sending a report to one of the supervisors and getting as only response: "wow, that is a lot of text" .....

officially i have about 43 holidays this year + the days i didnt take last year (don't ask me why - strange dutch laws). anyway, i doubt that i can take more than 20, otherwise i would feel far too guilty. besides, the pay is not great, so going to some cool place for 6 weeks is out of the question anyway.

but i will just take days of in summer and sit by the pool and work - that is as far as it goes. maybe someone else has some suggestions how to lighten work up during the summer? do you go camping with your literature review or something? i am still looking for something nice to do that combines work and relaxation :)

i am using JabRef - simple but effective and importing to WinEdt or Kile is only a click of a button away

oh yeah, and it is free

thanks for the encouraging words - i feel a little better today and am already knee deep in literature to check if other people came across similar issues at some point.
i can foresee lots of pots of tea and tons of pdfs in my near future ;)

Hi guys,

i am in my second year of the phd, finally got a research plan together (which everyone i showed it to signed off) and last month started very motivated into experimental work. There was a paper deadline last midnight which i was confident i have some results but it turns out that THE one assumption all my work is built upon is false :( not just off, but completely false (either that or i am too stupid to conduct experiments). I am totally blown through the wind right now, think about quitting the whole PhD business and just get a regular job :(
Anybody any thoughts how i can get out of the deep hole of depression?

greetz

i LOVE stroopwaffels!!!! probably the only dutch food i am really crazy about. could eat them all day - unfortunately that would mean twice a day to the gym so i try to restrain myself

i actually find it a bit hard to get to know the Dutch people closer. we have many people here i chat with, but after work they all depart and we never do anything together. somewhat sad.

i guess it depends a lot on the country. in the UK i know people who got near-fails, ie. major rewrites without any beforehand warning. here in the netherlands where i do my phd, once you are given the green light for the viva you know that you cannot fail anymore. the viva itself is just a kind of weird historic play (with funny sayings like "Your honorable opponent, many thanks for your question").

those chocolate sprinkles just exist to annoy foreigners - normal people use chocolate spread. why on earth would you want to use sprinkles .... the only use of that stuff i can think of is when you get a baby. apparently tradition has it that you eat blue hagelslaag when it is a boy and pink hagelslaag when it is a girl....

but to come back to the chocolate topic: i managed to restock my stock in germany :D

working today :(
invited for a dinner this evening. that basically sums up another boring weekend for me. i wish, i'd meet more people here in this strange country to party *sigh*

was it on your university computer? if so, your IT department should have a backup of - say the day before - just ask them. if it was on your private machine you can always do a rollback if you use windows. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt ...

good luck!

i am also going for JabRef - little tool, easy to import and export, runs everywhere, user-friendly and open-source so i can program my very own add-ons

hi marbeaux,

i am one of the view people who try to make a living in the east of Holland - Enschede.
i have to admit, i havent made it to rotterdam so far, but the winter here is kind of depressing, visiting other cities while it is pouring down on me is not really fun ;)

mh, so you like the weather - what did you do in your spare time then during that period of the year. over here, from november onwards the town falls dead-quiet, not much going on.

hi and welcome :)

where in germany are you sitting?
btw i am another one of those science-phd-people!

sorry for replying late - the stupid cable company switched off my internet at home so i have to do my surfing in the lab :D

juno you are indeed right, the Dutch LOVE fried stuff - they have those strange walls with little compartments where you throw in a coin and then you can take out the chips, the deep fried mashed up meatballs or the deep fried mashed up sausages ..... similar to Scotland, healthy food is just so much more expensive than junk food. On the other hand, Holland is a biking country and it is quite hard to swell up to 300 pounds when you have to cycle for an hour everyday (not to mention that it is quite hard to get onto the bike in the first place ...)

@juno
where in scotland are you stationed? i was in glasgow and cannot really say that the people were some sort of slim there .... maybe i just looked into the wrong corner ;)

i just found a nice recipe for a goot hot chocolate: baileys + milk + honey + 70% dark chocolate :D