Well, I had my first official supervision with Dr T Reifenstein and my first induction into the world of PGRs and PGRing.
Do I feel more of a Researcher now? In a way, yes. It was nice to sit and chat about both the formalities, the paperwork, the standards and the dreaded deadlines, but also about my interests and the research itself. It feels there is not enough time and at the same time it feels there is plenty.
I spent the following days shifting books, moving stuff around, using loads of colourful post-it notes to try and work out a plan, an idea of a structure, to give it a sense of direction.
Highly intense practice, this one!
I also went to this Eat. Sleep. Research. Repeat. conference which I found interesting but also, at times, boring.
Boring because most of the speakers / students / researchers were focused on "Mental Health". How much mental health is important, how much the findings of their research would help / affect / impact the mental health of a specific category; how minute funding there is out there for mental health, and yada yada yada...
Call me insensitive if you want, and you are free to do it, but
I wish people would stop using the wording "mental health" when it has nothing to do with "mental"; most of the time is [just / simply] emotional health;
I REALLY wish people would stop adding the "mental health" tag to their research just for the sake of funding / belonging / importance / validity;
what about variety?!
as a psychotherapist myself it would be really nice, for once, to go somewhere where the "mental health flag" is not raised - and mostly in the wrong context [!];
it would also be really REALLY nice if people would realise that there is such a thing as "life" where things happen and at times there is nothing we can do about it and that is fine.
To put into perspective, out of 19 UK / British presenters, 14 had to do with "mental health" in one way or another. It was "funny" to note that the 2 non-British East European presenters had NOTHING to do with mental health. And as a non-British European student, if I had to present my own research... this has nothing to do with mental health either.
Well, there is it, my own little piece of research done!
as per usual, onwards and upwards!
mx
READINGS:
none for this post, but if you are interested you can find T Reifenstein's paper titled Paperchase here.