A few weeks ago I was in Germany. I arrived at the Frankfurt train station. I was in no rush so when I saw a big bookstore I went in. I love hanging out in bookstores. So it being a bookstore where most of the books would be in German wasn’t a deterrent. One book piqued my interest. It was titled “The devil lies in the detail”. I flipped through it, saw this chart:
So I bought the book. (Seems I can’t come back from an international trip without a book or two.) It’s a German book in German about English language. My German is not that good yet so I have to read it with dictionary but the first chapter is already hilarious. The author recounts a scene he overheard. A German lady in England asked at an ice-cream stand: “Can I please have two ice balls”. To which the seller replied: “My ice balls are not for sale, Ma’am!” If she had said “two scoops of ice-cream” it wouldn’t be such noteworthy conversation.
Anyways, this is an example of how I follow my curiosity. One thing will lead to another, and I am reading a book in German.
It is the same with this Personal PhD project. I don’t know where it is going to get me in 5 years, but I am convinced its gonna be some place awesome.
Already it has taken me places I didn’t plan for in the beginning. For example I explored how to visualize my progress on the curriculum (thanks Dominique for the suggestion!)
See here:
https://infogr.am/personal_
I picked infogr.am as its a startup I have heard a lot about (it is a Latvian startup). The result is best I could do with free version in half an hour. 🙂