Back to reality...

(Originally posted 12 September 2013)

Every summer, I leave normal life behind for a few months and enter a parallel universe, or at least that’s how it feels working in the Social Programme Office at the English Language Centre at the University of Bath. Having always taken every opportunity to meet people from other countries and learn about their cultures, when a job first came up at the SPO, just as I was finishing my undergraduate degree in Bath, I jumped at the chance to spend all day every day looking after a large and diverse group of international students. I loved it so much that I kept going back every year, and this summer I wasn’t going to let a little thing like my PhD get in the way!

Life in the SPO is exciting, although sometimes exhausting, because it’s constantly changing. One day you’re making information packs for 250 new arrivals or dragging their suitcases through the rain to their new dorms, the next you’re leading a giant crowd around Stonehenge. As well as a different social activity every day and a coach trip every Saturday, we were the people for students to turn to when they were worried, lonely, homesick, confused by English customs, or just anxious to practice their English. All of this means we really get to know so many wonderful people from all across the world and learn a lot about how what we take for granted varies so greatly from other people’s experiences.

Leaving Bath at the end of the summer always makes me sad, because I miss all these new friends and the constant challenges that the work throws up, but I’m excited to be back in London now entering the second year of my PhD. Although I managed to grab a few hours in the library here and there over the summer to keep my PhD ticking over, I’m really looking forward to intense studying again and making headway with my first few chapters. There’s also a lot to keep me occupied over the next few months, including the upcoming Arts and Humanities Festival and running our departmental seminars. I also found out this morning that I’ll be teaching in Spring semester, which has been my dream for years now. I can’t wait to get on with it all, and of course blog about it all here!