It’s been almost a year since I started to blog alongside my PhD. I’m not sure whether I mentioned this a year ago, but my initial goal was to write something every week, which quickly deteriorated into writing something every month. With this post, I have been able to keep the latter promise up.
Although I had many moments of “oh, this is something I could write a post about!”, only few of them actually made their way from my thoughts into a digital version. The main reasons for this are, I think:
– too little practice: I really do find it difficult to write something that’s not directly about my research
– too little privacy: there are some issues I would not want to discuss online because my name is linked to my blog and I don’t want my opinions to always be “out there” somewhere. Many of the blogs I find very interesting (not just the ones that are linked on this page) are actually blogs that discuss such issues, and for 95%* these are anonymous.
* I initially wrote 95\% which amused me quite a lot.
– too little expertise: I like posts which contain advice on how to do something better, such as never worrying about poster transport again. The truth is, however, that there are not a lot of things I feel I’m more knowledgeable about than other researchers with blogs.
– too little information: I am, of course, knowledgeable about what I do on a daily basis (submitted this, got rejected for that). Of course, this is mostly relevant to me and not to readers in general. I am aware this is my blog and I can post whatever I like, but I am less motivated to spend time writing something that is not helpful to others. Also, I
What I recently realized is that I would have enjoyed to have more of these “progress” posts, just for myself. In my first attempt at blogging, I wrote about how I submitted my first paper and how a few months later, I got the email that started with, “We are pleased to inform you…”. Or about how I reviewed the paper for the first time, and it turned out to be horrible. It’s nice to remember how I felt then, what my goals were, and how I generally thought about research.
My advice (this is actually a helpful post!) if you are a PhD student: write your successes and disappointments down somewhere. Not necessarily in a blog. Maybe it’s even better if it’s not a blog, you might spend less time worrying about how to write it down, and who is going to read it. But sometime later, you will enjoy reading about these experiences, and what they tell you about your progress. Happy writing!