EPE-Event 2014 & Science Club Xmas special – December 11, 2014

An „EPEic“ Christmas Carol by Charlize Dickens

Dear PoGS-members, dear friends, dear guests, and particularly dear EPE-participants,

We welcome you to this special event, the EPE closing event 2014 and the last Science Club – Christmas special for 2014! Tonight, we need you, our dear audience, to be very active. Not only to support our pitchers, but also for our warm-up program, which is a short review of the program “EPE – Science meets Market”. Therefore, I am going to read the most famous Christmas story of Charles Dickens to you: “A Christmas Carol”. Slightly abridged and well, admittedly also slightly altered by the PoGS-ghosts... So prepare yourselves for a smashing action story, in 3D or rather 2D, but in any case a very interactive story, since our text lacks a few words. So it’s a Lückentext and you, our dear audience will need to help us fill the gaps in this epic story. Of course, all the gaps have something to do with being a PhD candidate, being an entrepreneur or with the PoGS in general or the EPE program. Our story starts like every good story starts:

“Once upon a time, upon a Christmas eve Dr. Ebenezer Scrooge sat in his office. The chimney was flaming happily, but Scrooge was looking grim. He was typing his newest article for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and was swearing all the time. “Oh, bloody paper! How I hate Christmas!!” Let me tell you, why Scrooge began to hate Christmas. It was exactly seven years ago and Scrooge was in the middle of his PhD project that Scrooge's former professor and mentor Dr. Jane Marley told him on the research groups' Christmas party, that she would move to a new job at a new university far far away: The University of Melbourne. Scrooge was not amused and he definitely did not want to move to Australia. So he started to hate Christmas, because his professor and mentor made him this very bad Christmas “present”. And, of course, he was secretly in love with his professor, but that is another story…

Today, Scrooge refuses to go to any Christmas party of his new professor's research group, because he feels that his career in science was destroyed on a Christmas party. Now, he has to work on a topic which he does not like at all, his new boss is a pain in the…. well, a not-so-good-boss, and his fellow co-researchers are all depressed because their working contracts expire at the end of each year. Scrooge sighs heavily and thinks of a study, he has recently read – the “Bundesbericht wissenschaftlicher Nachwuchs” where analysists found out that: Audience PROP 1: “In Germany, only about eight percent of all scientific employees in research have a permanent position”.

Scrooge thinks of his own career options and concludes: That he does not want think about that right now... He walks over to his couch and makes himself comfortable in front of his TV and watches an episode of “Audience - JOKER 1“. Later that night, Scrooge is visited by Prof. Marley's spirit. Or maybe it was a Skype call? Well, he will never know, since he had a lot of Glühwein, that night. Anyways. Prof. Marley tells Scrooge that he will be visited by three ghosts that night, and that he must listen to them or be cursed to carry on doing research in his current research group forever.

The first ghost The first of the spirits, the “Ghost of Christmas Past“, or rather a phone call from his best friends Jack and Jones, takes Scrooge to Christmas times of his first studies at a lovely medium-sized university. Of course, it was the University of Potsdam. Reminding him of a time when he was curious about research, spending happy hours with his friends and was a lot more enthusiastic. He remembers a Christmas party hosted by his fellow students and his first employer, a postdoc called Miss Understanding. He remembers, that she read in a book about occupational health psychology, that most young academics like about working in science that, Audience PROP 2: “it is a creative and innovative job, that they have a special interest in the topic and that they love the high independence and autonomy “. The ghost slowly disappears and Scrooge suddenly takes out a huge piece of flipchart paper and starts brainstorming about what he expects from his life as a postdoc. He sips on his hot wine and slowly falls asleep again.

The second ghost The second spirit appears, the “Ghost of Christmas Present“. Or rather, it is his boss who calls him at around eleven in the evening, telling him that the experiments in the lab have to be finished by the end of this week and that Scrooge is supposed to work unpaid extra hours, while at the same time preparing his professors lectures. Scrooge lets his mind wander and thinks about his and his fellow researchers’ situation. The latest study from 2011 says that Audience PROP 3: “Of all the 20.000 PhDs per year in Germany only about 3.500 continue to work in Research and Science”. One of his former PhD candidates quit her job last year, because she was fed up with the situation and instead founded her own enterprise. With two of her friends she started a small company that is specialized in software solutions. She is one of more than 17.000 people in 2013 who found a job in a business start- up in Berlin and the state of Brandenburg. And she asks Scrooge: Audience PROP 4: “Did you know that almost every second startup consists solely of academic staff?” Scrooge's mind wanders and he imagines himself being his own boss or getting his own professorship and doing research he really likes. And thinking of this, he remembers his professor telling him, that he will never find a professor’s position if he continues to be such a lame Postdoc and not dedicating his life fully to science. At the same time, his professor mourns, that he is forced to do only management tasks and that his PhDs and Postdocs are the only ones, doing real research. Over this Scrooge falls asleep again...

The third ghost The third spirit, the “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come“ shows Scrooge a Christmas Day in the future. In this dream, he meets his fellow PhDs and Postdocs who tell Scrooge which excellent programs and career workshops they have visited at the Potsdam Graduate School, for example: Audience JOKER 2. The ghost then shows Scrooge a happy participant of the Potsdam Graduate Schools Science Club, who is holding a certificate, which is titled: Audience PROP 5: “EPE – Entrepreneurial Postgraduate Education”. The text on the Certificate reads that the successful participant now has knowledge in Business-Oriented Thinking like Financing, Business Modelling and Intellectual Property Rights, as well as acquired general key competences such as project management, leadership and team management. At last the spirit shows Scrooge a sign on a door, which he has never seen before. But there is something weird about this door: It bears Scrooge's name...

Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning with joy and love in his heart (which, just to mention it, was NOT induced by an abusive use of drugs) and Scrooge says: Audience JOKER 3 He spends the day with his friends and tells them of his changed life. He also meets his former PhD fellow who went to a Speed Matching by Potsdam Transfer and found a good business partner for his business idea which is: Audience JOKER 4. He now is very successful, and according to the Berlin Business radar, about 80% of all startups in Berlin and Brandenburg are making profit already in their first year of existence. Scrooge himself found a new Postdoc position in an international research group, which is closely linked with the University of Melbourne. He now has to travel to frequent meetings with their Australian research partners...

So, our story happily closes with the following words: Audience JOKER 5 Or: “Be calm and participate in EPE 2015!”