Impressions of Nijmegen from Tartu student Elisabeth
Elisabeth Kaukonen, PhD student at the University of Tartu, used the MEDAL Mobility funding to spend the entire month of November 2023 at the Centre for Language Studies at the Radboud University. Read more about her experience in this post.
It is always good to get out of your bubble.
Elisabeth does her PhD with Liina Lindström and Raili Marling at the University on Tartu. She investigates the perception of gender-marked lexical items in Estonian and decided to enrich her research with psycholinguistic experiments. Therefore, she set out to Nijmegen in order to learn more about the basics of experimental linguistics and start planning her own experiment. When asked whether this goal has been realized, she replies positively and adds: “The main thing that I learned was simply getting to see how are things done and how everyday life works in another academic environment. It is always a good thing to sometimes get out of your bubble and see things from a different perspective.”
Elisabeth says she learned a lot about the importance of detail. As far as her experiment goes, she has created the potential stimuli, learned to use experiment-building program PsychoPy and even uploaded the draft of her experiment there. She credits most of the knowledge she gained to her local supervisors Laura Speed and Helen de Hoop, but also to the other PhD students. “[They] were willing to help me, discuss my ideas with me and introduce me to their own experiments. Shout out to Patricia Sanchez Carrasco, Kars Ligtenberg and Maria den Hartog!”
Everyone gets coffee together during the workday! I really liked this idea, although it was strange to me at first.
She also fondly remembers the coffee breaks and lunches at the university. “In the Grammar & Cognition research group, where I had a desk in the office on the same floor as other members, everyone gets coffee together during the workday! I really liked this idea, although it was strange to me at first, because Estonians, being so introverted, would first check whether the corridor is empty and if it is, quickly go get coffee alone and avoid bumping into other people…” She notes that these moments were not distracting from work on the contrary; she used those little moments to catch up with her colleagues and supervisors, who were, of course, normally very busy.
When asked about her impressions of the historical Nijmegen, she describes it as a beautiful, calm and peaceful city. She especially liked liked visiting local pubs, bars, cafés, such as the famous activists’ hangout Café de Plak. Like a real Dutchie, Elisabeth also travelled everywhere in Nijmegen by bike (pictured below).
Every problem I had during my stay found a solution.
Surely, there must have also been some negative sides to her stay? “I can’t think of any,” she says, “[although] there were some stressful situations.” For example, her laptop decided the crash on the first day of her stay! Fortunately, with the help of Laura Speed, she could borrow a laptop from the university. “Then there was the situation with bike rental…” she recalls, “I rented a bike and decided to return it right before leaving, on Wednesday evening.” Little did she know that that particular bike shop would be closed on the very obvious day of rest… Wednesday. Luckily, the owner of the apartment she was staying in agreed to return the bike for her. Elisabeth ends her reflections on her mobility exchange with the very hopeful note: “Every problem I had during my stay found a solution. People are so helpful!”