Leicester Adventure: Change of Plans

Right, so I emailed the people down in Kent that run the DCGC programme from there, to ask whether I could still sign up if my MSc ends in September.

They said no, and encouraged me to try for summer 2014. That means waiting for a year.

So now I've been looking into other PhD programmes, to see whether they've got any funding and whether I can start in 2013. It's a tough one.

I've looked at Oxford, but unfortunately Oxford only offers Studentships for EU students that cover the fees, and I'm not sure whether that also includes any college fees but either way, I'd still have to take out many, many loans to do that.

Of course I've also looked at Cambridge. That one might just work, if they have supervisors who would be interested in my research. It's quite difficult to figure out what their professors are interested in supervising, though. I'm going to give it a shot.

Leicester offers studentships commencing this January. Sucks. I can only hope they offer the same next year, but that would mean starting in January 2014. That's a half-year's wait.

I should start looking into other programmes, though on the other hand I should not begin to worry about this until after I've finished revising Dorian Gray because if I don't I'll have too much on my mind.

But there's two things I'm dead set on: I want to do my PhD in Britain preferably, and only in the Netherlands if I really have to. Other countries may still be a viable option if I can't find anything decent here. In any case, I don't want to go back to the Netherlands, not just now. Maybe some time in the future, if I find employment there as a university instructor or as a secondary school maatschappijwetenschappen-teacher. But I might just have to.

And maybe I get lucky and get a teaching or research position for, say, 10 months after graduation and then still get accepted fully funded for the DCGC programme. The only thing that then still bothers me is the fact that I'll get my PhD at 26 rather than 25. I think that's something I can get over.

Quite difficult to grasp the idea that my father was right when he said that I should keep in mind that there are always limits.