As many universities do, Uppsala University offers to its PhD students the possibility to include some courses into their study plan, but it also requires some mandatory courses as well to be included in it. The courses vary from department to department and, in my case, there were three of them. To be more precise, I had to take an: ethic, biostatistics and a scientific presentations course.
To be honest, I started this mandatory process thinking if that was really necessary since we all went through a really hard PhD selection and also a MSc and BSc studies in which we have already demonstrated our knowledge and skills (in my case also in the course contents). So, to put it bluntly, I was not very thrilled at the idea, but of course I understand the thought behind it and objectively speaking these are really important and necessary things to know, so it makes sense that a great institution such as Uppsala University want to be sure that its students are very well acquainted with these arguments. We are talking about standards here, and for sure it is good to have them both in science and in other fields.
But, when I really started, since the very first lessons of the first course, I truly understood that I was wrong. Of course, they were talking about things that I already know, but they were also putting us in the right state of mind and disposition to confront possible problems that we could find in our future career. Now I have finally took all three courses and I really can say that I was definitely enriched by them. I am with a much wider network, knowledge and understandings. So, I guess that the morale here is, never get something for granted even if you think that you know everything about it. Sometimes another perspective can give you the insights that you were searching for, especially in science.
This article was written by Niccoló De Berardinis as part of an ongoing series of scientific communications written and curated by BioTrib’s Early Stage Researchers.
Niccoló is researching Bioimaging of biomaterials and biological characterization of 3D-printed alloys for reconstructive surgery at Uppsala University, Sweden.