Around this time last year, I was reading in my garden when I got a ping from Guido Noto la Diega at the University of Strathclyde here in Glasgow. I’d messaged him to ask him what the closing date was for applications for Strath’s newly revived techlaw programme, because I was thinking of applying for it, but I needed to figure out how a skint freelancer was going to come up with a full tuition payment upfront. Guido replied by dangling the prospect of a full scholarship at me.

I somehow managed to not fling myself off my chair.

What emerged from that was nine fantastic months in Strathclyde Law School’s MSc programme in Law, Technology, and Innovation. I cannot recommend it highly enough. You should apply! You should come to Glasgow! You should become one of us! You do not have to be a lawyer! You do not have to become a lawyer! You can just do the thing! Applications are open for both the September and January starts.

And if you just want to get the hell out of America ASAP, give me a side wink and I’ll make sure you get into the programme. I can’t help you with anything other than that, but I can help to open a door for you to run through.

One afternoon in the bleak midwinter, I looked out over the bright and bustling campus and thought to myself, “why let this go?” It’s not often that a good thing comes along out of nowhere, but when it does, goodness me, it makes you think.

So I am delighted to announce that I will be staying on at Strathclyde Law School for another two years, doing an MPhil in technology regulation and human rights. I’ll be tracking the influence of the Christian Nationalist movement on tech policy and internet regulation, during the second Trump administration, through the lenses of internet integrity and human rights law.

This will be my part-time side project for the next two years. Nothing changes in my professional working life, and the normal work/troublemaking continues as usual. (That said, I could use a lot more work than I have on right now, so do hit me up if you fit.)

Please note, I am doing an MPhil, not a Ph.D. Will I be a lawyer at the end of it? lol no. Will I be a “doctor” at the end of it? Oh hell no. Will I be moving into academia? Absolutely fucking not. There is work to be done, and this MPhil will support it, but I know where I belong, and it isn’t in an ivory tower.

(Besides that, an MPhil is two years, part-time. A Ph.D is seven years, minimum. Yes, seven. If you think I still want to be writing about this stuff well into the 2030s, when I will be well into my fifties, you need to open a ventilation window.)

For the year just gone, some thanks are in order. Huge thanks to Guido for yeeting me into the MSc programme last year. Thanks also to my four other professors on the MSc – Adam Harkens, Linus Hoffman, Birgit Schippers, and Michal Sadkowski – for pushing me as hard as possible. (Yes, that’s an Italian, a Nordie, a German, a Nordie German, and a Pole, lest you thought that Scotland had actually left the European Union.) Birgit will be my MPhil supervisor, keeping me well on task with human rights law and well off my soapbox. Which is awesome.

Thanks also are due to ex-Strathclyders Lilian Edwards and Konstantinos Komaitis, who were so supportive of me in 2014-2015 when I did Strath’s previous PGCert programme, but wasn’t able to continue further; this was due to my success on the programme unexpectedly triggering all my husband’s traditional-white-Scottish-male childish resentments and petty jealousies. Now ex-husband, obviously. Some of us have had far steeper hills to climb than Montrose Street to get to our masters. And that’s a fact which some equally parochial Scots at a certain scholarship administration office in Edinburgh would do well to remember.

Anyway, it took an extra ten years, but we got there in the end.

What I was not expecting was that my masters experience would be such good fun. I loved every minute of it. That’s not to imply that it was lightweight or frivolous, not at all; it was tough AF and I rose to every challenge they threw at me. Part of that is down to the programme Guido put together, but it’s equally down to what a genuinely enjoyable place Strath is. For that, thanks to Erin and the admin staff in the law school for keeping everything running tickety-boo. Thanks to all the staff in the superb university library for doing magic things, like buying the book I’m currently reading just for me. Thanks to the grounds team for keeping the campus gardens beautiful year-round and for putting Ukrainian flags up everywhere. For that matter, thanks to the Ukrainian students who served me some makivnyk that nearly brought me to tears. Thanks to the student union staff for letting me repeat my Britpop undergrad years in the bar, delightfully but never disgracefully. Thanks to all the cafe staff for smiling at me like I’m your number one customer every day.

Finally, for our daily secret salute, thanks to The Notorious JBB, who reminds us that men who are far less competent than you are always going to claim credit for your achievements and erase you from your own work. That’s as much a fact as the laws of physics. All you can do is be true to yourself, knowing that for today, you’ve done your best, and that for tomorrow, the truth will out.

Now let’s do two more years of this. Here we go.