For those people who don’t know already, I’ve decided to drop down from my PhD and just do an MPhil this year. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and there are numerous reasons behind it—though mainly it’s a case of not wanting to do research full time (I enjoy it, but I’m not that committed to it) and it not getting me to where I want to be (chairman of a FTSE 350 company). It’s a shame, as I’ve got two really good supervisors who I get on with, plus a good research grant, but I think it’s better to leave in October than continue into the second year. Fortunately, I’m registered to do an MPhil anyway (the University sometimes registers first year PhD students as MPhil students anyway, though how they choose to do this appears to be an entirely random process), so I don’t need to change which course I’m on or anything like that. Hopefully I can also get a short extension in order for me to write up my thesis—apparently this is at the University’s discretion, but in practice this means my supervisors can decide.
So, come October I will stepping up my freelancing to a full time job, though hopefully leaving time to continue my commitments to Friends of the Earth, UKUUG and the Classical Association. Since I’ll be doing it full time, it will probably be worth activating my company (which is currently dormant) and invoicing clients through that mechanism. I think if I’m honest about it, this is really what I’ve wanted to do most of my life anyway—when I was eight I had already decided that I wanted to be a hotel manager with a chain of branches across the UK, so running a business has always been at the forefront of m mind.
In other news, I have been really out of it the last couple of days, which I think is as a result of doing too much. I’ve forgotten agendas, arrived late for events and not brought notes to meetings, which is not like me at all. I’ve also felt ill on a worryingly regular basis since starting my PhD, which is part of the reason why I want to leave now rather than sticking it out for another two years.