Careers Workshop

Monday, July 16th, Dave woke early, staggered out of bed and rushed out the door, thankfully pausing just long enough to put on clothes. He was off to the University of Liverpool's GRAD school Careers Workshop week in Edge Hill University, where he would stay for the next two and a half days.

After signing in and picking up his keys, he had a short break to check out his accomadation. His initial thought of "So this is why some students kill themselves" described it perfectly. It was a small plain room. A bed, a closet, a desk, nothing more. No room to fit anything more if you wanted to. The bed seemed on the small side even for a single, and it squeeked with every movement. The bed sheets were of a questionable nature and the pillow was waffer thin. Attached to the room was a small bathroom, toilet, sink and shower. The shower was fun. It took a remarkably long time to heat up, then quickly went from icy cold to bubbling hot.

As much as Dave wanted to just hang out and relax in his new crib, he was here to work and day one was about to begin.

The workshop was a very mixed event. From the people presenting, the people attending and the subjects on study it was mixed in every possible way. It ranged from CV building and mock interviews to seemingly pointless "fun" team games. In the first evening there was a chill out session complete with pub quiz and in the second a hardcore dancing session resulting in bruising and blisters for several people. Dave picked up some wonderful advice to advance his career, such as "wear pink", "get drunk" and "sleep with people for publicity".

Dave's main interest during the three days was not so much what the presenters were saying, but how his fellow PhD students responded. A large amount of them seemed to hate the whole thing with a passion. Dave, who very rarely hated anything with a passion and prefered to just make the most of it and get whatever cheap laughs were available, found their attitude rather amusing. Yes, it was a bit silly and pointless at times, but it had to be done, so why not be silly and pointless in a mature way rather than pointlessly and sillily complaining about pointless and silly performances, if that makes sense.

Another thing Dave picked up on was how strange a thing confidence was. Dave did very little in his spare time, he found it very difficult to talk to new people, conversation did not come naturally to him, he had no idea what he would do next in life, his written work was apparently abysmal and his supervisor told him on a weekly basis how awful his PhD was. Despite studying a PhD in statistics, Dave had failed to answer even one statistics related question asked by other students there. In comparison, another student there had been to Cambridge, was a Scout Leader, played Tenis tournements, badminton, swimming, kayaking, etc, etc, played 5 instruments, several of which were self taught, had a job, career goals, owned a house and was doing a PhD part time. What Dave found bizare was that when the two of them spoke, it was Dave who came across as the confident one. In fact, Dave had somehow managed to sound fairly confident throughout the whole event. He had even fooled at least one person into thinking he was "a good comunicator". How he had pulled that off he had no idea.

After a long hard day, Dave got back to his room and collasped onto his bed. Of cause, being used to a double bed and being very tired, he misjudged his fall going head first into the wall. That hurt. Thankfully, no one was around to see that moment of stupidity.

No one would ever know.