Wednesday, September 26, 2007
All Change
It's the start of a new academic year and it's all change around here. One of the students I have been particularly close to in my old lab group finally submitted his thesis and is leaving the department. Another student in my old lab group is just about finishing up in the lab and will hopefully be written up and submitted in reasonable time (my old supervisor seems very keen on traumatising his now unpaid, stressed students by trying to get them to help project students and stuff in the lab and not being at all helpful with actually writing up and getting submitted in a reasonable time frame. I could post loads about how out of order my PhD supervisor was with the writing up and submission phase of doing a thesis). It will be so quiet in the lab space I do most of my experimental work as there are loads of people due to finish this coming academic year and very few new students to take their place. Apparently this pretty much comes down the RAE and it not being such a good financial deal for the centre to have lots of PhD students anymore, they are more interested in recruiting research fellowes. It is a real shame as there has been quite a buzz around the centre with lots of sociable students and people being busy and productive and now it's really quiet and empty a lot of the time.
It's not quite all doom and gloom and emptiness as there is a new PhD student just starting with my current boss. I was showing him the experimental system we use and how to prepare samples and stuff and had a good chat with him and he seems great. He is certainly competent and sensible in the lab and seems to be careful and quick at getting to grips with everything. It seems like we are quite lucky to be getting a new student in the lab as there seem to be very few new students in any of the labs I work in this year. It's also slightly disappointing to see that out of the few new students, there isn't a single female this time around.
It's not quite all doom and gloom and emptiness as there is a new PhD student just starting with my current boss. I was showing him the experimental system we use and how to prepare samples and stuff and had a good chat with him and he seems great. He is certainly competent and sensible in the lab and seems to be careful and quick at getting to grips with everything. It seems like we are quite lucky to be getting a new student in the lab as there seem to be very few new students in any of the labs I work in this year. It's also slightly disappointing to see that out of the few new students, there isn't a single female this time around.
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