A Dive into the Unknown
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By Andrew Fenn
PhD student at the Centre of Maritime Health and Society, University of Southern Denmark.
Original photo by Andrew Fenn, edited using befunky.com (cropped and colour-adjusted).
My route was long and sometimes painful, but I would not change a thing.
My PhD journey has been interesting, and not necessarily conventional. I always wanted to pursue a PhD but never thought it would happen. I was raised in the UK. I did not have any particular plans for a career when I was growing up, and I was not exactly “gifted” academically at school. I was even told not to think about going to university, as my writing was so bad; that just made me more determined.
I went to university at 18 and studied food sciences and microbiology, which I loved because it was applied science and when science has a context it is a lot more accessible, to me anyway. After university, I went into the food industry, and one way or another I ended up pursuing a master’s degree in law. This was really interesting, and a world of options seemed to be opening up to me. I lost my job due to a restructuring. I got a job in food law quite quickly, but I had lost my house, and really did not like my new job. I stuck with it before being made redundant again – less than 18 months later. Life was getting me down and I started to get serious depression, my relationship failed, and life was pretty bleak. I decided to do some consulting work with a long- term plan.
My plan was to earn money, sell everything and then become a commercial diver – living out my boyhood dream. This was either going to work and be great or fail spectacularly. I went to Scotland and retrained. Eventually after many jobs in nasty places (and some nice ones too), I ended up in Denmark, building offshore wind farms. The gamble had paid off.
Eventually, I was offered a permanent job in Denmark after my first summer of diving here. The contract arrived on the day my daughter was born. Three months later we moved to Esbjerg. Eventually, I moved out of diving and worked in the offshore oil and gas sector, where I took another master’s degree, this time in occupational health.
A year ago, I saw a PhD Position to study motion sickness among offshore wind farm workers. This was the third PhD I had applied for, and this was the right subject, the right place (SDU), and the right time. My route was long and sometimes painful, but I would not change a thing.
Author Bio
Andrew, 47 yrs, is English and based in Esbjerg. PhD Student at CMSS-SDU.
He has 2 children aged 12 and 13. He keeps bees, he sails, and he’s a fanatical sea kayaker. He’s working hard to gain a Danish passport.
