At work today, I was looking through the students record system to find information on PhD students - whether or not they’d completed their courses in the allotted time limit, that kind of thing. All records have codes against them that mean various things - successfully completed, left, fully registered, transferred, etc. There’s also a withdrawn code, for students who’ve left before completing their course, which is suffixed with a letter describing the reasons for them leaving - P for personal, M for medical, F for financial. Sometimes it’s a combination - PM for personal and medical reasons. I came across one this afternoon that I loved, though - a student with the code WD FP, withdrawn for financial and personal reasons. Looking at the further comments on their record, it read ‘Withdrawn - won £250,000 on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.’ And let’s face it - who’d want to carry on studying for a doctorate if they won that kind of money?

After all the on again - off again problems with the secondment I was offered back in May, I was finally able to start on 3rd September. I’m now in a different office within the University, in a job with more responsibility at a higher level than my previous job, dealing with postgraduate research student funding.

One week in, and I’m both thrilled and awed. The learning curve is incredibly steep, and the work is incredibly intense, and I don’t think I’ve been as busy in the past five months as I’ve been in the past five working days. I’m loving it. I don’t know whether it’s the ‘honeymoon period’, with the excitement of a different job, but I have a feeling it’s something I’m really going to enjoy, regardless.

I’m going to be in post for a full year, until 29th August 2008, and then back to my old job, unless events conspire to keep me there or I move on to a different post. Either would be good - I think I would be more satisfied with a continued challenge, and challenging it currently is!

I’m absolutely gutted - for financial reasons, my secondment has been postponed for the foreseeable future. Until various meetings and committees have been held, I won’t know if I’ll be able to go. It may be cancelled altogether, or I may be able to go, but not until later. It’s very frustrating not knowing, and all I can do is wait.

Back at the start of April, just before I went on holiday, an email came round the division advertising a one year secondment position in a different department. It was a grade higher than my current post, and sounded like just the sort of thing I could do. I pulled together a hasty application letter, and sent it off the day I left for London.

Back home on the 14th, there was a letter waiting for me, inviting me to interview on Tuesday 17th. Two hours after the interview, I got a call offering me the job. I did write a long post about the difficulties in getting approval to go on the secondment, but in hindsight I’ve removed all that. Suffice to say, by the 24th I finally received confirmation that I would be released to go.

My new job starts on 2 July, and runs for a year. It’s very different to what I’m doing now, and I’m really looking forward to it.

In the Union shop this afternoon, as I moved up to the till, one of the older shop assistants was talking to a student assistant about Ivor the Engine, a 1970s cartoon.

“You don’t remember Ivor?” he asked. “Welsh train, you know?”
“Chitty-koom,” I said with a grin.
“Exactly!” the older shop assistant said.

The student looked completely blank.
“Never seen it in my life,” he said.

It’s at times like that when I realise that by the time he was born, Ivor the Engine had rolled into the train shed for the last time over 10 years previously.

“God,” I said, “that makes me feel really old.”
“Yeah,” he laughed.

I paid up and slunk off arthritically.

Several years ago, I worked for a technology company on a service contract for a financial company. I didn’t particularly like it there and, to cut a long story short, didn’t mesh with the company values or some such management-speak bullshit. As a result, I was more or less forced into resigning, done in an extremely underhand manner that left a really bitter taste in my mouth.
Despite living in the same city, I’ve not seen any of the people I worked directly with since I left there over four years ago. Saying that, I frequently see someone I knew there on the tram through the city centre. For the first time, I said hi to him this evening, and asked him if he was still working there. He said he was, that not much had changed, and I asked after the people I’d worked with. My ex-manager’s boss was now an account manager, he said, and no longer based in Sheffield. He didn’t know one of the women I worked with. My ex-manager, on the other hand, had been made redundant when the company lost the service contract.
“Well,” I said, “I’d say I was sorry to hear that, but they screwed me over, so I’m not.”
And I didn’t feel a shred of guilt.

