It is. I'm really excited. Really excited. I look forward to work. It's awesome. It's... weird.
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| Although not entirely representative weather, it IS a bit less damp here in the midlands! This is the footbridge from the University campus across a busy road to the medical school and hospital. |
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| The campus is quite "American" with lots of dormitories scattered about lovely green hills with a token lake near the union. |
I started at the University of Nottingham as an independent research fellow (vaguely the equivalent of an assistant professor in the US) and it was a frustratingly slow start. I knew it would be a bit awkward, with a job technically in one department (Medicine, inside the hospital) but practically in another (MRI centre, in Physics, in the University), but it was an HR farce; no one could tell me who my line manager was so no paperwork could be signed to get me on the payroll or equip me with an IT account. I'm still not in possession of a hospital badge, so at 4pm I get trapped inside of my office hallway, but things are improving.
I have offices (two of them), and their locations are relatively prestigious (although the decor is sometimes painful). That might sound trivial or petty, but it does give me a boost of professional confidence when the majority of new people I meet assume I'm a graduate student, regardless of how I dress. My fellowship comes with a little pot of cash, and my first foray into purchasing orders brought me my partner in crime, a lovely high-spec research desktop computer that runs shiny speedy Linux and goes by the name of Daphne.
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| Office in the hospital, complete with purple be-flowered walls and puke-colored checkerboard floors. I'm by the door, Chris by the window, so far no takers for a squished middle seat. |
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| New office in the MRI centre with a "borrowed" Windows computer and a seat by a window and radiator. No roommate yet... |
But what is most excellent is that I'm my own person. There has been an odd step change from semi-independent post-doc to quite emphatically independent research fellow. Sometimes that isn't a great thing: I don't have the one obvious person to seek advice from or run ideas past like I had in Cardiff. But, there is an entirely addictive feeling of freedom that comes with the post. I have a project idea? I'll learn some new stats, design the experiment, and apply for funding. I want to try a whole new scientific technique? I'll go email some professor in Psychology and figure out how to make it happen. I think I should collect this dataset instead of that dataset? OK, I'll do that. I really only have to convince myself that it's a good idea, although I'm learning perhaps that is harder than convincing less interested superiors. So I'm now submitting a project grant, making new collaborations with other professors, and introducing new data acquisition protocols to the MR centre. It's a blast.
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| Meet Daphne, the first thing I bought with my own independent research money. She's a stonkingly powerful workhorse, and a lady. |
