another week goes by...
and it's already my third week here. well, at least labor week, as I arrived on a monday. I'm still working on my first project at TUDelft and it seems end of April will be a little bit optimistic. But looking at my timing here I'm not too afraid. The kilo-vector project is more about discussion than doing implementation so I can probably overlap the two projects a little. still so.. my goal is to have it finished asap
One of the more interesting things here is how the group at TUDelft is organized compared to my department in Barcelona. What I observed so far is that there is overall a much more tight integration between teachers/professors, phd students and master students. There are two factors for this: one is the personnel distribution. From the point of view of a phd student I observe that the students per room (SPR) ratio is much lower than in barcelona. Down there we have about 8-10 students per room. There are only a couple of these large rooms and they are quite separate (even in different buildings) so the relationship between students in different offices is quite small. Often weeks if not months pass before you meet a student in a different room. As a consequence relationship (and friendship) builds mostly within the same office. The SPR ratio here is around 3. The first consequence is that office space is much more silent and quite. You can actually get some work done most of the time! The second is that relationship builds more between people from different offices since there are not enough people in one office. The second reason why there is much higher integration between students and teachers are the department politics. Social events are of great importance here. And I mean that social events receive funding. For instance yesterday our group organized a karting event. Who went there were basically phd students and master students (in a future post I may include some pics of that). At upc-barcelona the interaction between master students and phd students is inexistent. Master students are located in a single room in one of the buildings and you never get in touch with them. Ok, this comparison is not very fair since master programs are likely more tied to the department in delft than in barcelona, where they are basically tied to a project that a professor proposes. It seems to me that here the department has overall a much higher overall responsibility with master students. The higher integration between students and teachers can also be seen at lunch, where we usually share table space with some of the professors. Often our sysadmin is also there. Needless to say, this is very different compared to bcn. There you'll find many small and quite closed student circles while here there is almost like a single large group but very open and with constant fluctuations. At least at lunch master students don't come to eat with us others :-)
For today I decided to post some pictures of Schveningen where we went to the beach last weekend and some pictures of Delft
To start, this is a view of the beach at Schveningen. Amazing how many people are out there. C'mon, this is April! In the Netherlands!
Guess who's the funny guy here... a little white still, don't you think? :-)
Obligatory PIC of the Faculteit Elektrotechniek, Wiskunde en Informatica of TUDelft. This pic I actually took on april 2nd, my first day in Delft. As you can see it was 5 minutes to four as I was arriving to the building.
A canal in Delft close to zuidpoort. not the nicest canal but the only image I could find :P
The niewe kerk (new church)
And the oude kerk (old church). As you can see, due to terrain conditions in netherlands it's no longer completely vertical
that's it for today :)
have a good weekend there!
One of the more interesting things here is how the group at TUDelft is organized compared to my department in Barcelona. What I observed so far is that there is overall a much more tight integration between teachers/professors, phd students and master students. There are two factors for this: one is the personnel distribution. From the point of view of a phd student I observe that the students per room (SPR) ratio is much lower than in barcelona. Down there we have about 8-10 students per room. There are only a couple of these large rooms and they are quite separate (even in different buildings) so the relationship between students in different offices is quite small. Often weeks if not months pass before you meet a student in a different room. As a consequence relationship (and friendship) builds mostly within the same office. The SPR ratio here is around 3. The first consequence is that office space is much more silent and quite. You can actually get some work done most of the time! The second is that relationship builds more between people from different offices since there are not enough people in one office. The second reason why there is much higher integration between students and teachers are the department politics. Social events are of great importance here. And I mean that social events receive funding. For instance yesterday our group organized a karting event. Who went there were basically phd students and master students (in a future post I may include some pics of that). At upc-barcelona the interaction between master students and phd students is inexistent. Master students are located in a single room in one of the buildings and you never get in touch with them. Ok, this comparison is not very fair since master programs are likely more tied to the department in delft than in barcelona, where they are basically tied to a project that a professor proposes. It seems to me that here the department has overall a much higher overall responsibility with master students. The higher integration between students and teachers can also be seen at lunch, where we usually share table space with some of the professors. Often our sysadmin is also there. Needless to say, this is very different compared to bcn. There you'll find many small and quite closed student circles while here there is almost like a single large group but very open and with constant fluctuations. At least at lunch master students don't come to eat with us others :-)
For today I decided to post some pictures of Schveningen where we went to the beach last weekend and some pictures of Delft
To start, this is a view of the beach at Schveningen. Amazing how many people are out there. C'mon, this is April! In the Netherlands!
Guess who's the funny guy here... a little white still, don't you think? :-)
Obligatory PIC of the Faculteit Elektrotechniek, Wiskunde en Informatica of TUDelft. This pic I actually took on april 2nd, my first day in Delft. As you can see it was 5 minutes to four as I was arriving to the building.
A canal in Delft close to zuidpoort. not the nicest canal but the only image I could find :P
The niewe kerk (new church)
And the oude kerk (old church). As you can see, due to terrain conditions in netherlands it's no longer completely vertical
that's it for today :)
have a good weekend there!
posted by miki at
2:03 PM
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