The PhD Talk

I gave the "What I wish I had known ..." talk for the new PhD students this afternoon. I hadn't rehearsed it enough so I forgot to say everything I had planned, but there were no major omissions. I also pulled a colleague along for the reception later. When I joined the PhD programme, I dreamed of being part of a community of scholars who were fast friends and spent many a cheery hour plumbing the depths of our  intellects. That dreamed died long ago. I get along swimmingly well with the people in my PhD room and count some of them as close friends, but we are not intellectual bedfellows. Our intellectual interests (and ideologies in the case of some colleagues) don't align as much as I would like.
I long ago gave up trying to make friends in the university outside my PhD room. When I went along to the reception I had little expectations of meeting someone whom I would hit it off with. And, sure enough, I didn't meet anyone like that. So, why did I go? Because not everything one does needs to for a particular outcome. Sometimes the act is the outcome. I strongly believe we should have a closer PhD community, and while I can't be bothered to rally the troops for this cause, the least I can do is show up and have myself counted.