PhD students: know your public holidays, for a good start into 2021
For Happy PhD Students in 2021: write down your public holidays into your calendar now, avoid unnecessary frustrations and keep a healthy work/life balance!
For Happy PhD Students in 2021: write down your public holidays into your calendar now, avoid unnecessary frustrations and keep a healthy work/life balance!
CUSO interview-video series “Doing a PhD… And then what?” with tips for PhD students: here I am talking about overcoming isolation and about soft skills!
For finishing-PhD students and Early Career Researchers in Switzerland, a resource of websites for non-academic and academic jobs, in CH and also EU.
Check what’s still available in Switzerland, then turn to Online Self-Assessing Tools and more Online Career Resources for PhD students and other Early Career Researchers
Shut Up & Write events in Geneva, Lausanne, Fribourg, Bern and more! Write on your PhD thesis or science paper with other people and good coffee :) read more here…
Studies show that career perceptions influence PhD students mental health. The inside vs outside academia debate doesn’t matter. What matters is to inform about both.
Cheeky Scientist, Career Blog from the EMBL, EURAXESS, Research Identity, Beyond the Professoriate => resources, webinars, communities, for your career considerations
To answer your career questions about funding in Switzerland, get to know about the grant office in your uni, the Euresearch, the SNF, the myScience.ch website.
First some words about unemployment (ORP/RAV), then about the BNF program which has “20 years of experience in supporting academics” at “career crossroads” !
In Suisse Romande: the REGARD program and a mentoring program. For ETH: the Fix the Leaky Pipeline program. More programs in Bern, Basel, Lausanne. From Equality Offices.
Career Services for PhD students and postdocs in: Uni Basel, Uni Bern, Uni Fribourg, Uni Geneva, Uni Lausanne, EPFL, Uni Luzern, Uni Neuchatel, Uni St Gallen, Uni Zurich, ETHZ
A list of websites to help you identify your own skills, interests and values. For PhD students and other ECR. myIDP, ImaginePhD, RDF Planner, myDocPro
What is the mental health crisis everyone talks about in academia?
The taboo around this subject is so strong, but awareness is already increasing :)
Tips, hashtags and people to follow about the PhD experience and academia on Twitter, selecting relevant social media materials for PhD students!
A resource of graduate centers, career centers and transferable skills (soft skills) programs for PhD students and postdocs in the main cities of Switzerland
The Centre Did@cTIC of UniFr offers professional coaching training to its PhD students, with group and individual coaching sessions, in English, for free!
Create your secure password database using KeePassXC, a free password manager software; get started with these 8 simple steps illustrated with screenshots!
A resource of people and hashtags about the PhD experience and academia to follow on Instagram, selecting relevant social media materials for PhD students
Many students are sharing their ups and downs in academia; here I’m making resources selecting materials relevant to the PhD experience, starting with YouTube!
Here a detailed technique for group brainstorming, a powerful team-building tool which can also teach us a lot about improving normal lab meetings in academia
don’t receive Pubmed alerts in your already-full-email-inbox while you’re having a crazy rushed day, get it in Evernote and process it at your own pace :)
in this post I highlight the points which strike me the most in the review, points which strongly resonate with my own PhD experience in Switzerland
Project management is about supervisors and students finding a way to work together. Find here a selection of interesting blog posts and free templates.
Gantt charts are a highly visual and attractive medium to foster project management discussions. Download for free my Excel file and make your own timeline
Clarifying PhD expectations with this checklist of questions to ask if you’re a PhD student, or points to discuss with your student if you’re a supervisor
f.lux, Red Moon, glasses, Blink, 20-20-20 rule; easy-to-implement solutions for computers, for phones, for watching movies at night and to reduce eyes strain
Yes, but there are some drawbacks. Use it to visualize your whole PhD or to plan the next 2 months. Stay flexible and realistic, adjust a Gantt chart with time.
Plan only 60% of the week and clarify what you truly “need to have” done versus the “nice to have”. Tips in time and project management
To plan for the different steps of writing, submitting and defending a thesis. The big difference comes when you to take the time to write it down, visualize it
Finally being able to visualize my graduation and to apply true project management techniques helped me feeling so much better. Supervisors and students need to clarify their long-term expectations
an EMBO survey where senior scientists were asked to rate which soft skills they think are more important for their PhD students, and which ones they rate as more important for themselves
it is only by welcoming direct discussions about soft skills within institutes and with all academics’ levels that new PhD students can find the training and mental support they need
as a new PhD student, I lacked the academic jargon to look for training programs which could have helped me. Use this article to open up the discussion around you.
You can’t know for sure what is best, but it’s OK, we’re all in the same mess. It’s like an experiment for yourself, it will help no matter what life brings you
Create your Skills Portfolio for when it will be time to apply for the next position, and to remember all the shitty stuff which happened to you in academia
What I’m going to do with my life??
Looking at our soft skills is a good way to start: self-awareness to boost our self-confidence
Find here an all-in-1-page PDF version to print. We get enough frustration from academia, let’s try to enjoy the tool that we use the most.
A story on the lack of communication from my university about the mental health support services that it already has and which a PhD students highly needed
I didn’t even need to draw all my supervisor’s professional connections to realize that I was just one other tiny line for him. Was that depressing? …
Evans et al., 2018 “Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education”
My doctoral program provided me with moral support and work organization skills