life the university and everything

29 January 2023

My PhD experience and #LeavingAcademia

If you follow me on Instagram or LinkedIn, you might already know that, since last week, I am officially a doctor (PhD)! And with that, my academic career comes to a close after almost 12 years at university. A good opportunity to reminisce about my experience in academia, and my reasons to not stay there. Bachelor’s and Master’s I started studying in 2011, after previously having worked as a web developer. Why did I leave my career as a web developer in the first place? Well, I wanted a new challenge, and since back then I used my lunch breaks […]

26 January 2018

When your Teaching is Successful

What a day in teaching! Today was the penultimate session of my Introduction to English Linguistics. Early during the session, I got a bit angry at one person who was talking on the phone, and asked them to please go outside if they must talk on the phone during my lecture. Shortly after, once I distributed the exercise handouts, that person plus five other people left the session. I’m not quite sure if it was because of my little rant or because the exercises were too hard… anyway, I thought it was rather funny, and I was pretty glad they […]

21 November 2015

Tutorial Time Management

I’m five weeks into the semester – and into being a tutor to students of English Studies. As you might recall, I was terribly nervous about this before the semester began. By now, I’m not that nervous anymore, but some of my doubts persist. In particular I’m having a bit of trouble with the time management of my tutorials, that is, figuring out how to fill the hour with meaningful content. So far, this has worked moderately okay-ish, depending on tutorial and topic. One of the tutorials I’m giving is on Academic Writing and Research. This tutorial is basically a […]

9 September 2015

The Upcoming Semester

Even though I’m still in the middle of the semester break, I’m becoming more and more nervous about the upcoming semester which starts on 19th October. It will be my last “real” semester at my university, since I only need to take three more classes to fulfill my curriculum. Out of these three, I will have to take one exam, which will be in the form of a presentation at a conference in February on front of about 20-50 people. For this conference, I will also have to take part in a project seminar which organizes the conference, making this […]

11 June 2013

16.145 kilometers: Australia

Three weeks from now, I will be on a plane. That plane will take me to the other end of the world, 16.145 kilometers away from where I’m sitting now: Brisbane, Australia. There, I will attend The University of Queensland for one semester as a Study Abroad guest student. I have chosen this university because it’s one of the five best universities in Australia. Naturally, I have also chosen it because of its location: I wanted to go to Australia because a stay of several months is the best possible opportunity to get to know this country. Since it takes […]

27 May 2013

This is what it’s like to study at a German university

Since 2011 I have been studying English and Linguistics at the local university here in Düsseldorf, Germany. Unlike the universities in the anglophone world, universities in my local state of North-Rhine Westphalia do not require students to pay tuition (merely a small fee for the free train ticket every semester, which currently is about 280€). Education is supposed to be free for everyone in Germany. German universities also don’t have a strict selection process in their applications – there is merely a regulation by average grade (something like GPA). Based on the intake of students in a particular degree program […]

19 October 2011

Back to school

I’m one and a half weeks into being a full-time student at the University of Düsseldorf, and by now the flood of information is gradually turning into an array of observations. I’m constantly torn between being both intimidated and unchallenged by the workload. Everyone who has caught a glimpse of my schedule has exclaimed “Wow, that’s A LOT of courses!”. For me it seems very little, considering that I’m very much used to a 9am to 6pm schedule every day. Now I only have two such days, with one day ending at 4pm and the other two at 2pm (AND […]

25 August 2011

Life Changing

It’s been a long, long time in the making and now it’s finally reality: from October onwards, I’m officially a full-time student! I don’t believe it either! I will be attempting a Bachelor’s Degree in English and Linguistics at the University of Düsseldorf. How and why? A few years ago a new law was introduced in Germany, which allows people with a completed vocational training (Ausbildung) plus three years of practical experience in that same job to either apply for university in the same field or to take an exam if they want to study a different field. This January […]