What is the mental health crisis in academia?
What is the mental health crisis everyone talks about in academia?
The taboo around this subject is so strong, but awareness is already increasing :)
Twitter @ and # for PhD Students – Resource
Tips, hashtags and people to follow about the PhD experience and academia on Twitter, selecting relevant social media materials for PhD students!
Graduate Centers, Career Centers and Soft Skills Programs for PhD students and Postdocs in Swiss Universities – Resource
A resource of graduate centers, career centers and transferable skills (soft skills) programs for PhD students and postdocs in the main cities of Switzerland
Coaching program for PhD Students in Fribourg (CH)
The Centre Did@cTIC of UniFr offers professional coaching training to its PhD students, with group and individual coaching sessions, in English, for free!
Introduction to KeePassXC Password Manager
Create your secure password database using KeePassXC, a free password manager software; get started with these 8 simple steps illustrated with screenshots!
Instagram # and @ for PhD students – Resource
A resource of people and hashtags about the PhD experience and academia to follow on Instagram, selecting relevant social media materials for PhD students
YouTube Channels and Videos for PhD Students – Resource
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!
Effective brainstorming skills for academic lab meetings
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
Use Evernote email to sign up to Pubmed alerts and other newsletters
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 :)
Highlights of a review about the PhD experience (Sverdlik et al., 2018)
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 resource for PhD students and supervisors
Project management is about supervisors and students finding a way to work together. Find here a selection of interesting blog posts and free templates.
Guidelines to draw a timeline of your PhD
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
Checklist to clarify supervisor and PhD student expectations
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
Protect your eyes from screens’ light
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
Are Gantt charts useful for PhD students?
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.
Let’s try to plan a realistic To-Do list for the week
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
How to use retro-planning to plan your PhD graduation
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
How project management can help reducing PhD students’ anxieties
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
Do senior scientists acknowledge the importance of early soft skills training for their PhD students?
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
Lack of communication about soft skills training programs in academia
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
Where can I find soft skills training in academia?
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.
How to know which soft skills training is best for my career?
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
Academics: you already have more soft skills than you think and you can prove it
create your skills portfolio for when it will be time to apply for the next position, and to remember all the shitty stuff that happen to you in academia
What are soft skills for academics ?
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
Mac Keyboard Shortcuts
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.
Who Can I Talk To?
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
Managing professional relationships
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? …
How a doctoral program saved my PhD
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
