So, in my previous blogpost I shared with you some ways in which I cope with time.  And this blogpost will go further on it. For, it has turned out, that even with my ‘assistants’ (OneNote and Wunderlist) some things are still very hard to do exactly as planned/required/wanted.

At the moment I am still writing my first paper and some weeks it seems, I cannot write a word at all! It doesn’t have anything to do with not knowing what to write, but with:

1. Not having time to write, or even
2. Being ‘scared’ to write (yeah, you read well, scared, as in frightened, terrified)
   

No time? And what about planning….?

Yeah, I know, last time I said that time can be made… Read more

Doing your Phd means doing a research project for a number of years. These number of years are usually fixed. As a Phd candidate, you are supposed to start at a certain date and also to finish at a certain date. You sign a contract…it’s an official thing.

Supervisors monitor your progress and colleagues ask in which year you are or for how long you still have to continue.

If only it was that simple….

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When I raised a topic like this, I’m quite aware of your disappointment. It doesn’t make any sense at all  to work on a paper that is intended to be thrown away. In fact, I’m on my way as you are to get my articles published instead of getting them rejected. However, after being rejected several times by several different journals and with different articles, I realized my potential to do it the other way. For some people, getting their articles published is a piece of waffle; for me, getting articles rejected is easier than preparing a herring. I was thinking that perhaps sharing the experience with you can help you to reflect your own experience if you have the unexpected experience of being rejected, or your own plan if you are planning to submit your article to a journal, and re-evaluate your own potential: whether you want to do it this way, or the other way?

I’m not alone in talking about how to get articles rejected. Some editors also did that. With exceptional expertise of themselves and profound sympathy to the authors of rejected articles, they got their articles on how to be rejected PUBLISHED on peer-reviewed journals. Personally, I do not recommend you to read these articles, because if you truly want to get your articles rejected, with their exhaustive advices (including very smart ones like “don’t put your photos in the paper,” which I should try next time), you might end up with your articles PUBLISHED. And that’s for sure.

Here’re my tips to get your article successfully REJECTED, seriously: Read more

As I only now, after more than a year doing my PhD, start blogging, I thought this topic would be the best way to get you a bit up-to-date on what I do and how I do it…

My PhD started in August 2013 and I went head first into it, immediately. The project at the school started running and I had to start up my research directly in order to track everything that was going on. Starting my PhD with taking my time reading, thinking what ways to go, sorting out my materials etc. was not applicable to me. For me, this meant instant decision-making. Later, timeslots opened up

to contemplate what I had been doing the past time, how it went, and how it all relates to what I want to and will be doing.

‘Somewhere in your career, your work changes. It becomes less anal, less careful and more spontaneous, more to do with the information that your soul carries.’
Ben Kingsley

But I had to do it the other way around!

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