Today we had the full-day PhD Workshop I co-organised with Jean-Christophe Billeter as part of the 2019 NVG (Netherlands Society for Behavioural Biology) Meeting in Groningen. The aim of the meeting was to facilitate discussion about science and academia for PhD students in the field of behavioural biology in a private setting. About 20 students participated and gave a talk about their work after which we had a general discussion about the things they were struggling with. It was really nice to be on the other side and help by sharing my own experiences and lessons I learned as a PhD student and early postdoc to manoeuvre through our world that is academia.