As a graduate student any time taken away from the main task at hand, getting a PhD, can seem like a wasted opportunity. Especially when the time is not actually for a resting holiday in the sun, but is focussed on those hard-to-define transferable skills we are all told to cherish. So, it may come as something of a shock to learn that I have just spent some such time away from my work, honing those tenuous skills, and have come back re-energized and full of enthusiasm.