Entered on 14 November 2002 at 8:37 a.m..
Sheffield Visit
My trip up to Sheffield yesterday was rather un-eventful. It took about 2.5 hours to get there from Cranfield, just straight north up the M1. I figured we had picked a good day to visit, since it was cold & rainy so we could see what the campus was like most of the time.
When we got there, my first impression was this is so different. Sheffield is an urban campus, so some of the buildings are owned by the school and some of them are owned by other business. Top that off and not everything is as it seems. For instance, there is an old church right outside of the engineering building, that is owned by the school and is one big lecture theater, with apartments around the sides...
The engineering buildings/complex is beautiful!!!! As with most engineering departments, at one point they had separate buildings, which have subsequently been joined at various levels and in various ways. Not quite as complicated as the Hogwarts castle, but not far off the mark. We were met by the faculty member who looks after the PhD students for the department, what a novel idea! He stayed with us all afternoon, and toured us around the department and the campus. I was really impressed but the upkeep of the department. Both the class/rooms, offices, and labs were in immaculate repair. I've never seen such dust free laboratories. I've also never seen so many technitions obviously working with students.
The rest of the campus was architecturally less impressive as it was quite spread out, and done in a hodgepodge of styles. But they did have a big student center with actual facilities, they even had an STA office.
Campus housing seems quite good too, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my car yet. Nor am I sure how many people I want to live with. Most of the on-campus flats for grad students involve sharing space with 5-8 people, which I think is just too many. There are some private flats in a good location that I can also consider, and there are lots of private houses to rent a room in. I'll just have to keep thinking about it and wait until closer to time. I also need to work out my budget, because although normal humans deal in terms of months, i.e. I know how much I can afford to pay in rent a month, the housing office seems to quote things in weeks. It also makes it seem like grad students are only here for 38 weeks a year, which is crazy.
All in all I think it will be a fun place to go to school, and I'm looking forward to it. It will give me an opertunity to take some useful classes and do some teaching. And if these things push me past the 3 year time line, so be it. I've got funding for another 3 years, and if I finally end up in a place I like then I'll be ok with that.
Just a side note, I have yet another data point to support my theory that housing staff are universally unhelpful.