Welcome to the Active Vision Lab

What do you know, I'm an official student after all!

This week is my first "on the job", but there's still a lot of settling in to be done. As ever, the matriculation process is a little hectic and leaves you with the feeling that surely there is a simpler way to do things. Nevertheless, I have secured a student card (with a truly awful picture - I'll need to see what can be done about that), my university email and my new start has been advertised on my Lab's website. It's called the Active Vision Lab (or AVL) and you can read all about it here. We're actually very lucky in that all the projects running from the lab are really interesting and it's a great set of people to be working with!

So what have I done so far as an official PhD student? Well, there was a lot of checking online modules and a great deal of excitement at being able to select "Doctorate of Philosophy" as my course title. I also had the opportunity to meet two other girls starting their PhD's this year who I hadn't met before. Both are lovely, and have really exciting projects too! Altogether, there are five or six new PhD students starting across this month and next, and I think it really makes a difference having so many people starting all together. It certainly makes it a little less formidable and makes you feel more like part of the group. Two of the other students I know already from my undergrad years, which is nice too.

I've been in and around the building, which I love because it feels like coming home and also because the building is rather attractive (even if I am a little biased). I've done some work too and I definitely find it easier to be productive in uni as opposed to at home. I'm still waiting to find out where my office is going to be, but since so many people need to be accommodated it's understandable it's taking a while. Once I do have some space, I've got all my stuff ready to move in - books, stationery, plant and all!

We have a Welcome to the School party on Wednesday and a Welcome to the Lab lunch on Friday (I will be eating well this week haha) and after that, classes start. It's exciting times! For now, I'm plodding away with some reading and trying to think about what my first experiment might be. Whatever I'm doing though, it's nice to know I'm officially part of the School again.