PhD to PhD Fortschrittsbericht Spezial: Maria Beckemeyer

In this interview, Maria Beckemeyer shares her experiences that she has had before and during the conversation with her supervisor and mentor. She also explains how the progress report helped her with her further research:

I am a member of the working group ‘Arithmetic Geometry‘ and my supervisor is Christopher Deninger, who also supported me during my Master thesis. Additionally, I chose a mentor outside my working group to get another perspective on my work and maybe also on the way things can be done.

Within the guide lines of the MMGS I have already had a progress review – a meeting with my supervisor and my mentor with the aim to report on the status of my project, on the interaction between my supervisor and me and on what I have learned outside my main focus of research.
In preparation for this meeting I wrote a small chronological list on the main issues that I had dealt with, the (maybe non mathematical) problems I had faced, the solutions I had found so far and on the seminars and lectures I had attended. Finally, I described what I plan to do next. This gave me the opportunity to reflect my work, to see what I have achieved and to find a way to explain my work to someone outside my research area.

The progress review itself was not a presentation but rather a comfortable conversation. We talked about the content and status of my work and about my relationship to my supervisor.

After the progress review I had a better overview of the last year and it was a good motivation to see written down what I had achieved so far. Even if it was still work in progress without big results, it made me aware that I had actually learned a lot.