A brief backgrounder:
I enrolled at UCL as a full-time distance learning student in June 2019. As a U.S.-based entrepreneur since 1993, and a family man (with a magnificent, special needs teenager and brilliant wife of 25 years), UCL’s Post Graduate Research Program appeared as the best solution to help make transformative research and contributions to what I perceived to be an underserved and deserving segment of our society.
Today is a typical weekend day, packed with a variety of meaningful and motivating scholastic work. I started quite early (5.a.m.) by placing the finishing touches on my first draft of an MPhil/Upgrade Report (due four months from now). Having uploaded this to my brilliant supervisors (Prof Kaśka Porayska-Pomsta and Dr Sarah White), they will now have the opportunity to iterate the content by (re-)considering all that we have learned through my pursuits up to this point.
Later this same morning, I refocussed my efforts on the few remaining Doctoral Research Training modules I have left in my “requirements bin”. My final three subjects include Qualitative Analysis, Research Methods and IMPCorC. As today is an induction week for new students, the reading load is uncharacteristically light; however, Dr Sveta Mayer (who is the Programme Leader for Online MPhil/PhD) firmly believes in establishing and maintaining esprit de corps among the cohort of both returning and newly minted PhD students. Hence, I will spend a good deal of time “online” today reinvigorating my responsive efforts to supply answers to questions about my research, how mixed methodologies and theories affect my proposed study, etc. Then, I shall “turn the tables” and enquire about new student’s research and provide an encouraging soliloquy of life as a distance-learning researcher. “It’s the best thing I have taken on next to my marriage and birth of our daughter!”
After a quick email reminder to both supervisors about looming Ethics Application Deadlines, I spend the majority of the afternoon authoring an upcoming presentation I am to make at the Development Diversity Lab (within UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience) in two weeks’ time. This will be my second presentation which is streamed live to my secondary supervisor and attending students/participants at Alexandra House (on Queens Square, just a short walk from the Knowledge Lab). As a “mature” student who completed computer and electrical engineering undergraduate degrees in the mid 1980s, it amazes me that I can work in Florida—some 7,500 kilometers away from London—and confer in real-time what knowledge, experiences and camaraderie ensues with my fellow laboratory mates.
If only I could partake of the complimentary tea and treats provided….
As the evening approaches, I map out specific readings related to my ever-mounting literature research. Combined with a few extracurricular modules on neural network training (MATLAB Onramps, etc.), I dive in after a nice dinner with my family. If I have the strength, I’ll start porting my lab presentation outline to a PowerPoint Template; but something tells me I may be out of coffee…so a quick run to the market may prove useful for a morning re-start.