What I have been up to lately

Postcard 09th February ‘25: Aarhus

Hej again,

it has been a while. Well, actually, I skipped only las weekend. But it feels quite long ago that I sent you my last postcard.

While January was already quite packed with plenty of good work for my PhD, anything I have been craving beyond that has been - and somewhat still is - is hibernation.

Well, with leaving the house in the dark, coming back in the dark and the in-between vanishing in somewhat of grey-foggy-soggy mush, the Danish winter east coast vibes have not been helping much either.

But hey, there is some morning daylight now again when arriving at the university (8am)!

And it’s surprisingly cold. Temperatures linger somewhere around 0 - 5° C, BUT for the actually felt temperature, you have to subtract anywhere from 5 - 10°C. It’s super humid and windy. And those sometimes more sometimes less visible water particles creep in everywhere and freeze you to your bones.

Even so much that Molly with her double-coated fur is now a proud owner of a wool coat - and some booties to protect her paws from the salt.

Molly ♥︎

So well, my available energy seems to have been going into my PhD, keeping up at least some healthy routines and most evenings consisting of my still not finished binge-watch of Grey’s Anatomy (season 15 now) and knitting. I have been knitting a lot and even started my first vest. Let’s see how that goes.

Small knitting projects :)

So, let’s do a little 2025 so far recap:

• I probably had a pretty steep learning curve with programming in MatLab and understanding the physics of sound (underwater). So, I spent plenty of hours writing code, cultivating a humble relationship with ChatGPT, debugging, moaning (yep, sometimes you can hear quiet sequences of “f*ck” in our office coming from all three of us working on different algorithms.

• I went out on a field trip to recover equipment in Storebælt.

• I went to the Fjord & Bælt marine education station for a policy meeting.

• I joined the section meeting of our research unit that is located in Roskilde for the first time.

• I joined a 2-days section seminar of our research unit and met a bunch of new people (+ a whole day was dedicated to wellbeing at the work place / in academia!)

• I went out for a girl’s night with some others from our community area

• I think I made a tiny progress on learning Danish

• We started participating more actively in the communal dinners organised in our living are

Yep, I think that’s most of it 😀.

And: I could use a little inspiration of what you would be interested in reading from here during the coming weeks. Would you be interested in some more easy explanations on acoustics or rather on the day to day things? Let me know!

Just post your questions in the comments 😃

About this week’s postcard

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Me, Matlab & ChatGPT, a seal being trained for a scientific hearing test, another seal snuggling in her bed, hiding from the cold.

Up next

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In the coming week, we will prepare our equipment for the first big deployment of the year (8 sound recorders to be taken out into the Bay of Aarhus). We are not sure when the deployment will happen, but we want to be ready for a good weather window.

Next Saturday, I am going to fly to Marseille (France) to participate in a European PhD course on underwater acoustics. Maybe I will catch some sun there 😊. And I know at least 2 of the other participants from Norway, which is going to be a super nice reunion (plus, I am going with my direct PhD peers from Aarhus). So bear with me if next week there might not be a postcard - but I am planning to send one about Marseille next 😊

Hug,