Anyone want a general chat?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

By which title I mean, of course, that I am procrastinating and if I can't rise above it I'd love to drag you all down with me.

What are we all doing this term, and how's it going?

I'm trying to kick my book proposal into shape after yet another set of comments. I've lost track of how many times it's been 'nearly there' but I think it really is nearly there. Honest.

god - stipendiary lectureships are usually intended for internal canddiates people who are right at the ends of their PhDs and need some work to make ends meet. The pay is usually awful otherwise. And they can be very competitive. Anecdotally, they can also be a rather lonely type of post, as you're neither a PhD student nor a properly salaried postdoc, and you often have so little teaching you don't get to know the department well, either.

Yoga - yes I have post and undergrad teaching experience ( even experience of curriculum and course design) but I have to admit that it is the weakest pony in my CV, simply because I have luckily been able to focus on research and because the teaching I have done is not at the most prestigious universities in the world.

Lbr - I know exactly what you mean!
I am a believer in letting things cool down and then getting back to them. Might be a reason I am dragging this tail of nearly done work around with me.

Gobstopper The lack of feedback given is a crime. The whole system is ludicrously inefficient. I just wish appointing committees would be more honest with their criteria. It would save everyone time and emotional energy. I agree with what lrb says about Oxford. These junior positions in particular can be a bit of a closed shop (and I say this as an alumna, so no chipped shoulder)
Have you considered the Brilliant Club? Both their scholars programme and researchers in schools is worth checking out.

Apologies for terrible typos. Typing whilst nursing. I mean Lrd and godstppper of course

Oh the irony! I will shut up now

Mind if I join? Moved from industry to academia recently for a teaching fellow post. Was teaching for the last semester, and now starting a part time PhD. Have to come up with my own topic, which is freaking me out, especially as I come from the hard sciences where the supervisor comes up with the project.

Finding the change in pace hard to adjust to. I was so damn efficient and productive in my last job, my former colleagues wouldn't recognise me now. Turns out I can't read, who knew?! Finding it so hard to sit and read papers (of course, if I actually did that rather than going online I'd get better). And have a few MSc dissertation students to supervise over the summer when I have no research experience myself. Deep breaths, deep breaths.

Big fat rejection without interview for me, argh!

Very - I am horrified you haven't secured a permanent position.

I'm very impressed intimidated by all the publishing going on I'm really at the start of that journey. With few publications and no teaching under my belt I don't feel to competitive on the job market. I'm pretty much resigning myself to patching stuff together for a bit.

Interesting to hear about the pros / cons of publishing the PhD. I've shied away from publishing mine, but have recently been thinking about ways to expand it a bit into something fresher.

Hi liv! The change of pace from industry must be so tough! Can you recreate some of your previous work conditions to help productivity? Pretending I have an office job with pretty nonnegotiable hours helps me ( mind you that was before dc though!). I use a time tracker that goes off for every break etc which helps me stay accountable and also helps me figure out how I spend my time and how I can do better. And don't worry about the teaching. Everybody is winging it some days.

Grey. So sorry to hear about rejection. Get back on the horse. Do you have someone to give you feedback? Like a supervisor or someone who has recently gotten a job? I got the most helpful comments from people who are perhaps 5 years ahead of me because they have succeeded in this crazy market, whereas my supervisors landed his job under very different circumstances.

grey oh no so sorry, so disheartening. Academia seems to get ever more competitive. I don't think I'd get my own job if I applied for it now and I'm only 6 years in.

god yes they replied but just said they'd considered all applications so not very satisfying, but at least I made my point

My book is due at the publishers and I know already it won't be ready. I should flag it up now, right? So they can plan for a new submission date.

Ah. I might give the Oxford jobs a miss: all pay would be swallowed by travel and doesn't reflect the time taken to prepare anyway. That they are pitched towards internals is no surprise.

My institution has a direct appointments system where fixed-term jobs of up to a year need not be advertised externally. That seems reasonable and saves others wasting time.

To whoever mentioned the Brilliant Club, Thanks! Exactly the sort of thing I'd like to be involved with.

God- glad I could be of help. Pm me if you would like to chat about the brilliant club some more. I did some work for them right after my PhD and have stayed in touch.

Very - yes I've got some lovely friends who have been recently job searching and have been giving me feedback. I'm in a fixed location due to my OH career so I'm afraid there's nothing else to apply for right now. I'm going to get to work on some grant applications! How are you getting on with applications 51 & 52?

Liv - academia is such a varied job isn't it, between researching, writing, teaching, presenting, learning to jump new bureaucratic hoops Good luck with the reading

Hi to all

Grey- about to send off application 51, have application 52 scheduled for week after next. (Long application!)Though I am sitting on the fence a bit.

It's a very good department open to the kind of work that I do (rare!) but it's a 2 h commute each way.

For a variety of reasons (mostly family) I am not moving away from home. The thing that complicates matters somewhat is that dh works away from home most week, meaning that I do most ds related logistics.

