It has been a wobbly four weeks whilst I transferred myself from one University to another. It’s also been a month of completing and signing of pre-PhD commitments which were agreed before I knew for definite that I would be transferring this October to the Creative Industries department at the University of West of Scotland. I signed off the last of them yesterday (a preliminary research project for a client, into network analysis patterns, building links between the Birmingham Media School and the Screen Media Lab at Birmingham City University) and have spend the majority of today, filling in small week long boxes and clearing out my laptop in order to finally getting my life organised to take on the PhD as my “full time career”.

That’s a minimum of 35 hours a week – something that I’m very happy about, as in terms of being able to structure and organisation my work load – a part time PhD without a permanent source of income was one mean feat, but did not leave much room for independent study time nor did it pay for my telecommunication bills (124 pounds a month to keep me and the lad connected full-time – somebody’s making money from digi-hype and it ain’t me!).

My world wind trip to Scotland (Loughborough >Birmingham > Glasgow >Ayr >Glasgow >Birmingham >Loughborough in 48 hours.) was a success. It was a nice feeling being back at the Ayr campus, still the crackly wifi, my dongle doesn’t work (but I’ve always struggled with t-mob signal in Ayr), but it was nice to be back in the place I studied for 4 and a half years.

However, ironically, I won’t be there much at all. The reality is that my library access is arranged through SCONAL (where I’m going to be on the books at Loughborough University, a mere 20 minutes away on the bike) and I will be flitting around the country to balance supervision sessions. I’m still waiting for my student card and athens access (the things you take for granted) but when that is up and running, it is expected I don’t need to be anywhere in particular to access the information and communicate with the people I require. Ideal.

And on that note, now the hard work begins.