Acknowledgements [BSc Graduation]

As it turned out, the hiatus that has been my summer thus far was rudely interrupted by my BSc graduation on Monday - the Rubicon of my PhD, as it were. Yours truly, never being one to turn down the opportunity to ruin a video or otherwise make light of such things as important ceremonies (as you will come to learn, dear reader) - had no option but to attend.

Since the entire point of this blog is to discuss the steps taken which lead up to a PhD, it seems a fitting departure point to make the opening non-trivial post concern my first graduation - meaning that I'll be able to neatly wrap everything up full-circle in four years. For those of you who have either never graduated from a HE institute before, or have already - but so long ago that the whole experience is no longer any more than a memory - let me run down how it works nowadays.

Firstly, I arrived. This was important, as otherwise everything else would have encountered a minor hitch. In attendance were my ever-suffering parents Noeleen and Edward, and my ever-lovely girlfriend Nichola. The latter, despite not having a ticket, managed to con her way into the event by telling one of the attendants that we're engaged and she was appropriately devastated that she wouldn't be able to witness my special occasion. Bingo.

Shortly after arriving, I realised that whilst I could see everyone around me wearing mortarboards and robes, the only sign I could see directed me towards tea and coffee. Cue sweating (although not nearly as much as I would over the next two hours) and pace-quickening towards the only building that wasn't being held up by pegs in the hopes that some Good Samaritan would direct me to where I needed to be. Stopped briefly to take the obligatory photo that must appear at least twice in everyone's Facebook "Graduation 20**" album.

This is that photo.

To summarise what would otherwise be a pretty crushingly boring description of registering and dressing [although there is something to be said for the fact that Ede & Ravenscroft seem to employ people exclusively under five foot tall to dress graduands], suffice to say that I was eventually seated before enduring a thirty minute wait as the hall became progressively stuffier. Distracting solace was found in a looping video of some gorgeous aerial views of the University campus, which only made me bitterly long for the days back when I was a helicopter and thus able to truly appreciate the rolling (snow | rain | vomit)-covered fields which form the majority.

At some point between seeing the Portland Building for the seventeenth time and my nodding off onto my (remarkably heavy) ribbon colours, the focus of the projector screens shifted from gardenias to graduands - the cameramen panning across the length of the hall to capture those eager faces of people about to move off into the wider world and make a powerful, meaningful contribution to society. And me. I would usually at this point post a picture of the (frankly, genius) faces that I pulled here, but the techies behind the online graduation video repository have deigned to keep that section in. Until the day I die I hope that this was a policy I was responsible for.

Then these two arrived.

Professor David Greenaway and Jeff Randall (of Sky News and Daily Telegraph fame) spoke at great length of how fantastic an alma mater Nottingham is and how its graduates go on to do everything from inventing toilets to scrubbing them (but damnit with pride) - although I suspect that the latters' motivation stemmed from holding a Nottingham DLitt honoris causa and having been inducted into the College of Benefactors moments before speaking. High point of the ceremony: Jeff describing himself as a "miserable turd" (you can honestly check this for yourself) whilst quote-lifting from correspondence sent to him.

Between these two speeches lay the actual meat of the day. I learnt two things here. Firstly, that there are approximately two hundred possible surnames between "Adams" and "Armstrong" as a rough heuristic for anticipating how long a graduation list is, and secondly that I look my very best when standing on a tiny stage, beset by cameras, academics and parents on all sides and with a light that I can best describe as Proxima Centauri shining directly in my face.

And all the while, the chap next to me was reading the University prospectus.

The real tour de force of ballsing-up the entire thing happened - mercifully - after I was (mostly) out of range of the filming camera [although the following is bound to have been recorded on several iPhones]. After shaking David Greenaway's hand and receiving what was either a completely heartfelt "Congratulations Laurence, well done." or one of the best shows of fake emotion I've seen in many a month, I felt it appropriate to reply with nothing more or less than "You're alright.". No Latin witticism, no razor sharp pun. Something that I would have said to my brother in the pub. He noticed.

Feeling suitably embarrassed and flustered in equal measure at this point, I take flight down a set of stairs. The wrong set - but down those stairs I went - catching my robe on part of the stage scaffolding as I descended, leaving me stuck in a pose halfway between The Phantom of the Opera and The Dark Knight (if photos of this exist, kindly do not contact me with them). Shaking myself free with a movement just short of a barrel roll, I quickly moved back to my chair - only for my coursemate, graduating mere seconds behind me, to sit down with a folder with the words Graduation Award stamped on it.

Crap. I've just graduated without a degree.

After the elapse of a suitable amount of time spent waiting sheepishly before going up to collect my own folder (read: until the end of the ceremony), I returned to the desk which I somehow missed, nearly killing several elderly attendees whilst trying to force myself against the direction of movement. However, I eventually emerged, sweating like I had just ran the Central line, and holding the most expensive sheet of paper in my life to date.

