Time to concentrate on me :-) July 1, 2008

Today (1st of July) I am exactly half way through my three year PhD scholarship. That means it is time to really concentrate on me and my PhD project. It also means that I must learn the crucial gift of being able to say no.

Up until now, I feel like I have been much preoccupied with pleasing other people (e.g. students, journalists, colleagues, course participants, professionals, librarians or others who are interested in my research area) and although I like communicating my research results, giving interviews and public talks or being called on as an “expert” in different contexts, I must stop accepting all the invites to exciting activities and start being a bit more selfish in order to get my dissertation done in time.

Of course, it helps that I have now fulfilled all my teaching obligation here at the university. As a PhD student at The Department of Communication at Aalborg University I have to teach 600 hours during my three years of employment. At the end of this semester, I have fulfilled this obligation. Although I enjoy teaching and supervising students, not having to do that for the next year and a half will probably (hopefully) help me to concentrate more on my project and my interesting data.

Let the writing begin!
(And let’s hope I don’t suffer from P.Q.S.… 🙂)