{"id":26,"date":"2007-07-22T16:34:35","date_gmt":"2007-07-22T15:34:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phdwhat.com\/where-does-this-blog-come-from"},"modified":"2012-03-23T15:28:16","modified_gmt":"2012-03-23T15:28:16","slug":"my-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phdwhat.com\/book\/my-department\/","title":{"rendered":"I am content"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Birmingham New Street station, trains to Hereford, Redditch or Longbridge stop at University train station after a short 10-minute ride. Once there, at a very short distance to the left from the little station, two fairly new buildings, and a modern-looking statue, mark the West entrance to the university campus.\u00a0\u00a0 One of the two buildings is my department. On the first floor, room 117 is my office. From what I have seen, I\u00a0 think the building is most decidedly above the average for university standards.<\/p>\n

\"building\"
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Here is a picture of my department.<\/p>\n

Office 117, I should mention, is the best student office in the building. It used to be even better once, when we had a small, round coffee table in the centre of it. By a swift rotation of my office chair, I could forsake my work for a while and easily land my feet on the coffee table. From such position, I could address my office mates with confidence. In that way, we often held ernest speeches on the importance of being Teaching Assistants\u2014a sub-category of Ph.D. students with certain teaching duties; once a prestigious position, it has recently fell\u00a0out of fashion due to threats from above to make us pay income tax on the extra money we earn from the teaching. Anyway, we did knock a few cups of coffee on the carpet, and now that the table is gone to some meeting room upstairs, only the brown stains linger unperturbed in the middle of office. Yet office 117 remains, in my view, the master Ph.D. office.<\/p>\n

What has my office, or my department, to do with my essay on Ph.D.? Perhaps not a great deal, but surely my office and department are important in my Ph.D. experience. More than my office, my entire life-setting is playing an important role in biasing, as I will point out in a future post, my considerations, analysis and moods on my experience.\u00a0 So why not to indulge for a moment on some aspects of the environment where the author lives.<\/p>\n

When I moved to Birmingham, after a depressing period in the dingy Selly Oak<\/a>—an area of Birmingham\u00a0 that never inspired my imagination, though inhabited mainly by students—I moved to the sparkling city centre. Perhaps too sparking at times: I do have reasons to complain, but in general, my mood and general state of mind have improved considerably.<\/p>\n

\"flat\"<\/p>\n

From my flat just behind Sherborne Wharf (here is a picture of the living room), I have measured the average time I take to walk to a number of useful places.<\/p>\n