Resources

Your Career Path

Many students reach out and ask how they should chart the course of their career and what it takes to be successful. This topic is very close to my heart, and I plan to create a dedicated resource with more detailed and curated guidance.

For now, I want to offer a brief answer: your strategic planning and your mindset are the most important assets on this journey. You want to learn how to create a roadmap for your journey but you also want to adopt a playful, flexible and persistent mindset to accomplish those goals. Below are a few books I recommend that support both.

Planning Your Career:

Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans for dSchool at Stanford

80,000 Hours: Find a fulfilling career that does good by Benjamin Todd, also a non-profit organization started from Oxford

Your Mindset:

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth, the Rosa Lee and Egbert Chang Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert, a best selling author

Your Execution:

Getting Things Done by David Allen, a personal productivity system, which can be implemented through free tools such as Asana and Toggl

How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices by Annie Duke, great actionable tools for better decision making

... and remember, yes, you can do it.

Introduction Email

Please see below a typical template that we encourage you to use for contacting the research groups. Always include your CV as it helps a lot. If there are additional instructions such as filling in the form, make sure that you also do this, as it helps a lot to keep track of applications. Please be succinct, as the number of emails is quite high. Please if there is no response, resend your email once per week. In busy weeks, it can take some time until all the requests are processed.

[Subject]

Prospective XXX [here fill in UG, MS or PhD student or postdoc]

It is of utmost important to have a specific subject line as it helps us to find emails in the mailbox.

[Your text]

Dear Prof. XXX

[First paragraph]

• Mention why you are contacting, i e interested in a PhD position.

• Mention what stage of training you are at and when your prospective starting date would be.

[Second paragraph]

• Explain why you are contacting us in terms of research interests and what research overlap there is. Please do your homework, check our website and check our publications.

• Mention what you would like to study if you are to join the group.

• Attach your CV.

• Make sure you fill in the google forms on the first page.

Best regards,

XXX