So much going on at the moment, things seem to change drastically on a day to day basis…
QinetiQ PhD
I eventually decided not to apply for this, prompted by an email yesterday from the person who is organising things on the university end asking if I’d sent in my application. It was really hard writing a “thanks, but no thanks” reply, but I ended up saying that I wasn’t entirely happy with some of the work QinetiQ does and also that I didn’t want to commit three years of my life to a term of study at this point. I feel as if I’ve turned down a good opportunity, but at the same time I don’t really see any point in applying for a course if I can’t convince myself that I’d be happy doing it.
I also had a careers drop in session to discuss potential postgraduate stuff, but I couldn’t get much immediate feedback because the woman I spoke to didn’t have much expertise in the areas I wanted to ask about. She did take down some notes and has promised to email me sometime next week with more information after she’s spoken to some of her colleagues and possibly some employers, which is good because it means that I’ll hopefully have some feedback before the Easter break.
Gym stuff
Whilst waiting for everyone else to arrive I thought I’d give the running track a try, and set off round with the aim of doing one hundred laps. I quickly realised that wasn’t going to happen, but I did manage two lots of twenty five and then another ten or fifteen before I got tired and bored (running round and round on a circular track isn’t the most exciting way to spend time). I found out later than the track was 100m in length, so I’d effectively run about 6km at a speed of about 10km/h. Nothing spectacular, but I felt like I’d done a reasonable amount by the end of it.
I also played Rugby Fives for the first time, which was interesting. I’ve seen Tim and Jon play most weeks and been invited to join in, but until yesterday I didn’t actually own a pair of trainers, and I wasn’t going to play in a shirt and shoes. 🙂 It was more fun than I thought, I made a lot of mistakes but I didn’t expect to even manage to serve the ball so it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would have been.
Aikido ended up being rather painful at one point as I went crashing to the floor with a resounding thump followed by a cry of “argh that hurt!”. I don’t know if Danny did the technique wrong or I fell a different way than I should have done or a combination of the two (the most likely option) but it ended up with me falling backwards instead of sideways and my back/waist connecting with what felt like his knee. Whatever happened, it was the first time I’ve had to actually ask to leave the mats and take a rest for a few minutes. I felt bad for taking things a bit easier in the rest of the session, but I had no intentions of making the injury any worse. My back seems alright today, most of the pain is in my legs where I stretched a bit too far in Fives and no doubt partially down to the running as well.
Third year project
Had my final meeting with my supervisor today before the group demonstration next Wednesday. I’m not really sure how it went – he pointed out a lot of “problems” (from his point of view) which is good because it means I can fix them but it was a bit demoralising when he didn’t say anything good about the system and just criticised most of it. I get the feeling that he doesn’t like the way I do things, and at one point he said I should go work for Microsoft and then apologised as if he’d meant it in a bad way. This worries me a bit, because I really need to get a first on my project in order to stand a chance of getting a 2(i) overall, and my supervisor is also my default academic referee if anyone asks for one.
Thankfully I have no assessments tomorrow, so I can relax tonight at the pub with a few pints of whatever Sandbar has on tap.