The PhD: it’s a mindset

This post is a strange one. I’m precisely halfway through my PhD, so it’s a good opportunity to reflect, and remind myself of what I want academically in the next two years. As a PhD student, I’m often told: “BuT a PhD iS NoT a ReAl JoB”. Sure, unlike PhD students in continental Europe, I […]

Holiday Catch-up | Season 7 Episode 1

It’s officially back to school/uni/work time, one of my favourite parts of the year. In a few weeks I’ll be travelling back to Cambridge. This will be my SEVENTH year living there, and my third(!) year as a PhD student. Before season 7 of the blog gets started, this is what’s happened since last time… […]

2023 Summer update | Season 6 Finale

It’s been fairly quiet in Cambridge since the end of May week. It’s always a different place during the summer. I have been here since I came back from Sweden, except for a short day trip to Henley-on-Thames (to race the qualifiers of Henley Royal Regatta) With the rowing season over and without any meetings, […]

My Sixth Easter Term

Easter Term in Cambridge is always nice if you don’t have exams (edit:) AND it’s not 2020. This year, however, the weather wasn’t particularly pleasant at first, with some thunderstorm leading to river closures. Mandatory-rowing-paragraph With the Sun back up, I probably didn’t do much outside of rowing and base research. I somehow ended up […]

Spring news

I have been happily busy so far in 2023. academic updates The first paper of my PhD will be published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. It got accepted only a couple of days after I gave a (Flash) Talk about it at the Annual Symposium from Cambridge Infectious Diseases. Earlier this year, I also […]

2023

Part I: Looking backwards 2022 was a great year for me. It might have been the best year of my life so far. It was my first calendar year working solely on my PhD. I probably lived in Cambridge for more weeks than ever before. Beyond the UK and Spain, this year, I have been […]

Running the Helsinki half marathon

My (not-so-) daily writing this time features running. This post is about the most spontaneous thing I have ever done. As you will have guessed from the title, I ran the Helsinki Half Marathon a week ago (on the 20th of August). I wish I could tell you an inspiring story about why I decided […]

The (un)reasonable effectiveness of college rowing in cambridge

Today I am using rowing to get my daily writing practice in. I tried rowing only at the end of my 4th year at Cambridge, and I’ve been regular at it since my PhD started last October. To my greatest surprise, I love it. In undergrad, I used to wake up at 5am to study […]

Blogversary reflections

A quick post…on blogging and PhD Today marks five years since I launched the first post of this blog. There are very few activities I’ve kept doing in my life for this long, so I’m honestly surprised that I haven’t abandoned blogging yet. Moreover, despite what my blogging frequency might suggest, I don’t have any […]

Settling in. Finally.

It’s taken me almost 7 months of my PhD and 4.5 years in Cambridge, but (I think) I’ve finally reached a steady state.