I knew when I started this process that it would be hard, and last week I had my first official meltdown about my PhD. It wasn’t exactly nice but I’m not too worried about it either: I guess it’s part of the deal.
Category: Academics
Last month I officially started my PhD at the university of Amsterdam and I got a really warm welcome.
While everyone is suddenly working from home instead of the office, my days are not that different at the moment than before the coronacrisis. In January I quit my job to be able to focus on my academic career and one of the things I’ve been working on since then is my first publication.
In January was my last day at my job. In November I gave them my two months’ notice as I was getting more and more academic opportunities and I was not able anymore to combine them with my job.
Some academic texts seem extremely difficult, almost like they’re not meant to be understood. But I notice I get defensive when people talk about it that way.
The first step towards getting a PhD-position is writing a research proposal. I was a bit nervous to start this because I haven’t done a research master. In the Netherlands, you can do either a normal master or a research master, where the latter prepares you for academic research and you learn valuable skills like … Continue reading On writing a research proposal
After two years of hard work, my thesis is finally done. I submitted it, got my grade back (8,3/10!) and once I’ve had the ceremony I can officially call myself Master of Arts.
Now that my thesis is finally submitted, let me tell you a bit more about it.
A little while ago, I visited my first academic conference, the Colloquium vir Afrikaans in Gent. The university of Gent does quite a lot with Afrikaans literature and linguistics and every year they organise a conference. As it is free for students, I thought I would give it a try.
As some of my readers might have noticed, I’m currently specialising in South African literature – Afrikaans literature, to be more precise. I myself am Dutch, and had never set a foot in South Africa until three months ago. It is kind of weird to specialise in a literature that I’m so uncommon with and it has its own specific challenges.
