Hello everyone. It’s been a while. I have been…busy. I’ve had a lot on. A lot of things have happened.

In October I started a distance learning MSc with the University of London – specifically with Royal Holloway. It’s a huge amount of work. I’m learning a lot. I’m learning a lot in 90-minute blocks at the beginning and end of my working day and 4-hour blocks on Saturdays and Sundays. The course front-loads two sessions with two modules each, after which it calms down and I’ll have a little bit more thinking/breathing/being space.

We had our first two exams this past week. I really like the way they’ve been designed – we get 24 hours to complete them, which means folks can still work them around other commitments if they need to. They took me about 4-5 hours each, though, so I’m writing this from a brain that is completely wrung out. There’s no rest, either: we’re straight on to our next session, which started this week.

This session we’re covering computer and network security, and so far my takeaways are:

• the Internet was a bad idea
• computers were also a bad idea
• realistically anything beyond the abacus shouldn’t be allowed

Thankfully all of these things exist, mostly in terrifyingly badly configured ways, so I have a job for as long as the robots permit me to live life.

I took a couple of weeks off to prepare and sit these exams, and it’s been interesting. Even with the deadlines looming, I seem to get to a point of 75% knowledge and then just stop. I can’t learn more unless I start putting it into practice, so I need to find new ways to put my theoretical education into practical situations.

One of the most interesting parts of doing an international MSc is the variety of people I get to meet. There’s folks on this course doing all kinds of security and security-adjacent roles, most of them in languages that aren’t English. I am blown away by anyone trying to deal with academic English when it’s not their first language – I know I struggle sometimes – and so I’ve been working really hard to avoid idioms, sarcasm, and to speak plainly on the Slack instance we all share. Already there are fascinating little conflicts and resolutions, the kind of thing I see every day at work. What software to use for note-taking; what time to arrange study groups; whether to take a coaching or directorial approach to questions. We even have a little study group, and I confess I have a little crush on one of my classmates. It’s nice that I’m getting the full university experience, even remotely.

At work, which I am still doing five days a week, both my junior and my senior have found new jobs. This is interesting for me. I could apply for that senior role. In fact, I hope it’ll surprise some people reading that I’m not a senior. Obviously not you, my friend. You’ve read every episode I’ve ever written. But it’ll surprise some people.

Becoming more senior will come with more responsibility, and I’m not sure I want that. At least not right now, when I need to be able to start and finish at specific times so that I can get in the studying that I need. On the other hand, if I want that to be a way of being senior, it’s kind of up to me to model it.

At the same time – perhaps these things are connected, perhaps not – someone senior I trust approached me about a role in their organisation. I’ve not been looking to move, and my organisation has funded me to do the MSc, as well as coughed up a fair bit to help me move house to sunny Manchester. If it weren’t this guy asking, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought. But it is this guy asking. I don’t know. Right now, with no team around me, and the prospect of a contractors coming in…the idea of starting again is tempting.

(I like working with contractors on specific outcomes, but I find it hard to build a team around them, because I can never be certain they’ll be here tomorrow. Equally neither can they, that’s the nature of the gig, but I’ve found it a little bit harder to build a team dynamic.)

I’m going to wind up here. These were harder than expected to write. I think I’m out of the habit. Here’s hoping it comes back to me.