What has happened in the sixteen months between posts on this blog? Well, globally (it refuses to be ignored): a pandemic. As I write, it is exactly a year since I watched Boris Johnson’s 8 o’clock announcement of the first UK lockdown on my phone in the bath. My husband and I have been working from home for a whole four seasons – the sparrows are nesting outside the bedroom window again, chattering as boisterously as they did last year. I have readily embraced some aspects of lockdown, namely the lack of commute, the reassessment of just about everything in life, and the donning of loungewear (read: pyjama bottoms with leopards on). I am, of course, supremely grateful that we have a comfortable home and stable employment. I am also grateful for my natural introversion: many of the prohibited social activities that others long for are ones that I always found difficult. Nevertheless, this universal year of loss has held its mental stresses even for me, and I will be glad to progress to a post-pandemic world, with lessons learned and positive changes taken forward.
In the middle of the madness of 2020 I made a life change that was bizarrely unrelated: I applied to do a PhD. In the event this was a somewhat impulsive decision – my childhood ideas about following in the path of my parents to do a PhD having been dropped 10 years ago when I realised that I wasn’t enjoying my history degree. But last year, while finding myself much happier in my data science degree, I saw a very interesting studentship opportunity pop up. I applied, and interviewed over Zoom. When I received a congratulatory email some days later, I ran down the stairs screaming! I left my old job and now here I am, applying AI in medical research, in a degree that I hadn’t really planned to do.
What is a PhD? Standing for Doctor Philosophiae (philosophy meaning “love of wisdom”!), it is a research degree that requires the student to make a unique contribution to human knowledge. This is surely the coolest thing going – being able to point to a piece of new information and say “that was me!”. (Upon completion it will also allow me to call myself ‘Doctor’, which a friend has speculated is my primary motivation as a Whovian. I couldn’t possibly comment.) In my case, a project had been proposed, and I was selected as an appropriate candidate to conduct the research. And that’s what I’ll be doing for the next 3 years.
I am certainly enjoying myself so far. Research suits me down to the ground. For years I have been uncomfortably working in open plan offices, struggling to concentrate and never fitting in. Now I get to work from the comfort of my own quiet study, happily coding and reading and writing, and generally feeling much more positive and productive. In fact I work so well from home and have been so much happier, that I am nervous about what the future holds and being asked to work in an office again.
I hope the future of working is flexible. And accepting of leopard pyjamas. It won’t be too long before we find out.
Cryptic Meg 