I bet you thought this wasn’t coming! Oh yee of little faith! I have been characteristically busy since I last wrote, mainly due to Vulcan experiment which will feature in a later post!), but now I shall update events from almost 2 months ago.
I left you with me heading to Rochester, NY, after exploring Chicago. Now I have been to Rochester before for an experiment at the Omega laser facility, and I was returning for the next leg of this experiment. Things progressed similarly to before, with target characterisation, preparation, and the long shot day. Unfortunately this time I was rather cack-handed and managed to knock a very delicate target off its alignment. When these targets can take a day or so to make, you feel rather bad for pushing one off in half a second! Thankfully it wasn’t damaged and was returned to its proper place quickly – and we ended up not using these targets at all! The shot day itself had a few problems, not least with me almost not waking up in time, but I left feeling optimistic for the next run.
Before (left) and after (right) shooting our targets with the massive laser!
One of my main complaints of Rochester last time was the lack of things to do. Thankfully this time I not only had my American colleague but also someone at the University that another friend had put me in contact with. I therefore had visits to the supermarket – to buy pop tarts which unfortunately disintergrated on the trip home – and I saw some of the night life that Rochester has to offer. Along the way I think I taught a few people some British-isms, and I even saw a Praying Mantis!
Casually sitting on the boot of the car!
I left Rochester after not having slept very much and, as such, was not immediately impressed when my co-passenger caught wind of my British accent and wanted to talk. However; he turned out to be a rather interesting guy and now, whenever I return to Rochester, I have an open invite to go shooting for deer if I so choose! The flight back to the UK was a lot better than the flight out, though the film selection was poor, and I was very glad when I eventually got back.
When I got back I had to catch up on work that had been set aside before I went and, of course, complete the next part of my transfer of status: preparing my presentation to other members of the department. However; first I did manage to have a fun time in Birmingham for a friend’s birthday. Birmingham is not so bad as everyone says, and I had a whale of a time from both the foam party and the cafe for breakfast the next day.
The number of empty shot glasses here probably explains a lot of the evening…
After Birmingham the deadline for my presentation was rapidly approaching. However, slightly annoyingly, I had been told to go to a meeting in Paris and give a presentation as part of a return leg of a collaboration. “What’s so wrong with a trip to Paris?!” I hear you cry! Well, I feared that 1) it would be so short I wouldn’t be able to actually visit Paris, 2) the meeting would be irrelevent to me and 3) it was a distraction from my transfer presentation. Unfortunately, all three of these were true; though we did have a nice meal in the centre of Paris one evening. Sadly I could not add much to the meeting, and my topic area was unrelated to the majority of other people there, though I did get to practice my French.
The conference was set in the Paris Observatory, which we had a rather cool tour around.
The return to England, and the weekend, just led to more work on the presentation. At this point, going on previous year student experiences, we were also expecting our transfer vivas to be soon after, so I wasn’t just writing and practising speaking, but also trying to work out which plasma physics derivations were useful to memorise! I was more worried about the viva being sprung upon straight after the talk that I concentrated more on that, but did manage to have a practice of the talk in the lecture theatre beforehand. The presentation was completely fine, and also to the largest number of people I had ever presented too, so I was pretty happy! It also calmed my nerves for the viva as the tone of the questions were somewhat different to what I was expecting, yet I was able to answer them.
My presentation practice was a sell out…
After the presentation we were finally given dates for our vivas, and I had two weeks before mine was due. It was also at the start of our Vulcan experiment, but that, I feel, is a story for another post!
Joe @ Oxford 