First week of the rest of my life
Jul. 8th, 2023 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAs of a week ago, I have officially quit my job, quit science and academia, and started in earnest working towards ordination.
I had my leaving do a bit early, because hybrid working means that it was the only day most people were in the office. Lovely colleagues organized a nice lunch in a place that has good outdoor food options, but it's close by the war museum and a bit aggressively Churchill themed, which felt kind of uncomfortable with an international team. Colleagues also gave me a quite substantial sum of money for a leaving present; they were happy to give me cash rather than a voucher because I said I would probably spend it on something eccentric not available from obvious high street store. In fact, it was exactly enough to buy a nearly-new folding bike from a colleague, so I'm hoping that will make weekly commuting to college a bit easier.
The last week was a little surreal, I'd essentially already said goodbye to everybody, and my immediate colleagues were all running the third iteration of our pathogen genomics for UK healthcare course. I was a little sad to be kicked out of the main instructor team for that, but actually not having to spend the whole of my last week doing intensive in person teaching was a blessing. I handed over my laptop and badge, and walked away.
jack happened to be away (the timing was unavoidable), so lovely hatam_soferet rescued me from a lonely sad evening by inviting me for Friday night. This involved a lot of doing art with her 5yo, which was a great distraction, and plenty of tea and chatting and hugs. Then the weekend had a nice date with ghoti_mhic_uait, including spending some time at rmc28's party full of extremely awesome people, and a barbecue at my parents' for my dad's birthday. That was small by our standards, but "immediate family" is already over a dozen people once you include partners. (I didn't even bring all my partners, just cjwatson and OSOs' youngest). We experimented with 3yo G sleeping over at mine; which went really well so I'm glad to have the flexibility.
First thing on Monday, I jumped straight in to an Ulpan course at the university.aldabra found this for me and it's absolutely perfect, just what I need. There are three levels, absolute beginners and post-beginners, and then intermediate which I've joined. Not completely surprisingly given the context, the entire intermediate class is made up of people like me who have an academic interest in classical Hebrew. I think I'm probably the most fluent student in the class, but not miles ahead of the rest of them. I can just about cope with Hebrew language medium immersive teaching but wow it's hard mental work. Though the teacher does occasionally drop into English when he wants to explain a complicated matter of linguistics. The last hour of the day is enrichment, which is very Cambridge, we've been on a trip to the Genizah and had various lectures from faculty, mostly about classical Hebrew topics. I kind of care more about manuscripts and texts than about modern Hebrew so that suits me very well.
I'm still extremely not sorted for accommodation in London, which is a bit scary, but if I end up couch-surfing for the first part of term, so it goes. Also I have managed to catch a cold, probably from OSOs rather than the course, as they've all been poorly this week and I have been masking pretty consistently in class. So I cancelled the community work I was supposed to be doing this weekend; I only had a minor role, it was mostly an opportunity to meet the community where I'll be leading on Rosh haShanah, and I wanted to model the responsible behaviour of not travelling when sick. I'll keep testing but the balance of probabilities says it's not Covid. I really hope I'll be better for the second half of the course on Monday, but we'll see.
I had my leaving do a bit early, because hybrid working means that it was the only day most people were in the office. Lovely colleagues organized a nice lunch in a place that has good outdoor food options, but it's close by the war museum and a bit aggressively Churchill themed, which felt kind of uncomfortable with an international team. Colleagues also gave me a quite substantial sum of money for a leaving present; they were happy to give me cash rather than a voucher because I said I would probably spend it on something eccentric not available from obvious high street store. In fact, it was exactly enough to buy a nearly-new folding bike from a colleague, so I'm hoping that will make weekly commuting to college a bit easier.
The last week was a little surreal, I'd essentially already said goodbye to everybody, and my immediate colleagues were all running the third iteration of our pathogen genomics for UK healthcare course. I was a little sad to be kicked out of the main instructor team for that, but actually not having to spend the whole of my last week doing intensive in person teaching was a blessing. I handed over my laptop and badge, and walked away.
jack happened to be away (the timing was unavoidable), so lovely hatam_soferet rescued me from a lonely sad evening by inviting me for Friday night. This involved a lot of doing art with her 5yo, which was a great distraction, and plenty of tea and chatting and hugs. Then the weekend had a nice date with ghoti_mhic_uait, including spending some time at rmc28's party full of extremely awesome people, and a barbecue at my parents' for my dad's birthday. That was small by our standards, but "immediate family" is already over a dozen people once you include partners. (I didn't even bring all my partners, just cjwatson and OSOs' youngest). We experimented with 3yo G sleeping over at mine; which went really well so I'm glad to have the flexibility.First thing on Monday, I jumped straight in to an Ulpan course at the university.
aldabra found this for me and it's absolutely perfect, just what I need. There are three levels, absolute beginners and post-beginners, and then intermediate which I've joined. Not completely surprisingly given the context, the entire intermediate class is made up of people like me who have an academic interest in classical Hebrew. I think I'm probably the most fluent student in the class, but not miles ahead of the rest of them. I can just about cope with Hebrew language medium immersive teaching but wow it's hard mental work. Though the teacher does occasionally drop into English when he wants to explain a complicated matter of linguistics. The last hour of the day is enrichment, which is very Cambridge, we've been on a trip to the Genizah and had various lectures from faculty, mostly about classical Hebrew topics. I kind of care more about manuscripts and texts than about modern Hebrew so that suits me very well.I'm still extremely not sorted for accommodation in London, which is a bit scary, but if I end up couch-surfing for the first part of term, so it goes. Also I have managed to catch a cold, probably from OSOs rather than the course, as they've all been poorly this week and I have been masking pretty consistently in class. So I cancelled the community work I was supposed to be doing this weekend; I only had a minor role, it was mostly an opportunity to meet the community where I'll be leading on Rosh haShanah, and I wanted to model the responsible behaviour of not travelling when sick. I'll keep testing but the balance of probabilities says it's not Covid. I really hope I'll be better for the second half of the course on Monday, but we'll see.
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Date: 2023-07-08 09:23 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2023-07-08 03:37 pm (UTC)Exciting!
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Date: 2023-07-08 05:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2023-07-08 06:20 pm (UTC)If you do end up couch surfing, you're welcome to stay with me. It's entirely the wrong side of London (zone 3 SE) so you don't *want* to but just in case it's helpful.
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