Who does not know those American graduation hats?  They are traditionally worn at the ceremony after successfully completing a degree or doctorate. Black and consisting of a flat, square board of stiff material to which a tassel is attached in the centre, these graduation hats are also known as mortarboards. Worn festively together with a […]

I went to Iceland this summer. You will tell me, it’s not very surprising for a volcanologist and her geologist partner. But we were actually planning to go to Norway which would not have been a boring destination.  We recently left the mountains and cliffs from southern France for the Baltic sea at Kiel, to […]

Working in academia can take you anywhere. How wonderful is that? The possibility to go to different places, meet different people, and study different things. It is addicting! And still… it can be a lonely job. The constant changing can bring not only new adventures but also new beginnings over and over again. Coming to […]

Humans love categorizing things. We need categories, so that when I say ‘chair’, you know I mean the thing I can sit on without having to say ‘the thing to sit on’ every single time. In movies and stories, we love to see ‘the bad guys’ beat up and ‘the good guys’ win. Seeing the […]

By the time this blog entry is published, I will have completed my first year as a doctoral candidate at GEOMAR. And what a year it was! As a university student I heard all the stories, I read all the memes and saw all the videos on #PhDLife. I thought I knew what I was […]