How on earth has it been a year since I last posted?! I am so sorry to anyone who has been looking out for me — it has been one heck of a year. This blog entry will be a bit of a brief summary post to catch you up on how things have changed since I last wrote. I have several other post ideas in the works (including a half-drafted post about my viva experience), so hopefully there will be more to follow!
March-July 2023
In my last blog post, I mentioned that I was close to submission. And I was indeed — I think I submitted within that month? From what I remember about submitting, it was honestly all… rather anticlimactic. You spend four-ish years obsessing over a thing, agonising over every detail, constantly wondering if you’ve done enough. And then it’s gone in an email. Finished. Off to your examiners, who you hope will like it. Out of your control.
But, there was no rest for me after submission. I had to move on to the joys of job hunting. I’m pretty sure I had a job interview something ridiculous like three days after I’d submitted? I didn’t get that one (I assume the post went to the internal candidate) but I received some lovely feedback about it. I couldn’t linger on that post though, as there were many other I had to apply for. I ended up much luckier than some though. Of the roughly twenty applications I did within the first month or so after my submission, I interviewed for two and got a job offer for one. But this job offer meant I was moving again!
My viva happened in June. I’ll do a longer post about it at some point — to deal with my nerves, I started writing a blog about it in the hour before it happened — but, in short, it was thrilling, terrifying, and satisfying all at once. My internal examiner, Dr Steffan Thomas, was someone I’ve known since my undergrad years. I know him, I trust him, and I should have anticipated the marketing questions. It was lovely to have him as part of my final farewell to my PhD. My external examiner, Dr Miriam J Johnson, is a scholar whose work I encountered early on in my PhD research and I have admired since that point. I don’t know how many times I had to mention her research in my dissertation, but it was a lot! It was wonderful to get to talk to her thoroughly about our shared research area. I hope I’ll get the opportunity to do so again! But, most importantly, I passed. I had some corrections to do but these were minor.
No rest though — onwards, to a brief holiday/virtual conference in Llandudno, where the panels were great but the bed bugs were bite-y. And then straight on to my sister’s to do an Auntie Kate Sleepover Takeover. Me and my niblings lived on mattresses in the living room, visited the park, had McDonalds for dinner, and ice cream treats from the shop. But June still didn’t stop as I then had to go through to Coventry to figure out where I was going to live. Luckily, the first place I found was pretty close to perfect. July then became all about packing ready to move.
August-December 2023
These are not the most evenly spaced chunks of time but they represent the way the year moved in my head. The end of July and start of August are always busy in my family as we have three birthdays within eight days of each other. The niblings had a joint Pokemon-themed birthday party where I got roped in to face painting duty. This would be great if I had any painting talents. But thankfully my audience didn’t complain too much. I’m not sure if this also counted as my brother-in-law’s birthday party…
I then almost immediately had to move through to Coventry, ready to start work. As in, I arrived on the Sunday and stayed in a hotel, started work on the Monday, and then picked up my keys to move into my flat on the Monday evening. At first, my work life was slow. Things soon sped up once the new academic year began though — from the stats we have, I’ve managed to do more teaching than two people combined did in previous years, while also delivering roughly the same amount of 1-2-1 student support. No wonder I’m tired all the time! And, through this all, I was working through my corrections to finally submit in September.
The middle chunk of this time block had some really good bits with a whole lot of bad. On the good side, family came to visit and I got to put the flat’s second bedroom to good use. True, they went to Warwick Castle and had an amazing time while I was at work, but it was still good to see them. But then bad event one happened: a family member having a house fire. Naturally, this caused a good amount of stress. This was then compounded by bad event two: another family member getting hospitalised while on a cruise, requiring an impromptu trip to Rotterdam.
To be fair, Rotterdam is lovely. I liked it better than Amsterdam, in part because I didn’t feel quite as likely to experience death by bike. It also has an amazing food culture, as demonstrated by the pancake cruise that you too can take a parent on when not visiting the other parent in hospital. And, if you’re going to be hospitalised, there are worse hospitals you could end up in, for sure. I am glad to say that, after a lot of worry, everything worked out in the end and everyone (eventually) got to leave Rotterdam. I even get to say that I took the bus back!
Finally, December came and it was graduation time. PhD graduations are a bit weird. Unlike undergrad graduations, where you’re surrounded by course mates, a lot of it is quite lonely. There was only one other PhD at my graduation and we hadn’t met before that day. We bonded quickly over the fact that we had to spend extra time on the stage while the VCs acknowledged us! But it was so lovely just to round off the academic journey and catch up with my supervisor. And then only have one last week at work before Christmas!
January-March 2024
And that brings us up to this year. I have spent much of this time trying to survive at work while being very popular and exploring my new surroundings. I’ve been to see Dippy the Dinosaur, found out that Coventry has a weird relationship with a peeping Tom, only possibly cheated at an escape room, went axe throwing, and have just generally had fun. And this month will likely have more as I balance many students doing their dissertations, an adventure to Bath, a trip to babysit my niblings, and a return to Scotland to celebrate an upcoming baby.
Writing-wise, I’m also making lots of plans to catch up on Shifting Sands. Writing the second part has taken far longer than I ever intended. But I also plan to return to writing on here. I have many posts planned about finishing off a PhD, the rise of AI authorship, and writing in general. So, if you’re still interested, I’d love to have you along for the journey. It’s good to be back!
