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 As a child I always dreamed about being a famous soccer player. Masses cheering at one, scoring goals and winning important national and international championships. Now I know that this dream has not become true. Years have passed with average performances as a sports person, but with success in obtaining knowledge, a high education and earning a Ph.D. degree at the end. That I entered this way is about ten years ago and just recently I arrived the first finish with receiving a Ph.D. in physics. Be aware, the first finish. As a sports person the best years are over, as a scientist they will hopefully still come. I have the Ph.D., but this is only the beginning of a hopefully successful career as a researcher. I have it and I am happy about it. Now, as a postdoctoral researcher I have to start new projects, produce results, publish them and build up a network of researchers with whom I can collaborate. Later in a few years I would like to have my own research group and then who knows if it will be possible to make a step towards becoming a professor. Yeah, this is what I would like to do. Being a professor the big goal which would lead me onto a new path. Would this not be great! To gather new knowledge every day, putting new ideas into the world, being a mentor of young students and researchers, teaching and letting others profit from what one has learned in the past, in the present and in the future. Being your own boss, following your own ideas, just doing what you want to do. BUT, slow. This is still a long way and will take some time, some years. It will not be easy, but it should be fun.

The time as a Ph.D. student is still more present than what will come in the next years. During the past years, as a regular student, as a master's and then Ph.D. student I learned a lot about pyhsics, science and my particular field of studies. Besides this I was able to travel around, living in different places and making new, interesting cultural experiences. That was gorgeous, but not always. I also remember the times when I came home. Frustrated. The hole world was a misery. Nothing seemed to work. Or the times when I did not want to leave the lab, because everything went so easily and the data spread out of the experiment like water from a never ending spring. These were actually the better days. These were the days when you thought you are on the way to receive the Novel prize in a few years. For what I did not know, but nothing could possibly stop you. Yeah, making the Ph.D. makes you wondering through valleys and mountain regions. Sometimes walking through inhospitable regions and other times looking at the most beautiful landscapes. It is just like in normal life. It goes up and down, but at the end it works.

I still remember starting university or even earlier professors or Ph.D.s seemed to be soooo smart. They were close to being gods. Now, having the Ph.D. I do not feel smarter and I now that I am everything, but a god. I have achieved it, so it could not be so difficult. Yes, there are these really great, smart scientists such as Einstein, Boltzmann, Heisenberg, Bohr, Planck, Feynman, Pauli just to name a few who were clearly smarter than others. Not that I will ever achieve what they were able to produce in their lifetimes. I can be glad to understand what they learned from their research. Still, I have learned that also they only cooked with water. They had to work hard, had to discuss with others, had to persuade their opponents and they also made their mistakes. Research needs besides of some kind of cleverness, especially patience and the will. The will to go on even if it seems that there is no way. As a scientist you always enter regions no one else has touched before.