Conferences are an important, and a fun, part of being a phd student. You get to showcase your research and make important connections. As an introvert, I enjoy conferences as you can often skip the small talk and get to discuss interesting issues with people who are interested in the same topics as you are. That is, if you get into the conference in the first place! Depending on conferences, the amount of competition or what they are looking for can vary. Remember, that conference acceptances or rejections do not make your value as a researcher. I try to remind myself of this as well, as I was rejected from…

The first year of my PhD was full of refining my research plan, rewriting most of it, and conducting interviews for my empirical article known as Article 2. I also started a systematic review known as Article 1. During the first half of 2024, it was sometimes a struggle to balance full-time work and a PhD. The systematic review that had started well was put on hiatus and the little focus I was able to have, was given to the empirical study. The highlight of the Spring was my first international conference in Madrid and my very first poster presentation. That week in Madrid gave me a lot of confidence…

Scientific writing can be a scary thing for a new PhD student, at least that was the case for me. I wrote my research plan for a couple of years and once I was accepted into the program, I mostly read and collected data during my first year. I did not write at all! I felt that I was never ready to start writing, instead I read one more article, and another one, and then ten more. This week I published a video on my YouTube channel about getting rid of my fear of writing. Watch the full video above or directly on YouTube, but here are my three takeaways:

I was listening to a webinar on English learning in Japan, and it was mentioned that many Japanese students might lack the motivation to study English or see themselves as English users in the future. It got me thinking about how language choice, and if it is a choice, affects second language learning motivation. My experiences choosing languages If I first take myself as an example, I have experience learning English, Swedish, German, Latin, Cantonese, and Mandarin. When it comes to English, is a compulsory subject in Finland and as a global language, there are many incentives to learn it. I never had to consider whether I was motivated to…