Feedback area

Just type here what you think could be of interest for other diploma, bachelor, master or/and PhD students.

-- UweScholz - 10 Feb 2012

Some notes for a feedback:

• Program of HGS-HIRe seems to be waste of time at the first moment, because it takes time during which you can not work for your thesis. This is only true for the first moment; I took part in two lecture weeks, one of them not really related to my field. And I have to say, that this lecture week opend my horizon somehow. At GSI the the risk to become a "Fachidiot" is quiet big, because of lacking contact to other students. The lecture weeks gave me the opportunity to get in touch with other students. I realized, that all others have almost the same problems (wich are well summarized in phd-comics).
• Later you will hardly get the possibility to attend to a comparable event: Learning sth new for free.
• As said before, the missing contact to other students at university produces some kind of isolation.
• And it is still important to look to the right and the left and to other fields of research. I recommand e.g. to visit the Kolloquium, not only to keep trained attending a lecture.
• The advisors should also somehow learn, that this is no waste of time.
• The start is hard, it's good to have someone, who takes oneself "at the hand" and gives hints about what is important. Usually this is another PhD-student in the group.
• Generally I have the impression, that the mentoring at GSI is somehow less pronounced as at the university. During my diploma-thesis and also during my PhD-thesis I had the impression, it could be better. But could also be worse... It strongly depends on who you get as advisor and who you learn to know.
• Maybe the most important thing is to learn who one has to ask for which kind of problem.

I will return and reformulate these notes some day...

-- LarsBozyk - 28 Mar 2012