A Week as a PhD student

I have now been a PhD student for a week. Here are my first thoughts about this journey.

The week started as per usual with a new job environment: Orientation. As this is my third time working for a Swedish agency, the previous two having been Blekinge Institute of Technology and University of Skövde, it was not a lot of new information regarding the inner workings of an agency and what to have in mind. Instead, I could focus on listening to the information regarding the internal workings of MAU, the faculty, and the department. This orientation also gave me the opportunity to get to know new colleagues and one of my two co-supervisors, Raquel Robinson – at the time of meeting her, I was not aware that she would be my co-supervisor, but I am happy that she is!

As the week progressed I had a long – and uplifting – meeting with my three supervisors; José María Font Fernández as main supervisor and Alberto Alvarez Uribe and Raquel Robinson as co-supervisors. I got an introduction to the project Game Tech Academy that I will be a part of, information regarding what is expected of me during these few first months, and a few tasks to work with until our next meeting. This was completed in the afternoon with a meeting by the faculty, where I meet with the Deputy Head of Department, who is responsible for research and research education, and discussed more formal requirements of the PhD. All in all a very informative day with a lot of information.

Wednesday I had a meeting with the Head of the Department regarding my institute hours; that is to say, the teaching work expected from me. I start tomorrow, Monday 9^th of September, with labs in the C# course given to game programming students.

After this, it was mostly work as usual. As I had not received my work copmuter yet, I spent my time in the library reading up on the course I was to be teaching in, as well as went through articles I had since earlier to see which could be of use. Friday afternoon I went home to my wife and kid to spend the weekend close to them. All in all, I am looking forward to this journey – even though I am not particullarly fond of the commutes.

Bonus Currently, I am living with a friend I studied with at BTH. Evenings are spent playing some Magic: The Gathering (commander). The four deck I brought with me last week were:

• Enchamntment F-You, a deck where I play weird effects on enchantments to twist the rules of the games
• Legendary Tribal, a deck with legendaries and legendary synergies
• Artifcat Sacrificial, a deck where I use artifacts with sac-abilities to win
• Phyrexian Tribal, a deck with the idea of being phyrexians attacking a new plane