Thesis submission and the Royal Oak ↑ all posts

The long drawn out painful process at the end of the Oxford D.Phil. felt almost at an end as I picked up my hardbound theses from the printers. I slowly walked down Queen’s Lane and along the High Street to the Examination Schools, reflecting on all the times I’d made the same journey on the way to exams as an undergrad. No Finals were waiting for me this time, instead a more pleasing alternative: the satisfying sense of finality as I handed over the copy of my thesis which is destined to gather dust somewhere deep in the Bodleian stacks.

I celebrated by meeting up with members of my research group, the Mobile Robotics Group, at the Royal Oak on Woodstock Road. My supervisor, Prof. Paul Newman, got his copy of my thesis and I learnt about the future plans of the group and caught up with what had happened since I left. Rapid expansion is coming this summer, and although I’m happy to be finished, I’m sad to be leaving at such an exciting time with all that’s on the horizon for autonomous cars in the UK.