For those of you expecting an embarrassing story about my tooth I will have to let you down. It has an abscess and the whole tooth will have to be removed on Thursday; as I said in my last post, I am not looking forward to this!
It is my last full day in work today, possibly forever (only kidding). On Monday I regain the life of a student which I sadly lost a year ago this very month. One year of hard labour has certainly taken it's toll on me.
Some time ago I received an email which made me laugh (and eulogise about my student times) so I thought I would post it here out of respect for my new profession: full-time PhD student.
THINGS THAT CHANGE WHEN YOU LEAVE UNIVERSITY
1. 6:00 am is when you get up, not when you go to sleep
2. Having sex in a single bed is absurd.
3. You keep more food than beer in the fridge.
4. Your fantasies of having sex with three women with lesbian tendencies are replaced by fantasies of having sex with anyone at all.
5. You don't volunteer for clinical trials at the local hospital.
6. You know all of the people sleeping in your house.
7. You hear your favourite song in the lift at work.
8. Informative TV does not include Richard and Judy.
9. The bank manager doesn't write threatening letters any more.
10. You carry an umbrella.
11. Seven-day benders are no longer realistic.
12. You don't go to Tesco's with all your friends.
13. You have standing orders and direct debits.
14. The heating works in your house.
15. Your friends marry and divorce instead of get together and breakup.
16. You pay the government thousands of pounds every year.
17. You go from 130 days of holidays to 20.
18. Jeans and a jumper no longer qualify as 'dressed up'.
19. You're the one calling the police because those damn kids next door won't turn down the stereo.
20. You get out of bed in the morning even if it's raining.
21. Washing up is not an annual ritual.
22. Older relatives feel comfortable telling sex jokes around you.
23. You don't know what time the kebab shop closes anymore.
24. Your car insurance goes down and your car payments go up.
25. You feed your dog Pal instead of McDonalds.
26. You don't get ideas for drinks from local tramps.
27. You don't put half-finished curries in the fridge to eat later.
28. You don't spend half your day strategically planning pub crawls.
29. You "hate scrounging students".
30. You no longer have a strange attraction to road signs when drunk.
31. Sleeping in the lounge is a no-no.
32. You can't persuade your flatmates to 'Drink till dawn'.
33. You don't spend Wednesday afternoons in the pub.
34. You always know where you are when you wake up.
35. You no longer take naps from noon to 6 p.m.
36. A fire in the kitchen is not a laugh.
37. You go to the chemist for Panadol and antacids, not condoms and pregnancy test kits.
38. A £3 bottle of wine is no longer 'pretty good stuff'.
39. You can remember the name of the person you wake up next to.
40. You actually eat breakfast foods at breakfast time.
41. You don't have mice living in your kitchen.
42. Grocery lists are longer than pot noodles & cans of lager.
43. You don't go to Liquor Save to buy Vodka.
44. You have vacuumed.
45. Breaking the law means doing 40 in a 30 zone.
46. 'I just can't drink the way I used to' replaces 'I'm never going to drink that much again'.
47. Over 90% of the time you spend in front of a computer is for real work.
48. You don't experiment with banned substances.
49. You don't get drunk at home, to save money, before going to a pub.
50. Lunchtime is not 'the morning'
Some may think that this is an exagerrated list but I assure you that it fits 90%. I never liked pot noodles and I never experimented with banned substances; otherwise it's pretty much true.
But I am determined to treat this PhD as a job, a challenge even. There is no way I will return to those heady days of being an undergraduate student where I achieved nothing in four years except receiving a piece of paper at the end and building the best theme park ever on rollercoaster tycoon.
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I'm famous. Well not really but here is my picture in the Liverpool Echo. It was on page 27 or something like that but it was in a heart special that they were running. In the background is Paul Willgoss from GUCH who came along to support the cause and is an avid Arsenal fan, pictured with Xabi Alonso's shirt; this things people do for charity.
The Echo is owned by Trinity Mirror who also own a smaller local newspaper in the town where I grew up (just outside Liverpool). I am thinking of writing to them to see if they will repeat the story so I will be in more than one newspaper. Perhaps then I can get that Wikipedia article I so desperately want. ;-)
If you have anymore ideas for publicity then please leave a comment below or email me through my profile. Cheers.
