Rotherham

I have been reading the other blogs left by Students who are also blogging for the University of Salford. Maddie a third year radiography student who is in Finland and Alex a second year student who is currently in Warsaw. How amazing that they get to travel to the far reaches of Europe as part of their degree; I am starting to believe that I may have got the short straw when I picked my PhD because I spent last week in Rotherham.

Before someone from the Rotherham tourist board (do they have one?) gets on to me and tells me that Rotherham is a great place, I'm sure it is but it's not exactly a European capital of culture.

Anyway, the reason I was there was to visit my Industrial sponsor. Many PhDs are funded by companies and public bodies outside of the University. Mine is part funded by the European Union and part funded by Corus. This puts me in an excellent position as I get to not only use the equipment here at the University (we have some pretty neat stuff) but I also get to use the equipment at Corus (they also have some pretty neat stuff).

My trip involved taking some samples I had made here at the University on the train over to Rotherham and getting them checked out by their research team. Apart from having to get up at 5.45am it was a great commute - there are not too many people out at that time.

Because they are an industrial research group they have very different analysis equipment to the equipment we have here and it also works much faster. The results were stunning in just two days I had learnt how to use most of the kit there and I had plenty of results to take back to the University and digest. The same work would have taken two weeks at the University. This is not because the University's equipment is not as good, we just have it for very different reasons and speed is not one of them.

The staff at Corus were very good and made me feel like part of the team for the couple of days that I was there, they also pay all transport costs which is excellent. I am booked in to go back just before Christmas so I am now busy creating more work to take with me.

My first post

Sitting here, working out what first line could possibly start a year's worth of blogging, I have realised that it is very much like when I sat in the same chair working out what possible first line could start my PhD thesis.

It was at this point that someone mentioned to me that you always start from the middle of a thesis and work backwards and forwards at the same time. It seemed like a strange concept at first but I gave it a go, meaning that my first line read something like "the graph below proves that the initial hypothesis of a proportional relationship was correct."

Disregarding the fact that I had not written down an initial hypothesis at this point it certainly made it easier to start. Can I apply the same rule to this blog? Well I'm going to give it a go.

I started my PhD one year ago pretty much to the day, a lot has happened in a year and while I hope to convey what is happening on a day-to-day basis I also hope to get across just how much has happened in my first year of study.

I can safely say at this point that a PhD has been the right choice for me, it doesn't work for everybody but I have thoroughly enjoyed it so far and I am very happy with my progress. Keep checking back to see how I am getting on and how I coped entering the world of academic research.