Viva la viva!

Amazingly, I have reached the point where some very experienced and respected scientists will assess my work. They've probably spent quite a few hours this weekend finding all of the many typos and errors I've been finding over the last week, and accumulating questions about why on earth I decided to do what I did, several times, in my thesis. And tomorrow, for probably about 3 hours (though they're taking bets in my lab for a variety of different times), I'll have their full attention as they drill me on my activities over the last 4 years. Me and my work probably won't ever again have such an opportunity to be heard, read and examined so carefully, so I'm hoping I can make the most of the opportunity. And learn a lot from my mistakes, including how to deal with making them!

The fact that I've reached this point feels amazing to me for a few reasons. Firstly, I don't feel quite old enough to be at university yet, let alone to be having a viva for a PhD. I've now been at university for 8 and a bit years....but I still feel like I did when I started at the Other Bubble all those years ago - that university is a big place where mature people go. And the PhD students, they were something else entirely really. Working on their own big projects, independently, in far off places; reading and writing journal articles; and confidently teaching undergraduates things. I didn't think I'd ever be one of them.

I don't think I can claim to actually successfully be teaching undergraduates things (especially not about protists), and I've not published my own journal article YET (despite having said I'd submitted all 6 in my thesis - I hope I won't be failed for lying), but I am a PhD (or technically a DPhil) student otherwise.

And maybe hopefully tomorrow (and probably, given probability), I might become a Doctor. And then there'll be a Dr Cole in my family again, since the last one got upgraded and given a comfy chair.

I can't keep up with this world....or the rate at which tropical peat swamp forests are being destroyed. Maybe I can fix that when I'm Dr Tropical Peat Swamps though. There's always hope.