taking forever, so I joined through Zoom instead. For this particular…