2020 11 14
In this article, I will talk about the academic environment I am experiencing.
My experience represents only one of the universities in Germany. That's why I don't want to generalize. Also remember that I have just completed a month.
Since my first day at university in Jena, I have not come across anything that could put pressure on university and university staff. Ok, I know this is normal :) I just wanted to mention that I haven't :)
The information I got a year and a half ago was in this direction, you can go in and out of the university any time you want, the libraries are always open. Work whenever you want, rest whenever you want. This may be shocking at first to university members who are used to compulsory working hours. So nobody will tell when I will work or not? Fortunately, I had already created a system that could set its own clocks (as much as possible). I feel the comfort of being over planned here. Because everyone is planned. While working in Turkey, I had to continuously renew my plans according to the flow of unplanned people, because I'm a loyal person to the plans.
In Germany, the opposite is the case. Everyone is considered to be mature, so you determine the hours you research. This does not mean that nobody comes to the office during the day and does not work. Rather, everybody chooses to work during the day because it is the healthy choice. Around 19 in the evening, the streets are quiet and calm. So everybody rests.
You can imagine that when everyone has their own plan and when you want to meet a person, life is easy. You control your own hours, and no one intervenes to cause you to renew your plan. This is something that increases efficiency at a level so high.
Sometimes I am at the office at 8 in the morning, someone may have arrived before me. Sometimes I work until 20 o'clock, while I leave, someone else could be working. In a way, the institute is working non-stop. It should be like this, just like this.
There are things I want to do to improve myself both academically and personally. This is the first time I can see them together within the limits of wholeness and feasibility. However, this covid epidemic has gone too long. I can say that it slows down opportunities for me here. One of the most important parts of doing post-doc research is to expand your network of people. The best way to do this is to have face-to-face meetings. But I have to do some of my meetings online. Keeping the acquaintances online is insufficient to continue.
I discovered an event fund that the university is giving out for post-doc researchers and PhD students. It gives a certain amount of funding for each event. They want two people to apply together and one to be a post-doc researcher. I sent an e-mail to PhD and postdoc researchers I met at the office asking for their suggestions. 2 issues came to the fore. Friday next week is the application deadline. If we can prepare a good proposal text, we will apply and get funding for the event. You should see the replies to this type of email. Many people responded positively to the email and expressed their suggestions. They wrote down when and how they could contribute. In short, I don't need to make an extra effort to get people moving, they are already prepared and planned. This must be the working environment I am looking for.