I like physical and mental challenges, and I like to surround myself with people. In addition to my outdoor activities, I enjoy hosting events like cooking for friends. I play games, and I’m quite competitive, haha. I like to learn new things – I’m currently studying Spanish. And I call my family and friends in Europe often. It’s not always easy to live on the other side of the planet. Unfortunately, I had to miss some happy and sad occasions of my friends and family, like weddings and funerals.
It was a fun and educational time. One thing that really stuck with me was the enthusiasm about unexpected results, and studying these in-depth. And of course the nice retreats and conferences with my NKI colleagues. The lab taught me a lot about the more bureaucratic, political side of science.
Certainly. It’s not all roses. One time something went wrong during a collaboration, and we lose nearly half of our blood samples. Terrible. And COVID-19 impacted our PhD students significantly. Luckily, I was able to analyze a lot of data from home and managed to continue my articles there. Unfortunately not everybody had entered that phase of the process, and that was difficult for me to see.
PhD students have a lot of options available to them at the NKI, as long as they talk to the right people. That’s why I recommend contacting lots of people outside your own department. And stand up for your rights, like the right to holidays. It’s not okay to get little to no time off. I joined the PhD student council. This is an awesome group of PhD students, and I am very proud of what the council has accomplished.
Haha, I’m not very good at that, no. I inherited that from my grandma, who still can’t sit still. Procrastination is not a part of my vocabulary. And seeing inequality or injustice really angers me. It’s very important to me that my work benefits society and that it challenges me as a person. When I was younger, my parents told me to do something fulfilling. Well, I get plenty of that here!