Blog: End Of Year One

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I've got the whole week off work this week, mostly for a conference in Dundee (where I am now - more about THAT another time!) but on Monday I was at RNUAL, a week of presentations by PhD students on their research so far. Originally I, and my fellow Comics Guys, were supposed to be there the whole week, but we managed to WRANGLE it so that we could do our presentations on Monday and then spend the rest of the week at the aforesaid conference.

I must admit I wasn't HUGELY looking forward to RNUAL. I've been to several of these events this year and though some of them have been Useful and Interesting the majority have been Largely Pointless and Boring, which is always RATHER annoying when you've had to take annual leave to do them. HOWEVER I must admit that this time it was DEAD INTERESTING - maybe it's because everyone has now had the best part of an Academic Year to properly get INTO their research topics, maybe it's because the high dropout rate means those who aren't interested in what they're doing have packed it in, or maybe I was just lucky, but I spent the whole day happily listening to people talk about what they're up to.

It was SO interesting, in fact, that during the first session I started to worry that mine would be a bit boring. I'm giving a presentation at the conference (later today, in fact) so had concentrated on that, so was a bit worried that the very quick talk I'd prepared would be a bit LIGHT. However, once I got started I found that I actually had QUITE A LOT extra to say and was SOMEWHAT ENTHUSIASTIC about it, so much so that my previously timed eight minute talk had to be stopped after fifteen!

Afterwards we had gentle questions from the mixed audience, but later in a tea break I received several rather more PIERCING THORTS from Knowleadgeable Comics Types, to the extent that I'm going to have to have a Proper Think about some of my ASSUMPTIONS. This is pretty much exactly what you want from these sort of events though, so I left for the day with a head full of IDEAS and INSPIRATIONS, ready to go home and start packing for SCOTLAND!

posted 29/6/2017 by MJ Hibbett

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