Some of the kids were really engaged and interested. Some weren’t, which is perhaps inevitable. The organisers had a nice system set up to encourage questions: if you asked a sensible, non-silly, question, you got a raffle ticket. At the end of the day there was a raffle draw for an iPad. There were a couple of very happy winners, but it also worked well as encouragement for the students not only to ask questions, but to ask some with a bit of thought behind them. A few did this in class or in other exposed spaces, but most waited and found me at lunchtime. Either way it takes a lot of courage… it’s an approach that I might think about using myself.

One girl came up to me after one of my workshops and very timidly asked me, “Before you started your job, how did you know that you could do it?”. It was perhaps the best question that I had all day, and I suspect represents not just her worries but those of many of her peers. I gave a fairly straightforward answer about how I had got feedback about my teaching, and I’d done some research before so I knew that I enjoyed that aspect, and so forth, and none of that was wrong – but it wasn’t the answer that she really deserved.

When I thought about it some more, later, I realised that what I should have said is,
“I didn’t. We can do things to try to find out if a job is right for us, but we can never be sure; at some point the only way to find out whether we can a do job — and whether we want to do that job — is to try it and see. And if it turns out to be the wrong thing for you, that’s not the end of the world, because you can change and do something different.”

It’s quite a time-consuming activity: 1.5-2 days to read the thesis carefully and think on it. And a minimum of a 3-day trip to do the exam (one day here, one day travelling each way). And that isn’t something that workload models allow for, so one can’t do too many. But the occasional one is not only essential for the system, it’s also good for the soul

It felt good. It helped me feel that what I do can make a difference; that it’s worthwhile, on the research side as well as the teaching. Maybe it will lead to future things – there is talk of a possible working group – but if it doesn’t, that’s OK too. It’s given a positive glow to the last couple of days.

The Friday after next will be my last day with the University of Hull; after a bit over 3.5 years, I’m moving on and fulfilling the ambition that I’ve had for a while to move back to Scotland.

In my time here I’ve kept a programme running, with positive evaluations, through a pandemic and then an overnight tripling of student numbers, as programme director and while teaching three modules. I’m proud of that, but it has come at a cost – both to my research trajectory and to my health.

I’ve learned a lot at Hull, and worked with some great people, many of whom I hope to continue collaborating with. Hopefully this will all help me in my new role, as Assistant Professor of Energy Technology at Heriot-Watt University. More specifically, I’ll be based at their Orkney campus, where I’ll be heading up the MSc Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transition. I have history there, as it’s where I did my PhD, so it’ll be nice to go “home”, and I’m excited to work with my new colleagues – both those I know from before, and those who have arrived there more recently. The intention is that I will also spend a portion of my time at the main campus in Edinburgh, so for central belt people out there I won’t be far away for all of the time!

I don’t have a Heriot-Watt email address yet, but I’m always available by the routes on the Contact page.

Before I leave Hull I’ll be attending Global Offshore Wind on their behalf – so if you’re going to be there next week and would like to meet up, give me a shout!

I went in without too much in the way of expectations – I’d had an unproductive day for mental health reasons (no big deal, it happens sometimes) so I wasn’t in a great mood, and I was anticipating a slightly boring ceremony, but wanted to support the students.

I was wrong. It was a joyous affair. It was wonderful to see my former students cross the stage and stand in front of their friends and families with proud smiles on their faces. Wonderful to see those who had excelled throughout, and those who had struggled a bit along the way. In the reception afterwards I was able to congratulate them in person (sometimes with difficulty – the music was loud!); many of them introduced me to their families, took selfies with me, etc.. Graduation selfies have worse lighting than field trip selfies, but much smarter clothes

I left after some hours with a big happy smile on my face, lifted up by other people’s celebration. So now I shall look forward to future graduations… and if any of today’s students are reading this, congratulations again!

When I agreed to be the internal examiner I underestimated how much time it would take.

• It took me about one and a half days to read the thesis in detail.
• Probably another half day, spread over a time, to arrange the date and the venue, catering and parking, etc. (catering actually ended up as “I go to B&M and spend a fiver on water and biscuits”. Because although the university should cover it, I gave up on trying to actually get a cost code from anybody)
• The exam itself took a few hours, but it’s intense and mentally draining so the amount of other stuff I was going to get done that day was limited.
• And now I have a fair bit of paperwork to do to follow up.
• Then in a few months time the student will send me his corrections and I’ll have to spend some hours checking that they are satisfactory.

