It's hard to hide my excitement about this one. I got my grant application accepted! I will be starting an industrial PhD in collaboration with Laerdal Medical and the Technical University of Denmark. The response came after three months of waiting. Writing the application itself was a surprisingly daunting and time consuming process. I honestly don't understand how I could spend so much time looking at the same handful of documents to make sure that everything was just right.
I'm so grateful that the grant application ended up being accepted. It has been a long time coming as I have been thinking about the possibility of doing a PhD for about two years now. Feels a little crazy to put that into writing.
A key lesson from the writing process is how to approach collecting feedback. I wanted to make sure that the application was spot-on and thought that feedback would be crucial - and turns out that it was. It was difficult was setting aside my own ego and not take anything personally. The amount of feedback that we received caught me by surprise and was actually the biggest contributor of stress during the whole process. Lots of input at once, making it hard to sort through and deciding how we wanted to address the feedback.
I'm very excited to get started in September.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_and_the_Art_of_Motorcycle_Maintenance
What a read. It was slow and tough. Took me about a month to complete and I had to use a study guide just to make sure that I didn't drift off. It was worth the extra effort. Since reading it I have listened to podcasts and watched videos that discuss the book because I wanted more. Turns out that it's one of those books that a lot of people have on their bookshelves but haven't read fully. Good to know that I'm not alone in the struggle!
The topic of Quality that the book discusses have really stuck with me. The Classical and Romantic approach to technology is something that I recognise in my own life. I enjoy getting down into the nitty gritty and understanding how things work, i.e. the Classical approach. Lately my appreciation for the Romantic way of life have increased quite a bit. Enjoying things for what they are. Seeking out beauty in simple things. My interpretation is that Quality occurs when there is a balance between the Classical and Romantic approach.
It reminds me a lot of how Steve Jobs approached Apple's product development. That the tight integration of software and hardware could allow for beautiful and seemingly magical experiences.
Being done with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance I went to the local library. I didn't have a plan for what I wanted to pick up and just roamed around for a little bit. One of the stands with books selected by the library staff had this one, Skrivemaskinen, and I was first drawn in by the cover. Plants, flowers, butterflies covering an old typewriter. The tagline "A wildly growing book about exploring your creative side" also had me pretty hooked. Quickly Googling the book made me realize that it is published by Zetland, an online news media that I enjoy quite a lot. All of that made it an easy decision to give it a go.
It starts off with the author going on a wonderful ramble about how learning touch typing has been incredibly important to him. Both in his professional but also personal life. It was just what I needed after Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The idea of combining the romanticism of collecting your stream of consciousness for the purpose of seeing where the writing takes you, removing mental barriers, etc. allowed by a classical skill of being mechanically abled and trained to be highly performant with a computer keyboard.
I'll look forward to finish the book as it goes into other themes such as motivation, freedom and money.