Great place to work - but PhD student Louise is still coping with stress

Louise Windfeldt is working with communication to the public and is particularly interested in the conservation of domestic species’ biodiversity. After working a few years for the National Museum, she obtained funding and started a PhD. For her, it was “crucial to take care of those species and maintain their biodiversity,” she says to the University Post.

The Department of Science Education, located at the old observatory in the botanical gardens is a place “where people take care of each other,” she says.

“We have lunch with each other, help each other, and talk to each other about practical or personal matters,” she says, before adding, “it is ideal, having a little nest and the right to concentrate.”

Insecurity before a project

An ideal place, but Louise has entered, and exited, the stress wave like many other PhD students.

“You know that feeling when you don’t do what you should do, and have the impression you will not get anything out of it?”

Louise describes the “frustration coming up and that insecurity when starting writing or a new project”. Louise copes with it by doing yoga, swimming, walking, and talking to people from her laboratory to unwind.

Stress from the inside

Married, and the mother of two grown up kids, Louise has “only adults at home now, so we take turns in cooking or taking care of the house,” she says.

She is also part of the museum choir and is involved in an ‘organic food basket’ community. A community that reinforces her engagement in the preservation of the biodiversity of Denmark’s vegetables.

For Louise, it often seems as if the PhD stress is coming from the inside, from standards she fixes herself. “I’m not necessarily good at dealing with it but at least I’m trying”.

universitypost@adm.ku.dk

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