Are you having a bad day at the office? Are you frustrated? Is your mind a bit fuzzy? I have experienced the same more than a few times during the course of my PhD. I have found sports or some other form of exercise as an effective way to uplift mood and activate my brain.
Recently, I was at ETH Zurich for my secondment. I was fortunate enough to be involved in an intriguing work in the emerging field of orbitronics and orbital torques. My daily work included struggling with the wire bonder to using a low temperature setup to measure spin-orbital torques at 25K to delving deep into the literature to find an explanation for my results. I was mentally tired at the end of the day.
Thankfully, there were a lot of opportunities for doing sports in and around the university. Marco (ESR3) was kind enough to lend me his bicycle. I biked to work multiple times a week and also explored the outskirts of Zurich on weekends. I was able to reconnect with my old passion of Taekwondo, thanks to the sports offer from ETH and ASVZ. The most interesting sporting event for me was the football cup organised by the Materials Department (D-MATL) of ETH Zurich. I participated as part of the Magnetars 2.0 team, consisting of fellow members from the lab and Prof. Gambardella himself who was by far the MVP for our team. There were a lot of memorable moments from the tournament including the skillful play of Matthias, the determination and grit of Marco, the masterful touches of Nicholas, the threatening runs down the wing by Min-gu and Enrique and the great tactical positioning by Annika and Laura. The moment of the day was however the long range goal scored brilliantly by Mark. Apart from these, the daily commute to the lab itself required me shed some drops of sweat since it is located on top of Honggerberg in Zurich. Overall, my stay in Zurich was filled with memorable moments in the sports field and also from scientific discussions in the coffee room, the lab, the canteen and any place imaginable. Keep watching this space for more details on my scientific work in Zurich.
I returned to Grenoble just in time to attend the PhD defense of Dr. Salvatore Teresi (ESR7 – the first SPEAR ESR to complete his PhD). I also participated in the Grenoble Ekiden (a relay marathon race) with my Spintec colleagues, thus continuing my involvement with sports. Even though I am physically destroyed quite often, my mental state is relaxed and mood is uplifted at the end of every sport session. In conclusion, do some sports if you can. It will be beneficial to maintain a healthy body but also a healthy mind.
