Have now been a PhD student for 2 weeks, although not officially as, of course, documentation takes a lot longer, so cannot tell Council Tax to no longer charge me, cannot tell TopShop to give me 10% off (I have no NUS card as I have no status), cannot get reduction at gym, have no payroll number (and no pay!) and am being asked to bring in my undergraduate degree certificate for THE THIRD TIME.
Everything seems to be working in treacle, everything takes ages to get and, as they’ve shunted me out of the department into Midwifery (no spare office space for what is the lowest of the low i.e. postgraduates), it is physically an effort to go find anything out (no phone and 2 weeks before I got a functioning PC).
Despite this, I love it here and absolutely do not wish to be anywhere else (this is a first for a melancholy soul like me). The day is my own, I can come in when I want (if at all) and do what I want when I get here. For the first week and a half I wandered in (approx. 10.30), met some tutor or other for coffee, and pretty much went home/shopping (approx. 2.30). Then it dawned on me that maybe I should just start…maybe the idea was that I should no longer need someone to tell me what to do, which is what I was pretty much waiting for. So I have spent the last 3 days in the library, photocopying articles, taking out books etc. nothing hard core – I'm basically just mooching around my vague area of research (keywords: ‘young people’, ‘offending’, ‘young people offending’).
I have my first supervision meeting at the end of the week with my 4 (!!!) supervisors, so I at least want to name-drop a couple of new researchers by then (so probably just a matter of scanning abstracts: I know the drill!). I also need to discuss how I want to ‘mange my team’. I am thinking that 4 supervisors (for me to supervise, it would seem)is perhaps a tad excessive.