An ending

I started this series of posts in november 2018. Quoting Robert Jordan, there are neither beginnings or endings to the turn of the wheel of Time. It was a beginning. This is an ending.

On september 8th, I received officially received my Master diploma in Philosophy of Language and Logic. Here it is.

I was persuaded to come and get my diploma in person because my supervisor would say a few words, which, according to him, would be fun. I was actually quite curious about what he was going to say and reckoned I should be able to manage to listen to those few words without blushing too much. No, I do not like being on stage. I always do these things by post. But this time – well, I went. And it was great.

Obviously, in Corona time there was no big meeting at the university – the graduation ceremony was arranged in a Nijmegen café. The university had really tried to make things festive – with drinks and snacks afterwards.

It was a small party – here were only three candidates, including me, and we all got speeched by our own professor. Husband videoed mine. I won’t post the video here, as I have a feeling my supervisor perhaps does not like his pictures all over the internet – I can find very few good photos of him. But it was a great story which went on for well over 10 minutes. Basically, he had built a story from when I first appeared at his kitchen table up, haltingly trying to explain what I wanted, to my recent research proposal. Apparently – so he said – I am a joy to teach and amazingly hard working. And very determined to achieve my goal – he had imagined that I had got side tracked during my many essays (I really got into philosophy of mind and evolution of language), but in my research proposal I returned back to base. I was touched that he had put so much effort into this speech, and found so many nice things to say about me. Compliments are rare with him. This will probably never happen to me again, so I will treasure the memory. What I will also treasure is the look on Husband’s face. He was so obviously proud of me. Sigh. Such an occasion.

Afterwards we decided to go and try a new restaurant – very modern: no menu, expensive and beautiful. We ate outside. It was a lovely meal on a lovely evening at the end of a lovely day.

Since then, I was formally enrolled at the Radboud as a PhD candidate. I am an external candidate which means that I am formally employed by the university with an annual leave of zero days and a salary of zero euros. On the bright side, if I every complete my PhD, there will be a contribution to the printing costs. Plus I don’t need to teach. I have never been so happy with a job that pays nothing 🙂 Because it is not nothing. It means full access to books, papers, my supervisor, the research group, and obviously the phd program itself, which I will have to get to know.