{"id":596,"date":"2016-06-15T09:42:38","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T09:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/beyondlec\/?p=596"},"modified":"2017-02-07T14:57:42","modified_gmt":"2017-02-07T14:57:42","slug":"post-university-travelling-antje-fiebig","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/beyondlec\/2016\/06\/15\/post-university-travelling-antje-fiebig\/","title":{"rendered":"Post university travelling: Antje Fiebig"},"content":{"rendered":"

Antje Fiebig finished a PhD in the area of plant and soil sciences in 2014 (see her <\/strong>alumni profile<\/strong><\/a>). Here Anni writes about her round-the-world trip that she did after her PhD and before her current job. Post-degree travel is popular, can enhance your CV, and can be a welcome change of scene (e.g. see <\/strong>here<\/strong><\/a>).<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world. <\/em>Mary Anne Radmacher<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am a German who has lived in Japan and England for quite a while. I\u2019ve always been very interested in other languages and loved meeting people from different countries and cultural backgrounds. However, whenever I was abroad, it was for work or study \u2013 and even though I\u2019ve enjoyed this to the fullest, I also once wanted to have the opportunity to just be a tourist.<\/p>\n

I chose to travel around the world after completing my PhD and a temporary PostDoc position at LEC. I started my preparations with purchasing a \u201cRound the World Air Ticket\u201d, where you book all your flights at once (e.g. here<\/a>). There are different companies which offer these and it\u2019s very easy to do everything online. You just select the places you want to go to, choose the according flights and that\u2019s pretty much it. The great thing is that you can change the dates of the flights for free (if you want to change the airport though \u2013 e.g. fly to Hong Kong instead of Tokyo \u2013 you have to play an additional fee). For me, this was perfect \u2013 I knew I had my flights, but was still flexible with the dates. I purchased this ticket ~3 months before I started my trip. Meanwhile, I also had to organize moving from England back to Germany, get a travel health insurance (which I never needed, but it was good to know that I had one!) and sort out visas.<\/p>\n

\"Surfing<\/p>\n

I ended up travelling for 8 months, visiting countries such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Canada and the USA. Even though I have been abroad before, this whole experience has changed the way I see the world in a scale I never expected. There are so many wonderful people out there who will help you even if they can\u2019t speak a word of English. I was able to meet up with some of my friends, dress up as a Japanese Geisha<\/a> with them and even got to experience my first ever American Thanksgiving. My favourite day was surfing on this tropical island in Japan called Okinawa<\/a>: nothing beats hitting the waves in the sunshine (and knowing that you won\u2019t freeze when you fall off your surfboard \u2013 which obviously happens quite often).<\/p>\n

\"Lake<\/p>\n

My main goal was not to see as many countries\/cities as possible, but to relax and unwind. I usually stayed longer than the average traveller, to make sure I never had to rush to explore the place, eat all the delicious food and go on as many hikes as possible. To me, New Zealand with its volcanoes, glaciers, mangroves, beaches, mountains and hot springs was perfect for that. To me, it is also one of the most serene countries I have ever been to \u2013 not only because of the stunning landscape, but also because the New Zealanders (or Kiwis) are some of the friendliest people in this universe. My favourite hike was in Canada though, when my host (and now dear friend) took me to Lake Garibaldi \u2013 an alpine lake with turquoise water, surrounded by glaciers and beautiful flora.<\/p>\n

Most people said I was \u201cbrave\u201d for two reasons: travelling all by myself (I found it very liberating!) and not knowing what would happen when I came back because I didn\u2019t have a job lined up. But again, this was actually a good feeling for me: I had time to reflect on my career so far and think about what I wanted to do next. I started applying for jobs ~2 months before the end of my trip. And I have never received a single negative comment about my \u201cgap year\u201d. Instead, people were always very curious and the main reply was \u201cI wish I had done this when I had the chance to\u201d. It was not easy finding a job \u2013 but this was mainly because I wasn\u2019t immediately available. I got the offer for my current job one week after I had returned to Germany and am now working as a lab manager at the Horticultural Sciences Department of the Institute of Plant Sciences and Resource Conservation<\/a> in Bonn (Germany), where I also supervise PhD and Master\u2019s students.<\/p>\n

I can only recommend to be \u201cbrave\u201d enough to go and take a break from work and do whatever your heart\u2019s desire is. Travelling broadened my horizon even further, helped me to unwind and also realize just what I had achieved in the past few years. I am now a much more relaxed, calmer and confident person \u2013 because I have fulfilled myself one of my biggest dreams. So go out and do the same!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anni writes about her round-the-world trip that she did after her PhD and before her current job. Post-degree travel is popular, can enhance your CV, and can be a welcome change of scene. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":654,"featured_media":597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53],"tags":[55,66,56,11,46,7],"class_list":["post-596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","tag-advice","tag-blog","tag-careers","tag-postgraduate","tag-travel","tag-undergraduate"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/beyondlec\/files\/2017\/02\/PostUniversityTravelling.png?fit=680%2C256","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8rD16-9C","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/beyondlec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/beyondlec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/beyondlec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/beyondlec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/beyondlec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/beyondlec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":618,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/beyondlec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions\/618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/beyondlec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/beyondlec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/beyondlec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/beyondlec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}