THE THESIS STORY : Publish or perish

The publication pressure is a common acquiantance of all researchers. Publish or perish is the right expression for describing it. During the PhD pathway, one has to wirte original reserach articles, that will later become chapter of the THESIS. But it is not so simple. Papers are often rejected. It is normally nothing personal but the competition for space in high quality journals is astonishing. However, the individual, in this case a PhD researcher just feels like all the work and effort involved in the preparation of the document was simply worth of nothing. This is not true, and the search of other journal starts, with the same cycle: submit, wait for months to get an answer, in the best case scenario, revise the manuscript including the wise comments of the reviewers, re-submit and again wait for other couple of months until the final decision comes.

Again, my friend David Geertsma interpreted very well in his particular style, the feelings of someone in this cycle of submission-waiting-rejection-resubmission-and so on, that may affect even the self worth of this strange subject called PhD researcher!

Armando

Flemish Vineyard Day 11.06.2006

Last week three Christian churches held a joint service and spent the day together in Deinze. It is in fact a part of my church's process of integration into the Vineyard network of churches. The weather as you can see was simply great, and I believe everyone enjoyed.



Worship was led by Bart van Hyfte, with musicians from all the three churches.



The word, on God's Father Heart was brought by Jo Cools, the pastor of the Antwerpen Vineyard Church. Later on, he and Eddy De Pauw shared their experiences on how to make practical the vineyard values.



I have to say that it was a good day, and a blessing to meet each other.

Armando

THE THESIS STORY

A PhD thesis has always a starting point. It is the final result of several years of working hard, writing papers, getting them rejected, correcting them, getting them published, and starting the cycle again. But the end point is to put all of them together in order to make something that makes sense for the reviewers and the PhD committee. Some time ago, my prof Patrick Kolsteren came to my office saying "Armando, I think it is the time for you to start writing the thesis". My friend David Gertsma
interpreted very well my feelings in the drawing! Thanks a lot David!.

Last week I finalised the missing chapters, but again, the wise comments of my promoter are making me to feel like at the beginning ... lots to put in order.

Armando

Recent Article

The March's issue of the British Journal of Nutrition published one of my articles, which is a key part of my doctoral thesis. It shows the feasibility of using household survey's data for nutritional surveillance in Bolivia, identifying the social differences in food availability within the country and comparing these levels with other countries.

The article was made avialable at the site of the Research Group Food Chemistry and Human Nutrition of the University of Ghent.

Enjoy reading it!

Armando