I swear I will upload a more visible copy of this, ASAP.

Having survived this ordeal, I took refuge in the Hospitality tent (hilariously questioned by someone - I won't name them - with "why do they need a hospital here? what do they expect will happen?") whereupon I rediscover that drink only ever hauled out at the most pompous affairs despite being drunk by a completely statistically insignificant number of even more pompous people. Pimms and Lemonade. Needless to say, three of them hit my stomach by the time you can list the 'ingredients' listed in that Pimms advert on TV (protip for Diageo: "jug" just isn't one).

Taking some of the obligatory camera-phone photos, I ready myself to leave (a bottle of vintage port is waiting for me at home by this point) before learning something which leaves me reeling.

Remember the ubiquitous scroll that everyone is holding in their graduation photos whilst putting on their least-creepy smile? It's blank - just a prop. At least, it used to be. Having learnt what they use nowadays, I opted out - at least until my PhD graduation. That degree which you hold in the picture which you parade in front of your in-laws, is nought but a plastic tube.

I'm so proud of you, son.

ANYWAY, I then went into town, received several heckles for wearing my gown (you would wear it too if you paid fifty quid for it), got drunk and had a lovely dinner paid for by Nikki. As I go to sleep for the first time with postnominal letters behind my name, I remember thinking to myself "every day should be like this."

Without the Pimms.

Abstract

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Reply from 209.85.227.191: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=55...

Hello reader(s)! [take heed, for this is literary optimism at its' finest]

Welcome - my name is Laurence and I'll be using this blog over the course of roughly the next four years [until circa 2014, then] to document my experiences as a PhD student in the form of a metathesis. I'll be discussing the, in my opinion, major departures from the undergraduate experience and the general lifestyle impact of "being a doctoral student" in the 21st century. Moreover, I'll be talking about the dynamics (social, professional and otherwise) of various aspects of those quirks unique to academia, viz. conferences, assistant teaching and being awkwardly positioned on the university social ladder somewhere between "postdoctoral researcher" and "that guy who's always first in line at the cafe at lunch".

So who am I, where am I from, why do I want to do this and what is the point of it all? Well, with identity-theft concerns thrown to the wind, I can tell you that I'm a 21 year old who was born in Cambridge and grew up in Johannesburg, and a graduate of the University of Nottingham, the ambivalent holder of a first class Joint Honours bachelors degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. Due to a) a complete apathy of the concept of doing a Masters degree as an interim step to going anywhere "better" and b) very much liking Nottingham as a place to live/drink/work/party, I decided to stay there for my postgraduate study as well.

I duly applied to the Functional Programming Laboratory of the School of Computer Science to study under Dr Graham Hutton, the very same researcher who supervised my undergraduate dissertation. As much as this appears to have been a choice borne from sloth, his research interests are in the same vein, if not artery, as my own. Convenience at its very best!

My dissertation topic has been tentatively set in sandstone as modular compilers, a term easy on the tongue and relatively complicated to explain, as all good research topics should be. However, in a fashion which I'm sure will be tiresomely repetitive by the time the next half-decade is out, I'm dogged by two...minor problems.

1. I've never considered myself great at programming in a 'modular' way. 
2. I know next to nothing about program compilation and compilers in general.

Challenge accepted, then.

I will also be spending (at least) the first year of my PhD as a resident tutor for Sherwood Hall, University Park. This means that not only am I spending my working week within the confines of a university research laboratory, but also that my home is within campus, where I will be surrounded by eager, studious freshers†  all the time, asking them to please stop spraying me in the face with a fire extinguisher, and no, I don't like listening to Children of Bodom at three in the morning, could they please go to bed? This should add an interesting dynamic/criminal conviction to my postgraduate experience, which I feel is worth documenting here for others perhaps contemplating walking the same path.

Why do I want to blog about what it's all like? Because I like writing with a comic twist. Because this will help me to recount all the anecdotes which I'm sure I'll have forgotten by writeup and which I'll so desperately need for solace when I'm at the bitter end. Because - if by putting this online, I convince a single other person that postgraduate study, for all its pitfalls and positives, is for them or not - I'll have helped someone, in some small way, to make a big decision. Maybe, when all is said and done I can convert this all into one of those ubiquitous advice books with a catchy cover promising to answer all related questions, make millions and retire (odds: poor).

Insofar as the timeframe for an update is concerned, I (hopefully) have a desk in the laboratory free for use from the beginning of August. You'll all have to bay in anticipation of then. There'll be pictures, no doubt. Lots.

Hopefully some of you reading this will continue to follow over the coming months - alternately if you think I'm going about this entirely the wrong way or have a suggestion to put forward, please comment!

Enjoy your summers!

† read: drunken, rowdy bastards