Entered on 2001-10-10 at 10:50 a.m..
I've found the other research students
Yes I'd been on a quest for the past day and a half to find the other graduate students. Actually I was looking for the other research students. Because Cranfield is a completely post-graduate university those students who are here taking MSc or one year taught masters seem like undergraduates in the US. I've met hundreds, but I don't have lectures (classes) with any of them, so I don't feel a part of their world. Also very little of what rules apply to them apply to me.
So as I said earlier I've been searching for the research students. I knew that when I found them, 1: I would have someone to ask questions of, 2: I would find the people I would be essentially living with for the next few years. The reason it has taken me so long is that the guy who assigns research students desks is gone for until Thursday (tomorrow). So there are a lot of unplaced research students wandering around. Well yesterday I finally received permission to go up to the second floor office/bay and claim a desk.
I walked in not knowing what to expect after my experiences with ASDL and other graduate students at Tech. Well as true of Tech I found a grand assortment of furniture, half dead house plants, paper and year old journals, legos and three research students. One of the students was a girl and looked friendly, so I asked her to show me which cubes were available. Luckily one rather nice one in the middle was. It came with a wide and deep desk along one wall (actually it is about 8 feet long and a divider has been placed at its center point creating two work spaces. Opposite that are two book cases with doors. The upper door is glass and the lower is wooden, both are lockable. As an added bonus the cube also comes with two full-size filling cabinets. I could not believe my luck, so I set about labeling everything "Claimed--Karen, Oct 2001 --> God only knows" This all happened around 5:00 yesterday afternoon. So after everything was sufficiently labeled, I headed home for a run with Flo.
I was so worried that I had taken someone else's half-claimed cube that I came in extra early this morning just to put more of my stuff in it. I met some other research student who helped me procure a fan and a heater for my new space (apparently we are at the mercy of the hanger heating system) I feel pretty secure now that four established students know the cube to be mine. Ah the law of the jungle for graduate students.
Also last night we had a talk from the program manager of the F117 program formerly from Lockheed Skunk Works. I finally got the true story of how the Skunk works received its name. Apparently it was near a paint shop which smelled awfull and the comic 'Little Abner' which was popular ran a moonshine opperation called the Skonk Works. Put the two together and you get the name Skunk works. Most of the lecture was about how the Skunk works opperated, so the speaker went through all of the 12 rules that Kelly Johnson established. It was a great speach, and so many of the rules still hold true today, or at least they should. Especially the ones which stated that the staffing should be kept to a minimum, almost viscously so. That way everyone can be housed in one big office area and has daily interaction with everyone else. I very much enjoyed his talk.