Inductions and introductions

At long last, the start of term has arrived, and with it has come the inevitable volley of meetings, talks and Q&A sessions that characterizes the start of any new academic enterprise. Thursday was ‘induction day’, when our ever-so-slightly-nervous cohort of new PGR (postgraduate research) students from all disciplines filed into the Alumni Auditorium to meet the staff at the Doctoral College and to learn about how the University works with (and for) postgraduate students.

We loved meeting all our new PGR students today on the Streatham Campus #ExeterPGR #Welcome

— UniofExeter Doctoral (@ExeterDoctoral) 15th September 2016

It was a pleasant surprise to see such a large amount of time being given over to wellbeing issues: the head of the University’s Wellbeing Services gave a well-received introduction to some of the issues that postgraduates frequently experience, as well as some reassurance on how to deal with them. There was a collective sigh of relief in the room as he acknowledged that it’s perfectly normal to feel overwhelmed at the start of postgraduate research, and that the lack of structure is not something that only scares a minority of students! The talks ranged in subject from MyPGR (Exeter’s graduate supervision records system) to using the library and taking part in the Researcher Development Programme, and were followed in the afternoon by College-specific inductions. For me, that meant a trip over to the Queen’s Building to meet my fellow Humanities students, before splitting off still further into a sub-sub-meeting with the modern linguists. There are five new PhD students this year – I’m the only one in French – and the two of us who attended the meeting had a wonderful time meeting our colleagues in other years, getting useful advice on everything from teaching to time management. I left the meeting with a distinct feeling of being part of the Department, particularly given the invitation extended to us to attend more general departmental meetings alongside subject-specific seminar series.

Friday began as a flashback to my year in Lyon, with coffee and pastries kindly laid on at Café Rouge by the French Society. This was swiftly followed by a slightly awkward cycle up to the main University campus, as I got used to the second-hand bike that I bought a couple of days ago, all the while trying desperately not to be late for perhaps my most important meeting so far. Before that, though, a message from (for?) our sponsors.

Yes, it turns out that both of my supervisors read this blog. I won’t be naming them here, but rest assured that rarely have I had a better incentive to proofread thoroughly for spelling and grammar before hitting the big blue ‘publish’ button. I bring this up because the first of my meetings with my primary supervisor – standard practice in the arts and humanities is to have two supervisors – was also on Friday, and it left me feeling rather optimistic about what’s still to come. I left with my first ‘task’ of the PhD, and with a concrete target: three to four thousand words placing my research topic in a broader context. This is something that my primary supervisor had done at the start of his doctorate, and it’s definitely a task that I’m looking forward to getting my teeth into. When I was applying for a PhD, one phrase that really appealed to me was ‘original contribution to knowledge’, and at the moment I’m confident that this first task will help me to get my feet under the table, as well as pinpointing exactly what it is that will guide me through the three years of a PhD project.

My work for the next couple of weeks, then, will consist largely of reading secondary material, making notes, and writing 250-word ‘reflections’ on each in turn (following here the advice I read somewhere – I wish I could remember where! – about writing from the outset). In the more immediate term, though, I’ve got plenty of things to be getting on with, from preparing for my next rowing outing (more on that in a future blog post!) to sorting out a study desk. Something tells me that the next few weeks will pass by very quickly indeed.

Cover image: University of Exeter on Flickr. Used (and cropped) under a Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 license.