Hopefully I wont Roe the day I went to this meeting.

I tossed the idea of writing a new blog back and forth before settling on keeping Radjeworks. It's been a hell of a long time since I wrote anything of any depth, and a lot of it shimmers with the sort of innaccuracies you only notice after working your face off studying them for exam season and dissertation. It stands as a testament to the learning process though, and there are a few articles scattered within that talk a little about my own mini-adventures. Consider everything after the last post (in Feb 2011) to be of the past, and we'll move on to some exciting adventures in the upcoming few days.

It seems odd, considering how all-consuming 4th year was at the time, that I can sum up the past few months in a few paragraphs. The rest of February, March and April were dominated by the 100% examination modules and my honours project. My friends and classmates in Dundee will remember (with varying degrees of distaste) what it felt like to have every conversation eventually lead back to coursework and the impending doom of assessment. Procrastination became a way of life for me, not because I was a lazy student but because I could no longer feel entirely guilt-free when not doing coursework. Perhaps because of that, I pushed all of my focus into my honours project. If you're interested; the final title was "The application of models of sexual selection to between sex competition". It gave me an excuse to go into way more detail about evolutionary perspectives of human behaviours rather than get stuck looking at the less thrilling 'social psychological' aspects.

Along with Advanced cognitive psychology, advanced forensic psychology and education and health, I passed my last year with flying colours and accepted a 1st class degree with pride and a great deal of relief. Graduation was an absolutely wonderful experience. Strawberry tarts, champagne, garden parties on warm summer afternoons, the incredible ceremonies and most importantly, the friends and their oh so very proud families. Standing beside my good friends Gavin (1st class in computing) and Paul (1st class in Mechanical Engineering) was a special moment. All from the same year, same school, same town.

So. What's next?

Summer was spent in a really well decorated and plush limbo in which I had a really great time. I moved out of my flat in Dundee... I miss it, but it was definitely time to leave... to come back to Dunfermline to live with my parents. The PhD / Research assistant job hunt became all the more fervent for the loss of independence, but my parents have always been understanding, fair and nice to be around. We havent had to work too hard to keep the peace :). During the first part of summer I stayed with Paul and Katie so I could carry on at the library and save like crazy for the gap between employment and employment. Paul and I got through a lot of ace multiplayer games and I haven't had a good cup of tea since the last one Katie made me. Sigh. I had forgotten the good parts of living with flatmates. Eventually though they moved back to their respective homes also, and I had to leave the library behind. The ladies at Douglas made sure I departed in style with a case of beer and loads of pastries!

Little bit of free publicity for Dean Koontz here.

After coming home, there wasn't much to do besides apply for work/ PhDs and spend time with equally restless friends. Edinburgh zoo, Dunfermline Glen to feed the squirrels, Glasgow, Stirling to do the tourist thing. Lots of visits to pubs and playing games, all the time taking breathers to apply for a position here or there. The process has been one of rejection and a lack of feedback thus far, but it was never going to be simple so my moral hasn't dropped too much. At the beginning of August I used a chunk of my savings to go on a great venture to France with parents, then back to Norway to see Mia'n'co. We spent most of the time in Mia's Cabin just across the border in Sweden, where I got to meet such a fantastic group of their friends. We went canoing and swimming in the nearby lake, had campfires and played an overwhelming amount of yahtzee. It was here I made friends with Torun, who will feature later on in this summary!

Every one of these people is an individual and compelling argument for a huge bridge connecting Scotland and Norway.

Now that Autumn has begun, things have changed. The focus is now very strongly on the application process and a sort of terror-based curiosity about where I will end up and what I will be doing. After a meeting with my Ex-tutor Fhionna, I started volunteering with Vera, the tutor who taught the communication part of communication and consciousness; and basically all of the language stuff we've done in the past 4 years. More recently Vera approached me to act as a casual paid research assistant on a different project. One of the people I met during my duties in the volunteer research, Kenny McAlpine, expressed interest in having me give a small seminar to some of his 4th year students about the research process. In short, I've begun adding bits and pieces to my CV through a combination of genuine interest and luck. My friends have, in the main, already left limbo and are well on their way to future success. I have to congratulate them on how readily their hard work in Uni has paid off! 

Only a couple of days ago, I received a reply to an email I sent to a tutor in The University of Roehampton enquiring about some advertised PhD positions. They were the type of advertisements that gave you free reign to design your own project proposal, but hinted very strongly that the best path to success in the process would be to get in touch with some of the potential supervisors and see what they suggest. My attention was grabbed by the department of psychology's access to an fMRI machine, and the centre for research in cognition, emotion and interaction (CRICEI)'s focus on combining neurological data with psychological phenomenon. To really top it off, these findings are often applied to areas such as anxiety and social behaviours. The tutor expressed an interest in my explanations of my motivation for applying for the PhDs there, and invited me to come meet with him and a co-worker who was also keen to meet me. I was thrilled at a chance to discuss their work and to research it well enough to discuss potential projects leading from it. As a result, I have booked flights and will be heading down to Roehampton this coming week! Torun, you will recall me mentioning a couple paragraphs above, has kindly offered me a place to stay for the couple of days I will be down south. I can't wait to see her, and to be getting on a plane again. 

This weekend is dedicated to researching the work of Dr Jon Silas, Dr Joe Levy and many of the big names in the mirror neuron area as suggested to me by my old tutor, Clare Cunningham. If this meeting goes well, it could be a real advantage to my eventual application, and Roehampton is definitely a really good place to end up. I believe my blog would be a good way to write up my train of thought as I gain more insight into the complicated subjects, so keep your eyes peeled for more in the upcoming days. Maybe even hours.