What can I do, to make How can I seek permanent Personalised Assessment Arrangements, rather than applying each year? helpful to others? I don't think that PAA is specific to my case. Many others at other universities probably face this dilemma too...
My university provides a mobile app connected to the learning management system, so that every time a professor uploads some teaching material, students get notified. I find it amazing that immediately after having uploaded something – a few seconds thereafter! – there are already several downloads.
@MassimoOrtolano This reminds me of the time when I uploaded the grades and critique for some final and thus crucial reports ten minutes before Germany won the football world cup …
That's mean! :-) Well, the other day, when the election ended, I was having dinner with friends and I was like.. should I try to have a look at the results or not?
Thank you for your detailed answer @Discretelizard. It has helped a lot. I am leaning towards dropping out for now. I heard London University International is starting a Computer Science distance learning degree in 2019. That gives me time to wrap this mess up and apply there.
@Belle-Sophie Good for you! I think this is a good thing to mention in the comments. I'm pretty sure that others like to know you're doing well. If you want anything from me at, don't hesitate to ask. "Vragen staat vrij", as we say.
@Belle-Sophie Also, I haven't explicitly mentioned this because you might disagree, but I do think the advice: "don't walk, run!" is well-placed here. Clearly, people have messed-up and don't want to take responsibility. It is best for you to simply leave respectfully.
@Discretelizard I'm starting to get that feeling. I am taking an online course in photography at Michigan State University and things are just so much better taken care of there, it's ridiculous.
Not to mention the smelly building we've been moved to, with no airconditioning or heating or windows that can open. Halfway the day students start reporting dizziness. At least the view is nice...
I don't know much about Dutch educational system. I only heard, in education exhibition and other place, Dutch PhD position is an employment with salary, but when I actually check PhD programs in Holland, I found that's not always the case. I found a PhD program states in their website that everyone emailing their profeesor to ask for PhD position should include in the email how they prepare to fund their PhD studies.
@CaptainBohemian Yes, it usually is basically a 'traineeship' with decent pay. In STEM, it usually is, at least. One caveat though: you are required to spent a certain percentage of your time of assisting with education: not too much, something like 10-20% IIRC. But of course, this may differ.
@Wrzlprmft Indeed. A statement often used to indicate uncertainty
@CaptainBohemian What often happens in STEM is that some company basically funds your PhD. This means you are solving some interesting problem at that company, which is pretty cool. In general, the 3 so-called 'technical universities' (Wageningen claims to be such a uni, but that is a lie) have pretty close connections with industry partners. The netherlands is really a knowledge (and logistics) economy
@CaptainBohemian Not necessarily. Note that in the 80's, companies (such as Philips) were very keen on funding 'fundamental research'. And who knows, perhaps the company thinks your fundamental stuff would be very useful to them. But in general, for research, Academia is the place to start.
my fields are of pure theoretical feature, like general relativity, quantum gravity, gauge field theory, etc. I have only seen universities or research institutes fund these.
The journal asked me to summarize my recently accepted paper in 100 characters for Twitter. Now I wonder whether I can express delay differential equation and Lyapunov exponent with emojis.
Among other courses, I'm teaching a (basic) matrix algebra course for 1st year university students (they are studying Economics, and the cursus leads them to management, finance, or econometrics in 3rd univ year).
As it's quite common in France, these notions are taught in a rather abstract way,...
The Ivory Tower
The Ivory Tower