Why this course?

Working in an academic environment is challenging and sometimes stress-inducing due to many factors, such as the uncertainty of research results, time pressure and the nature of a high level and specialistic study. In order to pursue your goals despite all these circumstances, it is important to get to know yourself well and learn how to interact with your environment. The combination of your, talents and a well-developed personal skill set will allow you to remain motivated and positive, and as such creates the pathway to academic success.

This workshop helps you identify your basic motivation, stressful events, your responses to these, and your coping strategies. Developing your academic resilience will allow you to respond more effectively to change, setbacks, and unexpected events which are common in a research environment. One key component in developing your academic resilience is practicing mindfulness, which you will practice under guidance of a mindfulness trainer. In this workshop you will start developing your personal PhD tool kit in a small group (8 participants at most). This tool kit will help you navigate the challenging PhD journey. At the end of the workshop you will formulate a S.M.A.R.T goal and experiments to increase your resilience where you can work on in the weeks after the course in your daily (academic) live. We will discuss together the progress that you have made in achieving your goal in a two hours comeback session.

The trainers will help you understand what your talents and skills are, how you interact with the environment, how to recognize stressful events, and what coping strategies you can apply. He has been a PhD coach and trainer for many years and is eager to help PhD candidates navigate the PhD journey. Upon completion of this course, you will be able to: Identify your personal talents and skills, recognize your interaction with the environment, recognize the characteristics of stressful events and your reaction to them and implement coping strategies to navigate the challenging academic environment

Format

This course alternates theory and practices, including the following topics topics: 
•    Identifying stressful events
•    Getting to know your talents and personal skills
•    Your interaction with the environment
•    Coping strategies such as mindfulness