- Send effective emails - Reading emails is too often perceived as a chore. Yet, sometimes you receive the perfect email—I don’t mean the one saying you won to the lottery and must send 50€ to receive your prize. You feel this email is effective and directly actionnable. The main problem with emails is their daily amount (300 billions a …
- Fat outline: put some meat on the backbone of your research - You want to convey your next idea to the world—or your supervisor—but you are lost on the most effective way. Very often, you would fall back to sending a rough table of content—the backbone of your research. Unfortunately, this backbone does not completely convey the motivation of the research, the logic you follow, and is …
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- Ready to try Agile for research?
Join our upcoming study - Agile methodology has revolutionised project management in industry: but what is its potential for academia? We've joined forces with Laura Pirro and are looking for professors and students willing to try Agile for research. Learn all the details in our new post! - Anthropomorphism or the art
of humanising nonhuman subjects - By trying to be objective in academic writing, we sometimes attribute human actions to objects that cannot undertake them, like articles, reviews or experiments. Learn more about anthropomorphism and how to avoid it in this post. - Passive voice in scientific writing: angel or devil? - Should passive voice be used or avoided in scientific writing?
- What if your PhD didn’t need to feel as long and tiring as a marathon? - In many ways, pursuing a PhD resembles running a marathon: long distance, loneliness and fatigue are seemingly insurmountable obstacles and nobody can hope to reach the end without adequate training. It might be difficult to remove fatigue from the picture; however, something could be improved concerning the other two ‘painful’ elements of this process: all you need to do is split up your marathon into a series of shorter-distance sprints and share the challenge with a team of running partners.
- Succeeding at your scholarship interview:
Advice from Prof. Alessandro Parente - We interview Alessandro Parente, Professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and frequent member of juries for the FRIA and FNRS fellowships. He talked with us about his experience as a jury member, and he gave us some precious tips for students preparing for such scholarships. - Is your supervisor your best opponent? - One of my favorite time of the day, is when I discuss (read argue) with the PhD students I advise. This post includes a simple technique to challenge your advisor.
- I wish I knew about these books when I started my PhD - This post collects all the books I wish I knew about when I started my PhD. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have found one that is not in this list.
- Do you have problems communicating or meeting with your supervisor? - Get in touch with your supervisor as efficiently as possible.