I submitted my PhD thesis

So today is the day. I am turning 27 and spent the last 3-4 years doing research and my PhD at the University of Oldenburg while working at the University of Applied Sciences in Aachen.

I submitted my PhD thesis. Handed in the digital version, double checked everything. Printed it as a hard cover for myself, printed it 6 times as soft cover for the reviewers. Sent the package to Oldenburg.

Just to receive the response that the comittee will take a look at it in October. Holiday season.

In October 2021 I began my thesis. I already wrote about this on my blog. In the mean time, I talked to many researchers in the research community and enjoyed various conferences a lot.

A quick temporal outline of my thesis is shown in my previous post.

I feel relieved and enjoy that the pressue is gone. It feels like having achieved something, even if it is still quite a long road until I can have my defense and hopefully earn the degree.

There is so much that I learned. Unlike the submission of my master’s thesis, it does not yet feel complete. I still have to do my defense and even then, there is another research project waiting and still a lot of opportunities to improve research in energy informatics.

Generally, I am very happy with everything and how it went along. Living in Aachen with my girlfriend is wonderful and I enjoy my life, my friends and my free time quite much. There are always things which could have been done better. But in the end, I just hope that everything is fine.

If I could take a look into the future, I would not want to see it. Partially, because I believe that without seeing it, it is not determined yet, partially, because I want to be surprised by it. The next few years are quite undetermined and I am interested to see what will happen in the next year.