This week I attended two courses for my Teaching Certificate. Both were about backwards course design. What is backwards course design? Well, it´s a student-centric way of designing your course. Instead of thinking about what to fill a lecture with, then figuring out how to assess the student´s knowledge, and…
It´s Friday evening and seriously warm in California. In southern Californa there is apparantly a heatwave generating record temperatures. But here we have days and night warmer than I´m used to in May. 30 degrees (Celcius) is around 15 degrees warmer than Stockholm right now. But although it´s warm, I´m…
We´ve had our first day of fasting here in California and although first days are usually quite ok, today was really difficult. It could be due to the warm weather that we´ve had this wekk, or it could be due to having two toddlers in the house. Or a combination…
After almost six months in the US, I still find that it´s difficult to find out what has happened in the country without getting a biased message. News channels here are all biased towards either the Republican or the Democrat political parties. The main Republican outlet is Fox News, the…
I attended a virtual seminar this week that was about understanding my own strengths. Most of us like to focus on our weaknesses to become better, but this seminar was about understanding what our best features are so we can use them to our advantage. The seminar will be held…
It´s been an odd couple of weeks, to say the least. The Corona Virus and Covid-19 are the new buzzwords and we are all acutely aware of it. This week several counties in California ordered a Shelter-in-Place order. Both Santa Clara, where Stanford is, and San Mateo, the county we…
Last week I attended a three-hour seminar in the Scientific Management Series where we learned about negotiation and negotiation styles. The basic point was that when negotiating it is possible for both parties to leave the table satisfied. If you communicate well you can both identify your needs and wants…
I´m attending a six-week course on how to write in Academia. The course is for postdocs that are non-native English speaker and it´s taught by a very funny guy, Dr. Kristopher Geda. The course is held every Tuesday 5 pm-7 pm and although it seems like most people would be…
I was thinking today about what my niche in the blogging sphere is. My Swedish blog has been alive and well for more than 10 years and I´ve gained a lot of readers there, but my English blog isn´t getting as much traction. It could be because of the sheer…
Another week, another learning opportunity! I have the possibility of obtaining a Teaching certificate through the Postdoctoral Office at Stanford. To obtain the certificate I need to attend a journal club, teach at least 20 hours, and participate in a teaching workshop. The workshop is held three times a year,…
I attended another postdoc workshop last Friday. It was called Creativity in Research and we learned to use our creativity to get unstuck, create collaborative projects, and design our research projects. The workshop started out with various games. One of them was to spontaneously draw a random person sitting in…
The new year has started and Stanford has been open for a week. During this week I´ve already managed to sign up for a course and various seminars. And set my learning goals on LinkedIn Learning. Did you know that Stanford and SLAC affiliates have unlimited free access to LinkedIn…
My family has been in the US for almost two months, and what have we learned so far? Everything is expensive Very early on, we learned how expensive things are in the Bay Area. Housing is ridiculously expensive, and we spend around half our income on our two-bedroom apartment. Still,…
After flying from Stockholm-Arlanda Airport early on Thursday morning via Munich we finally landed in San Fransisco International airport late at night, Pacific time. There, we had to queue for more than an hour to get through passport control before our youngest kids started screaming. This led to an officer…
Last winter I thought about doing my postdoc at Stanford University in California, USA. I applied to the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation for a two-year grant with the possibility of another two years back in Sweden. Now I am excited to learn that I was awarded the grant, which…
I ended my trial subscription on Pluralsight and decided not to renew it. I have to say that I was disappointed when the trial ended and this was the biggest reason for not going ahead and paying for a subscription. Why was I disappointed? Well, when you are about to…
Now that my development environment is set up I've started following the videos on Pluralsight. However, I don't know if it's my particular installation or if the videos haven't been updated, but I got a problem immediately with the first task. I just couldn't see the results of my coding.…
I want to properly learn JavaScript to improve my front-end developer skills. I've been using HTML and CSS for over a decade with my themes and my websites, but I feel like JavaScript is the missing piece of the puzzle. Nowadays there is no need to buy a book if…
Do you write scientific papers and want personalized assistance? Or do you want to know what the best practices are in scientific article writing? We offer several options, including courses, workshops, and one-to-one coaching. Go to our website to read more and sign up for online coaching, a course or…
My hubby bought me a new phone a couple of months ago while he was vacationing in Malaysia. It's a Samsung Galaxy Note Fan Edition (FE), which is basically a refurbished Samsung Galaxy Note 7. You remember the ones that used to be potentially explosive? (more…)
Although I was looking forward to the trip and determined to go through with it, I knew I would miss my children, and I worried that my youngest one, who was only 9 months old, would miss me as we had never been apart for very long before. On top…
Going for Hajj is a big thing, one of the biggest adventures in your life. For me, thinking back to where and when it began, it's getting difficult to remember. Although the process started almost a year ago (when we first started talking about making the trip), it finished just…
See u all in Malaysia!
Happy Eid al-Fitr 2013!