Inter-con week
Feb. 16th, 2026 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
procyonraccoonScotiacon and Nordic Fuzzcon were even closer than usual this year, such that there was only a single week between them - giving only a temporary window to dip back into normal life before zipping off on another (fuzzy-oriented) trip.
At work, the most notable thing that has happend this far is that I've picked up yet another PhD student. Normally the new students begin in September/Octobeer, but international students have to apply for visas and the associated delay typically means their start is a bit later. In last year's admissions round we were able to make one international offer, and that student arrived last week and decided to work with me. This technically brings me to five students (!!), although one is graduating within a few months and another is a shared student initially being led by a postdoc supervisor. Admittedly I had some hesitation to sign onto a new student that nominally will be expecting to work with me here until the end of 2029... but the reality is I probably won't actually be going anywhere, and in any case I feel a particular responsibility for this student since I fought hard to ensure he was given an admit offer in the last year's cycle. Hopefully it goes well. On thing I can say is that for everything else that's been mixed in my life lately, I can at least be satisfied that I clearly have a group of current students who are willing to say good things about me when newcomers arrive.
Various other things are also going on at work. It's also that time when we start gearing up for PhD admissions and interviews to take in next year's cohort of year (so I've been reading lots of applications). I've been trying to overhaul our summer project assessment guidelines to better adapt to the reality that students can now easily fake certain types of project reports with GenAI (a general subject I am growing more and more alarmed/despondent over, but that's a post for another day). I also had to set up a campus visit by the external examiner of the MSc programme that I'm in charge of, which thankfully went smoothly in the end. And as always, there have been various other minor things going on constantly that quickly add up (it is amazing how busy I can be even when teaching subsides and even when there are no major deadlines in the imminent future...)
Saturday was also Valentine's Day. Considering that I spent a fair bit of time this week ruminating over the events of the past year it might be reasonable to think that this day would be a bit of a downer (it often was in the past for me even before the recent drama) although thankfully that wasn't really the case. I think one part of it is the realization that the day is not really about coupling/partnership (something I abstractly want) but romance (something that the past year demonstrated that I actually really don't, in any traditional sense). People who want that can have their fun and I will do my best to have mine. To try to help with that, I messaged some other friends in a group chat (most of whom are also single) to see if anyone wanted to go out to a pub in Manchester, but only got one positive reply, and I felt a little bit awkward that I might be going out for dinner with just one person on Valentine's Day since I didn't want to send the wrong idea about things. But it turned out he was feeling a bit sick anyway, and so it made sense that rather than meeting up in person we would just arrange an online gaming night which ended up being pretty successful despite being on very short notice.
Anyway, that's all behind me now and I'm off to Copehagen/Malmo again. I've been a little bit anxious about this con but lots of friends will be there and there'll be lots to look forward to, so I'm hoping it'll be a great time in the end.
At work, the most notable thing that has happend this far is that I've picked up yet another PhD student. Normally the new students begin in September/Octobeer, but international students have to apply for visas and the associated delay typically means their start is a bit later. In last year's admissions round we were able to make one international offer, and that student arrived last week and decided to work with me. This technically brings me to five students (!!), although one is graduating within a few months and another is a shared student initially being led by a postdoc supervisor. Admittedly I had some hesitation to sign onto a new student that nominally will be expecting to work with me here until the end of 2029... but the reality is I probably won't actually be going anywhere, and in any case I feel a particular responsibility for this student since I fought hard to ensure he was given an admit offer in the last year's cycle. Hopefully it goes well. On thing I can say is that for everything else that's been mixed in my life lately, I can at least be satisfied that I clearly have a group of current students who are willing to say good things about me when newcomers arrive.
Various other things are also going on at work. It's also that time when we start gearing up for PhD admissions and interviews to take in next year's cohort of year (so I've been reading lots of applications). I've been trying to overhaul our summer project assessment guidelines to better adapt to the reality that students can now easily fake certain types of project reports with GenAI (a general subject I am growing more and more alarmed/despondent over, but that's a post for another day). I also had to set up a campus visit by the external examiner of the MSc programme that I'm in charge of, which thankfully went smoothly in the end. And as always, there have been various other minor things going on constantly that quickly add up (it is amazing how busy I can be even when teaching subsides and even when there are no major deadlines in the imminent future...)
Saturday was also Valentine's Day. Considering that I spent a fair bit of time this week ruminating over the events of the past year it might be reasonable to think that this day would be a bit of a downer (it often was in the past for me even before the recent drama) although thankfully that wasn't really the case. I think one part of it is the realization that the day is not really about coupling/partnership (something I abstractly want) but romance (something that the past year demonstrated that I actually really don't, in any traditional sense). People who want that can have their fun and I will do my best to have mine. To try to help with that, I messaged some other friends in a group chat (most of whom are also single) to see if anyone wanted to go out to a pub in Manchester, but only got one positive reply, and I felt a little bit awkward that I might be going out for dinner with just one person on Valentine's Day since I didn't want to send the wrong idea about things. But it turned out he was feeling a bit sick anyway, and so it made sense that rather than meeting up in person we would just arrange an online gaming night which ended up being pretty successful despite being on very short notice.
Anyway, that's all behind me now and I'm off to Copehagen/Malmo again. I've been a little bit anxious about this con but lots of friends will be there and there'll be lots to look forward to, so I'm hoping it'll be a great time in the end.
