I came to Stanford in late October 2019 for a two-year appointment as a postdoc. But with four months to go, I’m already preparing to go home. This past year has been really different for a lot of people. Many have had the opportunity to… Read More »Preparing to go home
The US doesn’t have a lot of religious holidays, but it does have plenty of, let’s say, political (?) holidays. One of them just passed by – Martin Luther King Jr, or MLK day. Since this holiday happened to occur in the weekend this year,… Read More »Martin Luther King Jr – day
Today we´ve been in the US for one year. It´s been an eventful year and a not very eventful year, both at the same time. Obviously, we´ve had the pandemic going across the the globe in waves, and we´ve had riots and the politically induced… Read More »One year in the US
This week started off pretty bad, with a blackout for three hours (!) between Sunday and Monday. It was a very hot night – made worse by the lack of electricity (and working fans). And the following Labor day was also very hot – if… Read More »Is this what the apocalypse looks like?
We´ve had some very hot days in the past two weeks, with temperatures reaching more than 38 degrees in the middle of the day and afternoons. Many nights have also been “tropic” with temperatures up to 30 degrees, meaning that we get no respite from… Read More »Firenadoes and evacuation warnings
My first day working from home was 12 March. Today is the 10th August, which means I have been working from home for five months! Today we had some hand-over training that I had to attend and I was excited to leave the house and… Read More »1st day back in the lab
All staff at the university have to go trhough the sexual harassment prevention training once every two years. As I will only be at Stanford for two years it means I have to complete it once. As I got the e-mail I thought the training… Read More »Sexual harassment prevention training
This week I took a look at my calendar and realized that I´ve spent more than 100 days working from home. It feels like time has stood still this whole time, but when I look through my calendar and my journal I see that in… Read More »100 days at home
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… Read More »Backwards course design
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.… Read More »StrengthQuest
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… Read More »Professional and Academic Writing
I was curious about what makes a great blog, and I learned that good blogs with ardent followers have a niche. And so I thought “What is my niche?”. Is it being a postdoc? Being a foreigner in the US? Being in the privileged Stanford… Read More »What is my niche?
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… Read More »Teaching workshop
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… Read More »Creativity in Research
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… Read More »LinkedIn Learning for Stanford and SLAC employees
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… Read More »Two months in the USA
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.… Read More »Arriving at Stanford
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… Read More »Wallenberg Postdoc grant for research at Stanford University