Beards.
It's no good, I can't remember how to do my PhD.
It was all going so terribly well last term, and now it's gone to shit. I just can't quite recall what it was
precisely that I do on a day to day basis. Ah well. I'm sure it'll come back to me.
Had my head scanned today. Actually, that is a complete lie. Bernie has some new photographic equipment that allows him to take 3D shots of people's heads. 3 of us from the lab wandered over to have a look and be scanned. Slightly dissapointed by the lack of a booth to stand it. We all had images of having to stay really still in some sort of pod while something went round our head really slowly. But no. Just two blocks of cameras and an office chair. More than made up for by the resulting photographs, anyway. It is very weird seeing your own head rotating on a computer screen. Well, almost all of it. There's no back to it, so when you turn it all the way round, you get the inside of your face, like an empty mask.
Crazy.
Anyway. Currently sitting on my mate's bed while he looks around for post-degree jobs/ postgrad things. All very exciting. Remembering recently the sudden rush of graduating fear I went through. All my friends were getting jobs/ moving to London/ applying for this and that. I didn't even have a CV... and I already lived in London. Strange times.
Louise and Lewis are moving in together. This leaves Jessie and Kate as a twosome. I wonder what'll hapen there.
I am a very tired man at the moment. But I did get my hair cut today. Which feels much better. No more greasy badger on my head.
One of the professors has asked for sponsorship to shave his beard off.
Nice.
For the record
Friends are great, I'm glad I have some good ones.
Funny thing is, I came up here not all that bothered about making new friends. I mean, I'm a sociable bunny, we know this to be true, and I make friends easily. That said, I thought I had a decent quota of
good friends and was now happy to, you know, just get on with it and do the thing and make like a whatnot with stuff.
And then I go and make another really very good and highly valued chum, even after such short aquaintance.
Which is excellent.
Bitch snow.
Well, good heavens, it's been a very, very long time indeed.
Sorry.
I shall quickly bring you up to speed. Obviously, it would be great at this point to be able to say that I'd been doing something simply FASCINATING and time consuming. Like, say, saving gibbons in the arctic, or dousing squid in sheepdip... but I haven't.
Well, it's been worthwhile, certainly. In a career advancing and intellectually stimulating way. Busy busy.
*ahem* WHAT I BEEN DOIN SINCE LAST I POSTED:
- drinking.
- supervising undergraduate project. It is on a subject I in which I am not all that interested. I spent a great deal of time and energy getting the experiment in a workable state, and then had a cortisol-enhancing time trying to run it. I have stepped back from it and am making the undergrad do it on his own (which is kind of the idea anyway). If anything comes of it, however, it is mine again. HAHAHA.
- Trying to sort out my own project. Less movement here. Although I have an idea and a direction that my supervisor likes. Actually, that sounds like I'm not doing anything exciting. This is not true. Let me be specific: my project ROCKS. I just haven't got it rolling yet.
- drinking.
- sleeping.
- Producing a very fine academic poster for the departmental poster session and then dressing up as the Head of School for the Psychology Christmas bash. She is a woman. I am a bloke and am somewhat hairy about the legs. Ah well. We all suffer for our art. Or something...
- Ah, and then Christmas happened. Which was nice. Off to my uncle's place with maternal family. Cousins, aunts, uncles etc. All very pleasant. Very NICE... but, as my mum put it, "not much fun" . The rest of the family talk in a sort of shorthand that excludes my mum and I. She feels left out anyway because the rest of them are all coupled up and my mum's on her own. First time I knew what she meant, actually. My eldest cuz just got married and her hubby was there for Christmas Eve, her sister has moved to Hong-Kong with her man who was there for the duration and the second youngest cuz (I am youngest) had his girlfriend with him too. So it was just my mum and me without partners. There was a general feeling that we didn't quite count because of that. Added to which, my mum's family reckon neither her career nor her politics as being proper, grown up things to be doing. This too has just been visited on me. Apparently academia isn't a proper career, or something. Which is weird, coz my aunt was (well, IS still) a Doctor of molecualr biology. Although wouldn't know one end of a microscope from another these days. Most odd. My uncle asked me some time ago, when my place up here and my funding were both secure, if I didn't think maybe I should get a job instead of being a student. I told him a PhD is a job, of sorts, and in any case my funding requires me to be contracted to a rather large corporation as an employee. Then I told him how much money I get. He looked a little deflated. But has forgotten it. Anyway. Christmas: nice but boring.
- New Year: drunken, as in the best it is.
- And now am back here.
My house is very cold and there's a massive saucepan in the bathtub.
These two facts are, as far as I can see, unrelated.
Was meant to have a research proposal in yesterday. Oops.
Hopefully will have it done by monday.
I think that may be the first deadline I've missed in my academic life since I handed in an essay 1 hr late as a first year undergrad.
My, how the standards slip.
It is really very cold here. Snow is forcast. Well, blizzards, actually. I scoffed when I got back yesterday because it was actually quite warm. And the weather this morning was glorious sunny. As soon as I left my house, however, the sky darkened and the wind rose. Then the temeprature dropped about a million degrees and it started to not quite snow, not quite rain. Bitch snow.
Hmm, and now I feel a bit hungover. Either my excesses of last night have taken an unusually long time to reach me, or the weather's doing something weird and it IS going to snow soon.
I shall let you know.
