Taking care of my future!

Tuesday, 12 January 2010 16:18

As a young girl of twelve, in 1992 I came to the Netherlands from my home land Bosnia with my parents and sister. It was easy to get adapted to the Dutch (and Frisian!) society since people here are very generous and helpful. After finishing my high school in Friesland and almost being able to speak Frisian, I decided it was time to move at least a little a bit abroad to the dynamic city of Groningen to study Medical Biology at the University of Groningen.

After receiving my Master’s Degree in Medical Biology, I pursued my career at the University Medical Center Groningen as a PhD-student at the Department of Pediatric Gastroenterology. My project focuses on the Treatment of Cholestasis-induced failure to thrive (CIFTT) and essential fatty acid deficiency via improvement of the intestinal function in rodent and in vitro models. At this moment I am in the very last stage of my PhD study, which is a very exciting and unique period in my life. Several serious decisions are to be taken concerning my future career and finishing and defending my thesis. I realized already at the beginning of my PhD project that research is my big passion and that I would like to pursue my career in the academic world. It seems to me as a very exciting and challenging step to move abroad for some time to work and live in another country. Few months ago I have contacted (by email!) two highly recognized professors in the USA which I would like to work for as a post doc. They both invited me to visit their lab and to present my recent work there in order to see if there is a possibility for me to work there as a post doc. At this moment I am planning my trip to the USA where I will have these two job interviews at the University of Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. In my future blogs I will share my experience, excitement, but also difficulties and troubles of my post doc search abroad. Hopefully, this will help other PhD students planning their future academic career step abroad to share and learn from my experiences.

One of the very first steps in planning my future career was attending the PCDI last month. The reason I attended the PCDI was to gain more information on how to discover and increase my own competences. Furthermore, I was interested in what the possibilities are for PhD’s outside the academia. The most important thing I learned was not what the next step is in my career (since I already knew that before the PCDI), but more importantly how to increase and optimize my chances to make these next career steps more efficient and more successful. I was surprised about the possibilities for post docs outside the academic world; it is nice to see that there is so much more and that there are some very interesting jobs which still involve performing research but in different surroundings than the academia. I was very fond of the little red book entitled: “I am taking care of my future! – my personal action plan-“. This helped me to become aware of what I think is important for me, what my competences are and how I can combine these two in order to reach my future goals. Last but not least, I got to meet new people with the same ideas and in the similar position as I am at the moment. It was really nice to share ideas with them during workshops and walks in the forrest, but also to enjoy each others singing and dancing talents during our Karaoke night! My first plan of action involves finishing my PhD on time, arranging my post doc position and organizing my departure to the USA.

If you are interested in my experience and planning of my post doc abroad, or if you have any ideas, suggestions or thoughts which you would like to share with me, please stay posted via this webblog on PCDI site.