Induction Week – 2 student perspectives …
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Matty Warner
Before arriving at the CDT induction week, I will admit that I was nervous about a few things. It is only natural before a big change in life, the start of a new chapter, to be apprehensive about what the future holds. Thinking about how much work lies ahead, both with collaborative opportunities and the lonely hours sat in front of a screen, can be both exciting and nerve-wracking in equal measure. Thankfully, once the induction week had begun, many of initial nerves were alleviated and my excitement to start a PhD in fusion energy grew substantially. This was mostly due to the amazing people who made the induction what it was, both the incredible organisers and my wonderful new colleagues.
I have already alluded to the fact that parts of a PhD will inevitably be quite an isolating experience, due to the need to submit an individual thesis at the end of your research. This is why collaboration is so important and being introduced to life as a PhD student with a cohort of people all sharing the same passion for fusion energy was an immediate reminder that this is a team effort. For example, there will be people doing entirely different projects that at some point may use a similar experimental or computational technique and working through a problem together could assist both your personal work and theirs. Using the old adage ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’, seemingly insurmountable problems could be reduced to 10% of their original size by sharing knowledge with the brilliant cohort of students starting this year. This collaboration between PhD students working all over the country will prove invaluable to becoming a better researcher and the induction week helped to reinforce the idea that there will always be help available whenever it is needed.
Aside from the benefits of meeting people in similar academic situations, the induction week also offered plenty of time to get to know colleagues on a more personal level. From coffee breaks in between introductory talks and lectures to conversations during shared meal times, it was great to have the opportunity to find out about everyone’s respective journeys to the CDT and compare the paths taken and the skills we’d gained along the way. These conversations particularly highlighted the advantages that a diversity of perspectives has within a work environment, as everyone can bring their own unique experiences to tackle a problem which will ultimately help to solve a wide range of issues throughout our different research projects. Getting to know my colleagues on a level beyond our academic pursuits will undoubtedly enhance my personal PhD experience, and I’m sure everyone in the cohort would also share this sentiment.
Speaking of getting to know everyone better, our first collaboration took place on the Wednesday afternoon in the form of a team building activity. From attempting to direct a golf ball into the centre of a toilet seat through an intricate pipe network to racing to be the fastest human hamster wheel, we were put into teams to compete in a variety of activities where effective teamwork was the aim of the game. This provided an opportunity to work with new people in a more relaxed setting than the intensity of a research environment and allowed us to form stronger networks in our respective teams.
Overall, I would say that an induction week like this should be essential for starting any research project as it presented the PhD in the context of a team, rather than an individual pursuit, highlighting a clear support network for the duration of our studies. It also means that we have an established connection going forward into the taught modules that will benefit our studies of fusion energy. Discovering the many unique reasons why being a part of fusion research is important to each person in the CDT provided me with extra intrinsic motivation for my studies that I didn’t know I needed. The main point I keep coming back to is just how much the people at the induction week created such a great experience for me personally. I already feel as though I have met a group of people who will substantially increase both the quality of my work and the quality of my PhD experience, and I only hope that I can do the same for them.
Sean Beggan
Arriving at a Café Nero tucked behind Leeds Train Station, filled with a mixture of nerves and excitement, there were about a dozen twenty-somethings all eagerly waiting to be picked up by the coach and taken to Oulton Hall to begin our CDT induction week.
We pile into the already half full coach at 11am to join the rest of our new cohort who had travelled down from the York Plasma Institute. Everyone was friendly, chatty and in good spirits which helped to settle my nerves. Only a short 30-minute journey and we arrive at Oulton Hall.
After dropping our bags and having a delicious lunch, we entered the Hotel’s Repton Room which would become very familiar to us over the course of the week, spending up to six hours in there each day. Our first activity: an icebreaker – going around the room find one other individual with whom only you share a fact and then finding a fact which is unique to only yourself. My favourite shared fact: Ryan and Ryan’s common fact was they were both called Ryan.
At this point I should mention that the induction was being led by Katy, the Fusion CDT manager and Russell, one of the Sheffield based academics helping to oversee the CDT, both of whom were brilliant throughout the week. Having shared lunch with them a few times throughout the week, they are both clearly very passionate about the CDT and extremely easy to talk to.
They led the majority of the talks throughout the week. Covering from the simple such as “Why do a PhD?” to more thoughtful topics such as “Expectations and Goal setting” and then finally to the more serious topics such as “Responsible Research and Innovation and Trusted Research”.
The remainder of the sessions were focused around the more technical aspects of the programme. Our first task: get Python up and running on our new laptops provided by the CDT – this was trickier than you’d imagine for a room full of STEM degrees. Following on from this was the maths refresher courses led by Arka, a Post-Doc researcher at the YPI. He was a brilliant explainer and took us through some complicated topics including Maxwell’s Equations of Electromagnetism, Ordinary Differential Equations, and Tensor Notation.
Finally, we had a session led by Gillian Arnold, an information technology leader and diversity and inclusion consultant. She led us through an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) workshop which was very insightful. It allowed us to be aware of each of our own inherent biases we have each developed throughout our lives, then taught us to recognise and be conscious of these biases and how we can overcome them.
However, the week wasn’t all just being talked at for hours on end. After the EDI training workshop, we had an afternoon of outdoor team building exercises. We made our way down to the front of the hotel where we were met by four toilet seats, each placed directly in front of a camping chair, surrounded by an array of materials: guttering pipes, string, crates, and more. The task: to build a track using the surrounding equipment which would maximise the time taken for a golf ball to travel from the camping chair and ending in the toilet seat. An extra 10 seconds would be added to your time if your team could also create a mechanism which would close the toilet seat as the golf ball entered.
We were split into four teams and given 35 minutes to construct our tracks. The time flew by and before we knew it, it was time to test our builds! Unfortunately, there were mixed results. We had a couple of false starts, the ball getting stuck halfway, even a DNF. However, one team dominated the challenge by not only taking the most time for the golf ball to travel, but they were also the only team to successfully create a working mechanism for the toilet seat to close – absolute result!
The golf ball puzzle was just the start, following this were an array of other exercises including the Tower of Hanoi rings problem, the mastermind board game with coloured pins, and for any Die Hard 3 fans the water jug problem which Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson have to solve to stop a bomb going off – luckily for us the stakes weren’t quite so high. After about six or seven activities the teams were tallied up and medals awarded to the teams in 1st, 2nd and 3rd before we all got a CDT photo.
Finally on Thursday evening, after a jammed packed week of introductions, maths refresher, training, and more we decided to organise a social as a new CDT cohort. We got taxis into Leeds town centre and went to a few bars and played some games of pool to varying levels of success. I called it a night a 1am but some braver souls continued.
Friday morning, remarkably, everyone made it down to breakfast on time despite the late night. We all then once again piled onto the coach at 10am to be taken back to Leeds train station. However, this time unsurprisingly everyone was a little less energetic. Overall, the induction week was a great success and really helped us all to gel as a cohort.