Ondrej Cernotik

Postdoctoral researcher

Postdoctoral researcher, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany

A new start: I am no longer just a student

Doing a PhD is a lot like climbing a mountain. As you start, all you see is the large pile of rock you have to climb and nothing else. The path is long and tiring and never leads to the top in a straight line.

The lessons I’ve learned by writing a dissertation

I’ve been slowly writing bits and pieces of my dissertation for well over a year. While that might seem like a long time, it was mostly half an hour every morning before going to work. Writing a dissertation, a half-hour at a time, is a long process; way longer than a year. And this whole process has helped me realize three things.