It’s essential work, without which the system would collapse – but there isn’t actually time for it in the diary.

It’s also really enjoyable work, at least with a good candidate who clearly knows their stuff. It was a really rewarding few hours talking about interesting research, and I learned a lot from both the candidate and the more experienced external examiner. Then I spent the evening in the pub with the student, the external examiner, and the supervisor

I’m glad I did it, but I will be careful of agreeing again during the main teaching semesters.

…in about a month I’m going to be starting as Lecturer in Renewable Energy[1] at the University of Hull! I’m joining the Energy and Environment Institute, which is a multidisciplinary group with a specific mission that speaks to me. It sits outside of any department, but works with a number of them, and feels like it should be a good fit.

My feelings are complicated. I had planned to be in the US for more than the ~7 months that I will have spent here. I’m sad to be leaving without having had much time to really get to know a city that I was starting to like, or the country beyond its boundaries. At the same time, living here is feeling less and less comfortable politically, and I’m also happy to be moving “home”. There’s a certain amount of guilt in leaving a postdoc after six months at relatively short notice, because it always has an impact on projects when that happens; but it’s a great career move, and I’m so happy to have the opportunity! The jump to a first faculty post is a big one. I’m a little daunted, but also excited, and really looking forward to getting into it.

Right now I’m buried in organising my second intercontinental move in a calendar year, while also working full-time and trying to keep track of what’s happening with Brexit. It’s stressful. In a few weeks I should be out the other side of that, with a new place to live in (for me) a new city, whether or not that city is still in the EU… keep watching this space for (very) occasional updates, and get in touch if you’d like us to work together!

[1] For the benefit of any Americans here, Lecturer in the UK is approximately equivalent to Assistant Professor on tenure track in the US – although tenure track is not a thing in Britain.

My time at Marine Scotland Science came to an end yesterday… and then I went in today anyway for a meeting, because it was the only time that all the necessary people were free. But that’s at an end, and so is my much longer time with Heriot-Watt. Obviously, I hope to keep in touch with and collaborate with both.

My next role will be a postdoc with Dr. Zhaoqing Yang at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Seattle. I’ll be building on my existing skills with FVCOM modelling, both for energy and other applications. That might hopefully be starting in about a month’s time, but it all depends on when my US visa comes through. In the meantime, I have plenty to occupy me with selling my car, sorting all my belongings into “ship, store, or throw away[1]”, and trying to see as many of my European friends – British and otherwise – as possible before I go. Oh, and that paper I promised to write

Moving to America, and working over there, is both exciting and daunting. It will be an adventure!

[1] Give away, where possible.

It’s also very hard work. I was brought in at fairly short notice after a lecturer left, to fill in the gap before a new one could be recruited. I’m only going to be delivering this content once, yet I’ve chosen to put together my own material for it based on what the previous instructor did, rather than using his directly. That’s because the content follows a different logical order in my head to his, and… well, as anybody who has tried giving a presentation using somebody else’s slides will attest, it’s not a great experience for anybody concerned. So I’m talking to students for 2-2.5 hours most mornings, and spending the afternoons preparing future material – trying to stay 2-3 days ahead, but occasionally catching up with myself. It’s not a pace that I could sustain in the long term, but it works for a few weeks.

This experience has reassured me that, should I be successful in landing a long-term academic role in the future (and I realise that that is a very long way from guaranteed), then I would be able to embrace the teaching side as enthusiastically as the research.

Of course, this is only half of the job. My lectures finish next week, but towards the end of the year the marking will begin….

A few weeks ago I finally got word back from my internal examiner that my thesis corrections had been accepted. This felt far more joyful and climatic, because this was an agreement that from an academic perspective, I had passed and would receive a PhD; the only remaining hurdles were bureaucratic ones.

A week later I printed four copies of the thesis and organised an overnight trip to Edinburgh to get them bound and handed in. I got a receipt, and I clutched on to it like the special document that it was. This was what I was waiting for – the point at which I could fully relax. Well, before worrying about the next job

Before and after. Photos: Author.