Four years after I arrived in Cambridge, I’ve reached a major milestone: I submitted my PhD thesis, and just today, passed the viva (thesis defense, from viva voce, oral exam in the obligatory Latin–and no the exam isn’t in Latin)! I still have more work ahead on publishing the chapters, so I’ll be hanging around a few more months with much the same routine. But given this milestone, I thought it would be good time to resurrect a blog post I started writing in 2019 about the two places where I spent most of my PhD time (that is, outside of pandemic lockdowns).
The day-to-day routine of a PhD student is often fluid, and has only become more so during the pandemic. Before, I went in every day to the office desk I was assigned in the David Attenborough Building (DAB) in the city-centre New Museums Site, or else to the lab in the Plant Sciences Department across the street in the Downing Site. Then, for almost two years, I worked exclusively from my laptop and borrowed second monitor in my bedroom. Over the last few terms, I gradually transitioned back to my old office haunts as my colleagues also repopulated the desks. After only a few visits, once again tromping up and down the six flights of stairs and through the many sets of glass doors emblazoned with frosted swifts up to the familiar DAB tower office with its view of carparks, spires, and sunsets, it felt like I had never left.