I did a 2h commute for my PhD and my first postdoctoral appointment and I did not mind traveling that much as I am very productive on transport. But this was before I had ds, when I was more flexible with my time and less shattered. We also want to have more children soon so I am worrying about how tiring it would be. And even if I could get away with only going 2 times a week: do I want that? And do I want to hire a nanny/ rely on elderly grandparents leaving ds with both parents either abroad or in other part of the country for most of the day ( in case of emergencies or illness)

Wwyd?

Hello! Joining in here but haven't read the whole thread. Marking all done and I was looking forward to doing some research and then what happened? Bloody half-term ...

Very - I'm not sure, it's a tough call. I think I'd go for it and see what happens. If your DH works away most of the week would there be an option to relocate 1h closer to this post? 3 days a week I do a 3h per day commute due to dropping DS off and it's tiring but doable. Is your post 4h per day door to door?

I feel your pain, we are without any family support and have to weather the endless days off because of kid illness. Have you good friends that could help out? Mine are awesome at doing pickups and drop offs when we are not available or are unwell. It's been a life saver as our nursery recently cut their hours massively.

My DH has a chronic condition that flares badly with stress so in a way that's another reason we're tied to our city. It seems much harder to get a job when you have to stay put for family reasons :(

Hi all

Term mixed for me. My new PhD student started and she is ACE and flying. I'm chugging through HEA fellowship and seminar writing at an ok-ish pace. But just had a paper (which we were really excited about!) rejected from the second journal with no comments, not even review. Bah.

Yeah, that is a tough one, very - so is your DH actually away overnight? I think I would be worried mostly about both parents being so distant so regularly - surely over time there will be some kind of issue, whether or not it is very serious - where you would want to be able to get to your child in less than 2 hours. Although, thinking further, I grew up near DC in the States, and many families had both parents working there, and while it was only ~20 miles away, the commute was usually functionally 1.5-3 hours due to traffic or on public transport.

I think I'd pursue it, but be honest if they interview you that you would require a lot of remote working. I think it really depends on the people how this would work - there is a whole crowd in another dept that only comes 2/days a week and they seem to integrate fine.

Welcome, never!

Aw, bad luck big - very frustrating to not even get feedback.

Our marking has ended, and I'm suddenly finding it much harder to manage my 5-days-in-4.5 flexi time: it seems the meetings are coming out of the woodwork now that they know we won't have teaching/marking commitments! I screwed up last week by thinking I could manage to push through, and ended up home sick Tues after basically collapsing Mon. So now I'm working catch-up on my capability and trying to manage the increased scheduling.

But, in better news, I submitted a grant proposal. And am moving on to the next one (whose early-July deadline seemed much further away halfway through the semester...).

I've had a student email (sent at 5am this morning apparently) sending me reams of work to check along with annotated queries before their exam... tomorrow. I AM doing it, but I am sending an angry email about how asking me to work on this on Sunday fails to respect my time and working hours. There's tons of stuff here, and it's on a text we've been studying since January, so plenty of time to ask before now. AIBU to include the angry note?

I think you're mad to do that. You'll only encourage more of the same. I'd just reply at 9:05 tomorrow morning saying, 'Just got in to the office and read this. Obviously too late to send any detailed comments, but best of luck for the exam'.

Well I did respond to some student queries (those were brief questions rather than the checking of actual work, however, so much easier) yesterday, so am a little worried about setting up a double standard which they then complain about. My instinct was initially to ignore the email and respond tomorrow in work hours saying I'd not seen it until then, as you suggest, but I do generally try and help my students wherever I can... perhaps however I am being too soft-hearted?

I think you're being too soft hearted, yes.

Yeah, I wouldn't respond today. Although I really don't check email over the weekend. (And, um, usually don't visit the internet at all on Sunday, which rule I'm obviously breaking right now - but it's been an unusual weekend!) Actually, given my pattern, responding to messages Sat but not today wouldn't send too much of a mixed message - some people specifically don't work Sundays.

Thanks - that's very helpful to know (for the future at least). For those who don't respond to emails at particular times - do you have a policy established in e.g. course documents, or do you just not respond? I have been wondering about the first option as something to consider for teaching next year.

I just don't respond.

I don't have a policy about it, but I think students should have the maturity to realise that a reply outside of normal working hours is a favour and not something to be expected.

I did recently have to write one of 'those' emails to a student who expected me to rearrange some one-to-one teaching to cut into my maternity leave, rescheduled it again, and then had the arrogance to tick me off for not being permanently available. I did my best polite, restrained explanation of how schedules function in normal workplaces. And I still got a reply suggesting that the problem was mine, because apparently, students mostly don't think about their teachers' free time, and it is unreasonable to expect them to keep other people's plans in mind.

I will say, this is the exception, though. I think you'd be mad to try to do work like that at that timescale. It's insulting to you.

I just don't respond. I do tell my students the first year in the introductory lecture to remember that lecturers generally will only respond in working hours (along with things like to give the message an informative title, mention what module it's about - "the test" doesn't mean much when I'm teaching on 3 modules with a test in the next few weeks, use formal language, and so on). I don't know what they do in other years, but in my final year module I just assume they know this by then.

My (unofficial) policy for students who are taking the piss over email is to wait until the end of the 3rd working day since they emailed and then respond. We have a response within 3 working days policy across the department. I will usually remind turn of the policy and what working days actually means as part of the email.