Almost there

Today marks the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence by the Finnish parliament, celebrated in my country as Independence Day. In Finland it’s a public holiday of hallowed status, and if I were home I might be uncorking a bottle of wine right about now to treat myself to a glass while preparing something special for dinner. However, in Ireland it’s of course just a regular Friday, so instead I’m sitting at my desk at DCU; it’s the second year running that I’m working on this day, and only the third time in my life. Really the only thing distinguishing this from a normal working day is that my playlist has consisted exclusively of works by Finnish classical composers.

Even though the date enjoys no special significance here, I felt that this would be an apt time to reflect a bit on my upcoming return to Finland – there really isn’t very much time left now, less than two months from now I’ll be starting at my old university again. My trial is proceeding roughly according to plan; some gentle nudging of the participants has been required, as well as emergency repairs of the classic “turn it off, then on again” variety, but there seems to be no imminent danger of everything falling apart. The first big batch of sleep data uploads should be completed well before Christmas, and after that there shouldn’t be anything much happening until January, so I should be able to get some good rest and relaxation in between.

I’m definitely going to need that rest and relaxation, because January is likely to be pretty much a constant flurry of activity. Not only do I have the project to wrap up, but also my life in Dublin in general, and when you stay somewhere long enough to make it your home, you tend to accumulate stuff that you then have to decide what to do with when you move again. I’ve tried to keep mine to a minimum – the minuscule size of my apartment has helped me there – but living out of my suitcase for two years would have been a bit too extreme, so there are various items that I’ll need to get rid of, one way or another, before I leave. Anyone interested in free household stuff put your hand up!

Looking back, it’s a little bit hard to believe that it actually has been two years since I moved to Dublin; the time seems to have passed much more quickly than I anticipated. Of course, in the beginning there was a lot of uncertainty about everything and a lot of new stuff to come to terms with, but after a while I got used to the idea that this is my life now and settled into my new routines. Perhaps I even managed to make myself too much at home, because I was slightly taken by surprise by the realisation that if I’m going to do some more exploring before my return, now would be the time. These past few weeks I’ve been putting my Leap Card and tramping shoes to good use in various small coastal towns near Dublin, and I have a weekend in Sligo booked for next week.

So then, what will happen when I do go back to Finland? It looks like I’m going to have a job there at least for the rest of the year, which is what I was cautiously expecting, so I’ll have a nice soft landing and can get settled without immediately having to worry about finances. I don’t know yet what exactly I’ll be doing to earn my salary – presumably there is some ongoing research project to which I’ll be expected to contribute, and also some lecturing, but hopefully I will also have time to keep the ball rolling and work on my own ideas. Ideally, I’ll get one more KDD-CHASER paper submitted for review by end of January, but at some point it’s going to need revisions, and there are others that I want to write once the trial is done.

After the end of KDD-CHASER, I guess the next big milestone is coming up in April/May when I get the decision on my Academy of Finland Research Fellow application. As I wrote before, the most likely outcome is that I won’t get the grant, and assuming that I don’t, I’ll have to do some fairly serious thinking about my options. I came to Ireland with the thought that I wasn’t quite done with academia yet, but what about now? The MSCA fellowship was an opportunity to build something of my own, and of course it would be a shame to just forget about it, but do I necessarily need to be in an academic environment if I want to keep building on it? Going international was perhaps an overdue career move – is it time to make another one sometime soon?

Whatever happens, I think I’m going to be happy to be back home. It was always the plan to come back after these two years, and while there have been some changes during this time, one thing that hasn’t changed is that Finland is still where I consider my home to be. I do find, however, that going through with all this has expanded my comfort zone quite a lot: I still vividly remember the mixture of excitement and panic I felt when I got the notification that the MSCA fellowship had been awarded, but now I’m entirely open to the idea of working abroad again at some stage. I don’t think it’s something that I’ll actively pursue in the near future, but hey, who knows?