PhD's New Year Resolutions 2017

The start of a new year marks the start of a new term! For us first-year PhD students, it marks one of our first significant landmarks: we are now no longer 'freshers' and can look ahead to the more distant future.  What have we learned from our first term? What did we miss in the buzz of department orientations and campus maps?  With all this considered, how do we want to move forward in the remainder of our first year?  Though we might not keep them all, our New Year's Resolutions - PhD style - might help get all of us thinking of how we might move forward these first few chilly months of 2017.

Katherine: Having missed 'Fresher's Week' last term, I focused on my new apartment in the city, finding the department, and using Berrick Saul and the library.  So this year, I am hoping to join a new society or two!  I also have resolved to begin attending the SHADY pub meetings more regularly.  Starting this term, the group for us York Art Historians will be conducting short theory readings/discussions over a friendly pint.  First up: Plato's Cave! 

Hannah: Like Katherine, I have resolved to be better at attending departmental and SHADY events, especially the discussion groups, as these will help to flesh out my theoretical grounding.  I'm also really looking forward to this term's departmental lecture series.  My biggest and most important resolution, though, is to keep pushing ahead with my Italian language training in preparation for my first research trip to Florence in April!

Adam: Central to Cartesian philosophy is the concept of Dualism, whereby mind and body coexist independently. Scientifically however this has been proven otherwise, so in 2017 I will resolve to exercise more frequently, without necessarily acquiring Arnold Schwarzenegger's biceps (I was thinking more Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man, preferably without Nazi dentists on my tail). Where brain-exercise is concerned, I will seek to work harder on my Latin grammar and brush up my Dutch!

A set of Whistler fireworks to ring in the New Year - James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, 1875