Last week I finally delivered my paper at the postgraduate conference that I’d been worrying about for several months. It went much better than I expected and I was told that I managed to field all the questions admirably. About two minutes before I was due to go in, several people came over to say that my tutor (who is an expert in the area I was talking about, known for asking questions and also the current head of school) had turned up to see me deliver my paper. This certainly made me somewhat more nervous, but it also felt good to know that a busy academic was prepared to take time out of his schedule to hear me ramble on about the Periclean Citizenship Law of 451/0 B.
Giving a paper has also had the interesting knock-on effect of giving people the impression that I want to stay on and do a PhD in the department. I’m not sure yet whether I want to leave academia completely or perhaps carry on for a little longer. If I did a PhD I’d have to take a year out anyway, because I’ve not got time to get the AHRC funding forms in before the deadline of the 1st March, so I’d need something to fill that gap—it could be anything, though preferably an activity that involved me staying on campus so that I didn’t lose touch with people. The MEnt degree looks interesting, and would hopefully allow me to pursue business interests for a year whilst perhaps presenting another paper at a conference to keep my academic profile up. On the other hand, I might just step out into the real world and get a job like everyone else, but I think I will wait until I’ve been to the MSEC open day before deciding one way or the other.
As for everything else in life, I’ve been stupidly busy for the last month or so, to the extent that I’ve not been to aikido for two weeks and have probably missed quite a few other activities as well. I’ve probably been working a bit too hard, but I think after this weekend I’ll have cleared most of the work that I have to do and normal service of only being rather busy should be resumed.
Well done Paul!
Though a Masters of Entertainment would be a bit of wasteful year wouldnt it noticing you had done 4 years at uni already!