April 23, 2018
Free your writing
It has been nearly one month from when I started my doctoral thesis. The time went by so fast and I have to admit that looking upon the next three years makes me kind of nervous. So many problems and hard working is waiting in front of the door. I am ready for it, but I know I have to give it all. When I look at some of my fellow doctoral colleges, who are working their asses off (kind of day and night) to finish their degree, it does not seem to be appealing to me. Nevertheless, I have a great study area - a really interesting topic which is kind of wide-ranging but also narrow in his spatial extent. What is perfect is that I have the opportunity to start now and have all in all 3 1/2 years. I would like to catch every possible event which gives me the chance to develop myself, my views, and scientific thoughts. I admire persons who are looking at one problem and find the solution within in seconds. I have to really think it through, turn the problem upside down and roll it around. Of course this is not true for every problem I have. Nevertheless, I would like to think faster, find better solutions and easier ways to get though a problem and solve it in the end.
To prepare myself I have bought a book which I would like to recommend. At this point I am not through reading to the end, but the fist pages pulled me in very much. It is called "Writing your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day" from Joan Bolker. She is writing about how we should structure our way of life and how the ability to write should be used in order to finish your degree. Starting with freewriting where you write about everything what is on your mind. It is like training - the continuous writing helps you to sort your thoughts - to keep the spinning problems in your head checked - and in the end you are able to write for a few hours (or maybe 15 minutes) with all your concentration. Especially for your thesis this technique is helpful in order to structure your outline or to give different part of your thoughts a playground. Sometimes thoughts are plopping into our mind a we forget them within seconds. When we write them down it is so much easier to bring them up again. Even so we produce a lot of written papers and a lot of different (and sometimes messy) garbage. But that is not important. We have the opportunity to pick the gems out of the trash. It is so important to write and she was able to show it to me. Now I am trying really hard to produce (even messy) staff about my area or about the thoughts I have (which are also messy). I will use this platform to publish a few of those. I want to create kind of a doctoral-life overview where I can go back and look for points where I have been motivated or where my motivation was quite low. I think it is helpful to see that one was able to get though those darker times and see the light and the end of the tunnel again. And to remind oneself that even when the motivation is bad, we have a writing blockade, or things we cannot control are controlling us, that we have the opportunity to find help, whether it is the college or the friend or the advisor. It is important to find help when we cannot get out of the swamp by our own force.
March 22, 2018
Write a catchy title...
In the description of this section - where everything is explained explicit to the even dumbest person - it´s said that you should now begin the "greatest blog". I´m somehow afraid of it, thinking about the word greatness and it´s meaning and if I´m able to be a really great blog maker. Nevertheless, I will start it anyway. Maybe not with the intention of making a "really great blog" but rather to give me, my family and whoever stumbles upon this website a highlighted glimpse of my life in the scientific world.
This is kind of a diary, formed for open-minded viewers, who have the possibility of joining me, my struggles, my achievements, my self-critics and inner-dialogs. Whoever is interested to follow me I´m welcoming you to be part of a journey through the wildness of Argentina, the bureaucracy maze of the university or just the every-day life of a young professional teacher.