It’s Registration Week here at the University, or Fresher’s Week, if you prefer. I’ve spotted a few foreign students wandering around in the past couple of weeks, getting their bearings, but today is the first day that the new students will be about.

Thirteen years ago today, I was in the same position. September 18th was a Saturday, and my parents loaded up the car with all my stuff, and we drove down to South Wales. I had a place at the University of Glamorgan, and a room in Forest Hall, one of the on-campus halls. I’d visited the University over the summer, and they were refurbishing Forest Hall. It was pretty much a complete gutting of the old building, and it was due to look pretty impressive when it was finished for the new term. Unfortunately, the best laid plans never work out the way you want them to, especially when it comes to construction, and me and mum arrived at the halls to find them still being finished. Plans were in place for returning students to temporarily accommodate them in halls at Cardiff University, 25 minutes away. Buses were laid on to get students to and from the University, and we were told we should be able to move into Forest Hall within two weeks. Heading down to Cardiff, we discovered the halls were a) huge; b) deserted; and c) scattered. We weren’t clustered in any one specific area. My mum, never one to be quiet, complained bitterly to the poor student union rep, a guy I had a crush on for the majority of my first year. She threw in the fact I had epilepsy, and that if anything happened, etc.. Medication controlled it well, but it was a pretty solid argument, and they weren’t to know. In the end, the University agreed to put me up in B&B accommodation along with a girl I’d made friends with. We stayed in excellent comfort just fifteen minutes walk from the University for 10 days before moving in to Forest Hall.

I know that making my way out of the University today at lunchtime is going to be like getting through a concert crowd. There’ll be students everywhere. I should sharpen my elbows in preparation.

I came across a baby rat today at lunchtime.
I was heading across the concourse towards the students union, when I caught sight of it out the corner of my eye. It was moving slowly along the ground at the bottom of the wall, and kept stopping, curling up, and then carrying on again. Poor thing didn’t look at all well. It wasn’t much bigger than my gerbils. I watched it for a minute or so, then a woman came up behind me, looking similarly sympathetic. She popped into one of the sciences buildings to get a box, and I scooped up the rat. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but in the end I took it to Animal and Plant Sciences. One of the academic staff was passing by as I gave the rat-in-a-box to the porter, and came to have a look.

“Yes,” he confirmed, “that’s a baby rat. Kill it.”

I made protesting noises and clutched the box to my chest, and the professor told the porter to take it upstairs, where it’d be taken care of, and then walked out the door.

“They’ll kill it, won’t they?” I said, even though I already knew the answer.

The porter nodded. “Sorry.”

There’s not much you can do with a sick rat, especially a young one that’s probably dying anyway and has got separated from its mother. Even so, if I didn’t have my gerbils, I would have taken it home.

Outside the office, in the park, there’s a permanent puddle. Sometimes it’s just mud, and sometimes it’s like a miniature pond, and the ducks swim on it, or drink from it. If the weather is bad, checking the puddle confirms if it’s actually raining or not - it’s often hard to tell with all the trees and everything.

This morning, I had to move offices. I very reluctantly swapped with another guy who needed more light. I can’t see the puddle any more. I had to squint hard out a different window to see if it was actually raining a few minutes ago. I miss my puddle.

Here at work, I’ve been going through written post it note comments made by staff in an open forum about improvements for the future. There’s the wide spread of comments and ideas you’d expect in a forum like that, and I’ve been collating them. I was confused and bemused to find a comment that simply said ‘Chelsea or Wigan!?’. I read it out to my office colleague, commenting that some football fan had obviously gotten bored during the forum. Ah, he said, no, that one’s very clever, I like that. He said that in the football Premiership league tables Chelsea were top of the board, spending lots and doing really well, whilst Wigan were further down, just spending average amounts and doing fairly well but weren’t amazing.
He’s right, that is a clever one, but I bet in 90% of cases it’d take a bloke to figure out what that one meant!