PhD student working on Metabolite Identification at Leiden University, TNO and the Netherlands Metabolomics Centre.
I post about my research, tips for PhD and graduate students, lifestyle design, and social media.
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I would like to share with you an example of the motivation letter for PhD jobs I have used in the past. I have sent plenty of motivation statements like this one when I was searching for a PhD project in Europe. It pays off to start from a good cover letter, like this one, [...]
I added a new cover letter template to my collection of free stuff. Download the Cover Letter Template For Journal Submission (.doc) or check it out at Google Docs (you can download in different formats). You might find it useful when you are submitting a scientific article and the journal requires a cover letter. In it [...]
PhD Motivation And The 4 Hour Workweek In this post I will describe how you can boost your PhD motivation by adapting the ideas presented in The 4-Hour Workweek book by Tim Ferriss. I have read this book and there are some gems in it that I belief could be used in any PhD project. Focusing on what [...]
In November 2011 I will be giving a series of talks in UK, more precisely, 23rd and 24th November in Cambridge and 25th in London. Please contact me if you are in the area and want to come by to one of the meetings, or want to join me for a pint (or more) of [...]
When I started writing my MSc thesis I was told many times to be careful with the English comma when enumerating items. Well, I have to admit that I didn’t quite understand what was all that about. Recently I found a crystal clear example of how to deal with commas. Furthermore, I discovered it [...]
Feeling like your Professor is like Gunnery Sergeant Hartman? Then these quotes might sound familiar. If you ladies leave my group, if you survive recruit training… you will be a weapon, you will be a minister of science, praying for research. But until that day you are pukes! You’re the lowest form of life [...]
I would like to share two examples of a reference letter. Download them here. You might find them useful when you apply to a conference and they want your professor to send a recommendation letter saying why you should attend it and why you should get a student bursary. If you want to write [...]
Very few people will tell you the following things before you start a PhD, and you are going to need them, oh boy you are going to need them. Being aware of what it really takes to accomplish a PhD will help you decide if you want so badly to start the journey. 1. Main [...]
During your PhD you will do lots of things that will seem useless. Time after, you will reach heights, that when looking back, you will realize that were reached thanks to a chain of useless actions. It’s what Steve Jobs called “connecting the dots”. You can only do it looking back. You have to [...]
(Photo: koalazymonkey) “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” This is Parkinson’s Law, one of the mental models used by Charles Munger and others. It comes to say: the amount of time you have to finish a task, is the amount of time you will use. So what is so special about it? [...]
(Photo: Bonolux) Dare to think big, because a paper in Nature makes you work harder than a paper for the neighborhood newspaper. Dare to approach a big name, because you need some godfathers in your network. Dare to say no, because it is your time, your project, your ideas.
At the end of your PhD, you are expected to be an expert in your narrow field. In fact, you should know more about your little field than your professor. On the other hand, your supervisor is expected to have the overview of a broader field where your project fits. What a professor is for [...]
