MIND1

• Engels
• HBO
• Studiejaar 1

My journey to the PhD

What is your motivation to start a PhD?

How do you always keep your motivation high?

Supervisory team

• In the early stages, set regular meetings. 
• The more you are independent, the faster you find your ultimate goal
• In the meetings, ask for feedback 
• Give directs feedbacks

Skill development

• Doctoral education program
• Check what you need the most 

Grade your time management

Below 6

7

8

9

10

Time management

• Write down your mind
• Sort the tasks: Urgency-importance
• Make a plan (daily - weekly - quarterly) 
• Adjust the plan every week
• Repeat these steps

Dealing with problems/failures

• Don't take the problems to your home/vacation
• Nothing works on the first try
• Ambiguity is the nature of the research
• Write down what you did
• Write down how you can debug the problem
• Brainstorm
• Plan for debugging  

Mental health and wellbeing

• Try to balance work and life, especially in the long-term
• When is the best time to take a vacation? 
• Push yourself to care about your wellbeing
• Register for a gym 
• Stress management-->good planning-predict the problems

Why your work-life is not balanced?

Work-life balance

• Find the root of the problem
• Be more productive ---> time management
• Think long term - your goals and wellbeing
• Have your own hobby
• Have a community of healthy friends outside the university

Have you ever faced with non-constructive behavior? if so from who?

No, I don't

PIs

Technicians

Students

Interaction with others

• Collaboration
• If you deal with bullying behavior --> be direct - policy
• If you can not --> discuss it with the supervisor
• If the supervisor is the problem? be direct
• Rule of thumb: emails don't always work
• You need to follow the procedure that matters to you

Future path

• After mid-Ph.D., decide on what you want to do after the PhD
• Then, try to prepare yourself accordingly
• Career development courses 
• Networking
• Keep the documents and files from your PhD    

Documentation

• Take notes every day
• Sort the notes
• use ChatGPT to make your notes tidy
• if this is a protocol, make it super tidy
• Take notes on your DRC errors 

Writing your thesis

• Aree on the outline with the supervisory team
• Create a skeleton for every chapter
• Think about how you want to implement that section
• Write it down in your own words (try to make the story)
• Premium ChatGPT (train it first --> check the writing for CC)
• Double-check with Grammarly 
• Ask the supervisors for chapter-by-chapter feedback