Last but not least: Winter School in Ratzeburg
From Febuary 4-6 our early career scientists met in Ratzeburg for our annual Winter School. This was the last winter school for this phase.
The first day of our Winter School was dedicated to science. We started with a Q&A session about the science done in the project. The PIs, Postdocs and PhDs tried to answer questions people never dared to ask, like "What is baroklin or barotrop?". The questions were collected anonymously beforehand using a online survey tool. During the session, we used the online tool Mentimeter so that the participants could continue to ask follow up questions anonymously. The feedback for this session was highly positive and clarified some terms and processes. Because of this feedback, we plan on including these kind of session more often.
After the Q&A, our PhDs and Postdocs chosen do present their work during the review had their first practice round. We all learned that 5-minute presentations are much harder than you would think, because you have to break down the science a lot. Nevertheless, with a little bit more practice we are sure to have a successful review in March.
On the next two days, our PhDs and Postdocs had two workshop days on "Scientific Writing" and "Getting the message across with graphs" held by Jean-luc Doumont. As the last time during the retreat, Jean-luc inspired everyone to question old habits and think outside the box. The key message was scientific writing and graphs have to be clear, concise and accurate and if you can write a good abstract, you can write anything. We are looking forward to working with Jean-luc again, if our proposal is approved in May.
Being our last Winter School with these PhDs and Postdocs, it did get sentimental at some point. We are looking back at four years of great work and times with our TRR 181 family. We hope for everyone to find new and interesting ways and that we can stay in touch even after they leave the project.
