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I would be really excited if I could start work on my PhD. I've been in college lots over the past couple of weeks, but all I've done can be summarised in three easy sentences:
1) Going to meetings.
2) Chasing up paperwork.
3) Shouting at people about disability stuff.
Basically:
Getting my registration paperwork has been a nightmare, possibly due to starting at a weird time of the academic year. Everything seems to involve three times as much bureaucracy as it should. I actually had paperwork in my hand on Friday, but after noticing the fees were twice what I was expecting I discovered it was for full-time study rather than part-time. And I couldn't just correct it myself, and they couldn't correct it on the spot even though I could have produced my offer letter from the department.
At this rate it'll be February before I have a student card, which is not pleasing me.
Also, Student Finance England are absolute numpties. ( Read more... )
And to make sure that no one in the School of Biological Sciences can turn around and say "we didn't know about [fill in the blank]", I've spent quite a lot of hours updating my Individual Student Support Agreement to cover being on a research course. This has involved Mark and Steve in the Disability Office, Caroline my Disability Mentor, Philip my supervisor, Richard my partner... It's still only 2/3 complete.
Paperwork. I hate paperwork! All this being proactive and making sure my needs are being taken care of eats up spoons that I should be using for... actual studying. I'm working along the lines that it's an investment now for much less hassle in the future, but it's hard to keep that in mind when you're two weeks into term and have done no work yet.
1) Going to meetings.
2) Chasing up paperwork.
3) Shouting at people about disability stuff.
Basically:
Getting my registration paperwork has been a nightmare, possibly due to starting at a weird time of the academic year. Everything seems to involve three times as much bureaucracy as it should. I actually had paperwork in my hand on Friday, but after noticing the fees were twice what I was expecting I discovered it was for full-time study rather than part-time. And I couldn't just correct it myself, and they couldn't correct it on the spot even though I could have produced my offer letter from the department.
At this rate it'll be February before I have a student card, which is not pleasing me.
Also, Student Finance England are absolute numpties. ( Read more... )
And to make sure that no one in the School of Biological Sciences can turn around and say "we didn't know about [fill in the blank]", I've spent quite a lot of hours updating my Individual Student Support Agreement to cover being on a research course. This has involved Mark and Steve in the Disability Office, Caroline my Disability Mentor, Philip my supervisor, Richard my partner... It's still only 2/3 complete.
Paperwork. I hate paperwork! All this being proactive and making sure my needs are being taken care of eats up spoons that I should be using for... actual studying. I'm working along the lines that it's an investment now for much less hassle in the future, but it's hard to keep that in mind when you're two weeks into term and have done no work yet.
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