Since the last time, a lot has happened.
I have done my minor correction for my thesis, which was approved on my birthday. This interesting coincidence lead to a situation where the letter from the Registry ended up stating that my degree was awarded on my birthday. I also submitted my thesis to the library. Due to publication opportunities, the full text is not accessible but the doi is present now: https://doi.org/10.17630/sta/186
This officially concludes my PhD journey. Done and dusted.
Now, I am in Glasgow and just started as a post-doc at the University of Glasgow.
Back in April – June, while the correction was slowly happening, I was spending quite a lot of time teaching. Delivering two tutorials, lab demonstration, and various set of markings: one full third-year module, two second-year tutorial groups.
The other thing I was juggling during this time was job hunting. I was quite anxious about deciding which job to apply. I spent more time thinking ‘oh is this position targeted for someone more senior?’ ‘Do I have the skillset for this?’ rather than actually applying. When I told this to my second supervisor, he said “You can’t choose a job until you get offers! Go and apply!” This pushed me to apply for a job, which I ended up getting.
Fast forward to today, I am working as a research associate on a project with Rakuten Mobile looking into edge computing and autonomous networks.
After sorting various details with the HR, I applied for a visa, and I began looking for a flat.
I applied for the visa as the headlines of how Home Office is under pressure for passport renewal as well as VISA issuing for refugees. Both the HR and myself effectively expected and planned for the longest wait time, which was absolutely the right thing to do. (it’s incredible how it was right on dot with the ‘up-to’ duration they stated on the website, seems to have taken public holiday into account)
Once the visa application was sent away, flat hunting began. I quickly learned, within the first few days of looking around that the rental market was rather moving fast. Any sensible option seemed to disappear the marked within the week it was advertised. More specifically, within the first hour or two, all the viewing slot seemed to fill up and they’d find someone within that pool. I set aside a week to find a viewing slot and I was panicking the morning before the day I was planning to go to Glasgow. As I rang up a handful of agents, after few tries, I slowly realised how bad this was. One of the agent kindly explained the situation and effectively encouraged to keep doing what I was doing; set an alert online, use the online form to book a viewing slot as soon as you see one, and occasionally call to see if I’m lucky. In the late afternoon, as I almost gave up for that day, I scraped one viewing slot. So I went on a 3 hour bus journey the next day.
After paying 9 pounds something for a day-rider ticket, and sat on the bus for three hours, my partner and I made it to the buchanan bus station. We then hopped on the subway, had lunch, and headed to the viewing. I was thinking “Do I have to come back again? How many bus trips do I have to do to find a place?” As I was not too hopeful for this particular property and to be quite realistic, even if I applied, I was quite certain there are others applying as well. But, at the end of the viewing, the agent suddenly said “ah, you wanted to see <insert street name> too right? Someone just dropped out, do you want to come after this?” This lead to another viewing somewhere closer to the train/subway station, and an ‘online’ viewing for another two properties.
One thing I learnt from this process was that there are certainly some level of interviewing going on during the viewing. As one of the things we got told was that we are now *allowed* to put application to other properties with video viewings where they send you the video of the property rather than being in person.
Things moved rather quickly from that day. we were shown one more property over the video call, and I sent in the applications for all of the properties we viewed. The very next day, I got a call from the letting agent saying that I got the second one on the list. Five days later, I got the contract through. One thing I struggled in the flat hunting process was the pace. The real estate market is pretty wild. Everything seems to be moving just so fast that it leaves little to no room for people involved to make any informed/sensible decision let alone this fear factor of “will I find something if I turn down the ones I got?” or “will I be disadvantaged if I turn down any?”
The move to Glasgow, or rather, moving away from St Andrews was quite emotional for me. Pretty much a third of my life was spent in St Andrews; I started my undergraduate back in September 2012. This September effectively marked the end of 10 years I spent in St Andrews (minus, the gap between my undergraduate and PhD and few months away here and there back in Japan during the holidays)
Just before my viva, February 2022 was just 10 years after the day I first set my foot in to this town for a weekend visiting day at the School of Computer Science, which is when I decided I’d come to St Andrews for my undergraduate. The day that literary changed my life. Little did I know that I was going to be here 10 years later finishing PhD. Just like September 2012 fresher-me had no clue that I’d be in Glasgow with PhD. While I knew someone who did an undergraduate at St Andrews, did PhD, then went on to do a post-doc in Glasgow, I did not imagine I was going to be doing exactly that 10 years later.
So here is another long update after long silence. Next update shall be bit shorter and quicker than this. With things moving and changing quickly, I’m sure there will be plenty to write about.