Abstract

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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