MaW’s Blog

So I’m four weeks into my PhD. I could say a lot. In fact, I could complain a lot. I could complain about living in Halls (and I have done repeatedly to my friends here and on the Internet, sorry guys and girls but it does help to share these things). Really I’ve been lucky — lucky with my flatmates, who aren’t really all that irritating and are mostly clean and well-behaved with remarkably good taste in music (i.e. I’ve not heard much of theirs and they’ve not complained about mine). No fire alarms in the middle of the night yet despite the ominous behaviour of people in the rest of the building. I don’t necessarily like them, I don’t like how they shout their way up and down the stairs, how they smoke outside my window, how they sing and shout in the car park and play football in it.

But they could be worse.

The thing I like best about this is the freedom. Being a PhD student gives me considerable leeway with regard to what I’m doing and how I go about doing it. To be honest I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but I’m told that’s perfectly normal at this stage. The atmosphere in the department is very relaxed most of the time, everyone’s very nice and I like going into the office. Would be better if the desk was the right size for me (as usual I’m too big for everything) but it might suffice for a while. The possibility still exists to get something better, as that hasn’t been investigated yet and so nobody’s said no to me yet. Not sure if health and safety regs cover me as they would if I was an employee of the department, and I know I don’t have the status of a staff member for some things, but in other things they’re treating me like one so who knows? I shall of course investigate every possibility I can.

Supervision meeting this week. Maybe I’ll have a better idea where I’m going after I’ve had it. Louise has been extremely helpful and facilitating so far, may that continue until I’ve passed my viva.