Adding another degree to my programme, 4/3

Big stuff is happening here in Christchurch, less than two weeks into my studies. In the beginning of this week I got the offer from the Director of the Medical Physics programme to do a Bachelor of Science with Honours (BScHons) instead of just the first part of my Masters degree that I have come here to do. After a day or two of thinking about this I accepted the offer, which basically means that I will be doing a research project in my first year, and the BScHons will provide access to doing a PhD after my first year. Whether I am going to do that or not, I have absolutely no idea at this moment, but it opens op a lot of opportunities, and if I “just” want to do the masters thesis as originally planned that is an option as well.

The one thing that required a bit of consideration before accepting the offer was that my workload will increase by 25% in the next six months. However, this increased workload will be within a project which will (hopefully) be more interesting than just doing another theoretical course, and I am absolutely thrilled about the whole thing. Some paperwork is still to be done, but I have agreed with my supervisor to start my project on Monday no matter how far the official process has gone. The rest will follow, I am sure, since I have the support of both the director of the programme (who is also my supervisor) and the head of department. I will have to change my visa and pay some extra fees when changing my degree, but there is just so much more to get out of the first year if I do make this “upgrade” – and besides, just getting the offer is quite a big deal, since only the brightest students are accepted in the honours programmes (the fact that they are slightly desperate to get more research students at the moment is something I choose not to focus too much on…). The curious thing is that my grades were not even considered before I was encouraged to make the change; however they would have prevented me from doing it if they were not at the required level.

The project I will be doing for the next six months is called “Simulation of energy selective computed tomography (CT) projection data”, and it is basically a matter of programming a virtual CT-scanner and seeing whether we are able to discriminate different kinds of tissue irradiated in this virtual scanner. It will all be linked to a PhD project, and nobody has ever published results like the ones we are hoping that I will get. Therefore I have a good chance of getting some results published, that is of course if I get some proper results, but if we did not count on this being the case, there would not be much of a point in doing the project in the first place.

Besides getting this fantastic offer, I am constantly being introduced to new people at the department. It really makes me feel welcome, that almost every time I attend something where my supervisor and somebody I don’t know are present, I am being introduced to whoever he is talking to. So far, it has all been people relevant to my programme here, but it still makes a huge difference that I am getting this introduction to people, who are all very supportive. Maybe they really are quite desperate to have people doing the research project, if not they are just exceptionally good at welcoming people from overseas and making me feel at home at the department straight away. I now have my own desk and computer at the eighth floor of the Rutherford building, sharing an office with two PhD students, one PostDoc and a Masters student who has just handed in his thesis. I sat there today reading, for the very first time, and it is quite amazing how motivating the sounds of other people working in the same room can be – I would never have stayed at the library until 5PM today, if I had not been at my desk.

Tonight we had a department barbeque, nothing big, just a small get together for students (doing at least their third year) and staff. It was really nice to go there with the people I am sharing the office with, getting to talk to them (and others from the department). It seems like the more time I spend around the department at the moment, the more confident I get that this is exactly the right place in the world for me to be at this time (which is a rather nice feeling!).