To PhD or not to PhD?

A linguistic overview of the university In 1997, I abandoned a PhD in mathematics, which I had begun in 1993. It had started to go seriously wrong in 1996, if not earlier, but I persisted for a ridiculously long time with the illusion that I could still finish. I was completely unaware at the time… Continue reading To PhD or not to PhD?

Image, mirror, selfie

Time for a proper blog post drawn from my cabinet of writing ideas. This one seems apt, since – according to Twitter – today is #NationalSelfieDay. Unhelpfully, the hashtag doesn’t tell us which of the couple-of-hundred-odd nations of the world celebrates this day. (It is, of course, the United States – a country that could… Continue reading Image, mirror, selfie

Hoarse and hair

In The longest journey, I bemoaned the nine-month wait between my first gender identity clinic (GIC) appointment and starting hormone replacement therapy (HRT). I didn’t mention the other NHS-funded treatments I started in the meantime, namely speech and language therapy (SLT) and laser hair removal. I had planned to write separately about each of these,… Continue reading Hoarse and hair