Tomorrow morning I will pick up a colleague, and together we’ll drive to Leipzig to attend the annual meeting of the German DFG chemodiversity consortium. I’m really looking forward to it. In fact, I was looking forward to this meeting so much that I shifted my parental leave plans to two weeks later than originallyContinue reading “It would make great television”
Tag Archives: postdoc
Write, rest, edit, rest, edit, (…), submit!
I ended this rather productive day today with a supervision meeting. In this case, it concerned a PhD candidate I co-supervise, together with a colleague in the UK. This particular project is almost coming to an end. Around the new year, the three-year contract will run out. Having said that, the candidate is in aContinue reading “Write, rest, edit, rest, edit, (…), submit!”
The horror of ecological experiments
Lately, me and a PhD researcher in our team were having some struggles in our project. As is often the case when you’re working with live organisms (Ecology, Yay!), things can go wrong, due unexpected organismal misbehavior. And if things CAN go wrong, they DO go wrong. Murphy’s law is the only universal truth inContinue reading “The horror of ecological experiments”
Do whatever you like
One of my supervisors during my PhD gave me a strong piece of advice at some point in my final year. It’s been a couple of years, so I’m paraphrasing here. “It doesn’t really matter what you do in a postdoc,” he said, pausing briefly, to then continue “If you really want to stay inContinue reading “Do whatever you like”
She’s here!
In September and October me and my boss held interviews for a ‘plant-insect’ PhD position that was available in our group. This was already the second round of advertising and interviewing – I must add – as the first round of advertising earlier last year yielded no suitable candidates. On October 14th, after having hadContinue reading “She’s here!”
The full-body NO
After a short ride in a huge pickup truck we arrived at a small and seemingly deserted harbour. It was freezing cold, and rain drizzled down upon us, which did not make us feel any warmer. It was a Thursday afternoon in early June 2019. Although it was almost summer, it was hard to recognizeContinue reading “The full-body NO”
Time will tell
The start of my postdoc position at TUM was not really as I had expected it to be. Most postdoc positions that I was aware of at the time were project positions. In such positions the goals were usually quite clear and I thought that this was somewhat similar to what I was walking into.Continue reading “Time will tell”
The price we pay?
The long-distance relationship format sucks in almost all types of relationships, except academic/professional relationships. Yet, it seems to have become an unwritten rule that if you want to make it in academia, you have to move around, and preferably abroad. What kind of fucked up rule is this, really? When I finished my PhD, IContinue reading “The price we pay?”
Robin Heinen 