Hello all and happy to see you here. I missed the creation of the corner and also the controversy owing to being on holiday with the DC. Before I went away people said "you're going for three weeks? that's a long time" and as these were mainly work people who said this, I assume either a) a three week holiday is a sign of being not at all serious about your profession or b) they were jealous. However as it turns out c) although we went a long way so it was a long flight etc. and it is better from that POV to go for longer, 3 weeks is a long time with two preschool DCs.
I originally made this name change for a thread about getting out of academia, pre-DC2. Part of my issue was with my university at the time having desperately wooly promotions criteria and though some colleagues thought it was bananas that I hadn't been promoted, a few senior stick in the muds (and one HoD, the HoD has changed several times and the others disagreed) thought that I didn't have enough of XYZ to be promoted (despite others with no XYZ whatsoever and comparable everything else having already been promoted).
So we now have our longed for DC2, relationship with DH is getting along fine, I'm back at work and HAVE been promoted (confirmed just before maternity leave, great timing!).
I have some nice projects going on (though have been COMPLETELY excluded from something else owing partly to major decisions being made while I was on ML, the problem is that nobody outside academia including DH understands that you don't just say "I'll take my ball home then" when this happens because if that happens you don't get any authorships). My teaching is really not too onerous, I'm part time and DC1 is growing up and getting to be more fun to be with (and I only have to go through potty training once more!).
But this is probably partly post-holiday feeling and partly post ML feeling, I still want to leave. Everything feels so petty - and it's not the "we are a business" admin crowd who I can kind of cope with. It's the "we've always done it this way and I don't care if it's stopping you doing your job we HAVE TO DO IT THIS WAY" overcautious jobsworth nearly-retired academics, and the younger ones who are supposedly go-getting 40yo professors but who bow to the jobsworths at every move.
And it's the "but I have kids too" male academics who never pick up their children from nursery (thank goodness for my neighbour who can be seen loading a screaming toddler into the car and driving to the Uni nursery every morning while his DW goes to work in the opposite direction in parallel with my DH). And the "I'm sure they didn't mean that" colleagues mansplaining comments about "you won't be interested [you gave me 2 days on ML to respond]" and "we consulted everyone [except me]".
OK I am going to HAVE to stop there, sorry about the rant. But I am now seriously stalking jobs.ac.uk AND seriously considering moving to something in a government department (DH does something technical and incomprehensible and I could potentially work in a parallel job).