3e uitgave 2011 Life in Maastricht Doing research and having fun BY MALA GEORGE, KENYAN PHD-STUDENT I am a first year PhD student working in Ethiopia. My PhD research is about improving tuberculosis care in a resource constrained setting. I am also affiliated to CAPHRI School for Public Health and Primary Care, the department of general practice (HAG), Maastricht University. The beginning of my PhD research work was intimidating. I thought that undertaking a PhD research is a really serious issue! A thought of doing research and having fun was just incompatible. But my mentality was changed when I came to HAG in Maastricht. I found out that research can be done just for fun and not necessarily to touch the real world, spanning across the decades. For instance, in my Maastricht office, there was a poster with an abstract: 'The effect of beer ingestion on research ideas and sex appeal of one well-known primary care researcher; study protocol of a non-randomized, open label, totally uncontrolled study.' Reading through this abstract leaves one not only smiling, but also more aware of the importance of creating fun opportunities to make casual conversation out of one’s otherwise ‘serious research’. Thank you guys, now I can have fun with my PhD research. My first stage in preparation for research was just ideal at HAG. I learnt the importance of exploring the research idea, which gave me time for reflection and ‘reading around’ the subject. This presented the best chance of bringing my creativity on the project. Usually you do not get the chance to do this in settings in Africa. The issue is that, it is amazing how the Maastricht research supervision team stayed in close contact with me from the beginning, making sure that I am not overwhelmed with new experimental techniques to learn, instruments to master, theoretical frameworks and novel methodology to become familiar with. Putting in place their network of researchers from HAG to improve my skills and help me realize that at HAG there is no such thing as a researcher who ‘knows it all.’ It has always been a pleasure and moments of experience every time I come to HAG. I had a good opportunity to meet other PhD students with whom I have gained valuable insight on my issues. I learnt from their experience that as a researcher I have to take charge of my research work and professional skills development. Thank you all for willing to share some of your early experiences with me and I hope that you also gained valuable training even to supervise a junior colleague later in your career. Now I am going back to Africa with the confidence that ‘the usual’ citing of references is over as I begin ‘the best’ citing using Endnote and Mendeley. Besides, learning from you how I can do the best literature search as much as possible. Finally, the two months I spend here on my research is worth four months spent in Africa. Why? The working and learning culture at Department of general practice; is ideal for thinking’ time as well as ‘doing’ time. 17 op één lijn 41
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