u/Pitsino

Hello everyone,

I am a PhD holder and I am currently try to land a Postdoc contract in the field of geology / planetary science.

Following my PhD defense (Winter 2025), I was feeling so lost as no one prepared me for what was about to happen. I started sending out emails to potential postdoc supervisors, with ideas of project drafts. The problem was that most of these ideas were already being considered by my PhD supervisor and collaborators. I don't know about your experience, but my PhD supervisor did not help me at all in guiding me. He just told me I needed to visit new labs, make new connections, and expand my field of expertise. In any case, I decided to drop my old ideas and started reading about something new, something on a different topic.

Therefore I contacted a new potential collaborator (X) which I could write a proposal with on this new topic. The idea is that he submits this proposal and if accepted, hire me as his postdoc. This guy accepted and right now we are about to submit a proposal. At the same time I kept looking for ads for postdocs, and found a PI that was looking for a PhD in order to work on a Marie Curie project. I sent my resume and got shortlisted. With this latter supervisor I also participated in an online Marie Curie masterclass for free. Eventually, I have been selected by him to write the Marie Curie proposal together.

I am now torn between these two opportunities. On the one hand, I really love this project that I wrote with collaborator X, which deals with something completely new to me and exciting. It will also be based in the same country where my girlfriend and I are staying. On the other hand, I don't want to disappoint the other Marie Curie guy, who was so nice. Tbh, the foundations of the project are more fragile as I don't feel I have a solid grip on this project (which deals only partially with my PhD thesis), and honestly I don't feel that invested in working on it.

What do you guys think of this? Should I just give up my second opportunity to invest fully (something which I already do) on my first one? What do you think this second Marie Curie guy would take it? Honestly, I feel I am letting down some people.

PS

By the way, amongst many other things, people in academia warned me against having a fixed relationship with someone during a PhD (I guess because in their mind, a stable relationship wouldn't allow me to be open to explore new potential places to live, visit less countries, ...). I mean, these are the same people that did their PhD and most of their careers in their home countries! And now they are lecturing me on not moving much? (By the way I got my PhD in Belgium, and I am from Italy).

Hello everyone,

Given the steam summer sales, I wished to try out some new games for my Lenovo Legion Go with dual boot (bazzite and win11). What do you suggest I try?

I'd like to explore some games that would be perfect to play on a console, but at the same time I don't seem to like the usual suggestions for steam deck games. I love RPGs, FPS, and sand boxes. I love the classics (Skyrim, Witcher 3), but I want to try something new able to run greatly on a legion go 1. Normally, I don't like 2D or isometric styled games, even though I'd fancy to play a Pokémon-styled game. Additionally, I don't usually like racing games, especially those with many settings to tweak (rally games ), but I loved to play wreckfest which had the right amount of arcade, fun, and realism at the same time.