Groundhog November

This month was very strange. I’ve had great experiences coupled with personal things that were a real shock.

I had someone e-mail me and say, ‘how are you finding one foot still in being a student, another foot in a new job’. And that probably defines my month. I’ve got one foot in Reading, one in Graz. I’ve never been in the situation before I’ve always had that hard stop, the hardest being my masters and my placement/secondment during my PhD.

Major Corrections is Like Groundhog Day

Someone else said ‘major corrections is like groundhog day of the last year of your PhD’.  During my PhD me and my friends used to joke that Wednesday was ‘dip day’ and my Groundhog Day this month has been a Wednesday. (Except COP, which was like Friday night).

I don’t know if it’s well known but at least for me I disliked being a student and I just wanted to be a researcher (that is my PhD reason), and I saw my PhD and my research as separate (my flatmate describes my brain as the German (Deutsch) Autobahn, if that helps you visualize, currently we’ve hit traffic in all lanes).

The first thing I managed to say after my viva was ‘I can’t do this’. I was lumbered with a state of limbo between where I wanted to be and what I disliked being labelled as, amongst way more complex situations. And I’d already seen the grass on the other side and it in this instance is greener.

Ok so how are my corrections going… depends on the day (overall it’s going well – I am probably a little cynical so bear that in mind). I said in a meeting: ‘new project little stress in comparison to my PhD corrections!’ We don’t talk about logos 😉.

Why am I sharing this? Because as everyone who got majors will tell you, you aren’t alone. And maybe me in this weird Limbo/Transition/Schrodinger’s Cat phase will make sense to someone else.

What I would say though – I don’t think major corrections should exist if I may (this is probably most controversial!). You should either pass (and of course if there are corrections, sure, it’s academia) or fail. And since I got major, I’ve been giving tips to my friends so that nobody I know as far as I can gets major corrections.

Paper of the month (Because we have different approaches to heating the office, and as a responsible heat scientist (or bioclimateography design specialist as am now known!) I researched it)

TV Show of the month: Locke and Key (flatmate suggestion)