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.

We have a three working day policy too for replying to student emails - which they are repeatedly reminded about. I find I just have to be very strict with myself and have taken my work emails off my phone and do not usually check them out of hours. When I am feeling snowed under I type my replies to students in the evening but save them to drafts and do not send until office hours - I do not want to encourage unreasonable expectations.

We have a 24 hour response time policy. But generally their email use is shocking - they can't even compose an email with the correct greeting/sign off. Think "why u markd us down? cos it's difficult and we all went out drinking the night b4 so not r fult" so I tell them that unless the email is correctly composed and has module codes in then they won't be getting a response. This cuts down on admin a great deal.

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

Coming in late, I know, but why would you even contemplate answering that?

"Your lack of planning is not my emergency."

I've also started leaving it to just before the two day deadline to reply for overly demanding e-mails.

Job-hunting underway. So far:

(i) I've spent two weeks writing a proposal for what strongly seems to have been a FAKE JOB SEARCH. Said institution sent an e-mail a MONTH after the deadline saying that they are extending it due to "incomplete applications" and "encourage" people to submit new ones by a revised deadline (!?!). Whole thing is a joke, and it's my career that's on the line whilst they "encourage" their preferred candidate to apply. When the rejection comes in, I'm going to complain to HR about how this particular one was conducted as it's been pretty poor.

(ii) Teaching Fellowship applications underway, though only for part-time roles. I learnt this year that research goes out of the window when teaching full-time. I've been responsible for much more than some permanent staff, and have little research to show for it. Been good to have actual lecturing experience, but the downside has been little research - attempting to revise/write over the summer.

(iii) Small grant applications underway. The length of some of these application forms is ridiculous. When the scheme is major and the likelihood of success low, I think there should be an initial, shorter form, with an invitation to submit a full proposal if you pass that. Otherwise, it's weeks of work for a "we are unable to provide feedback" response, which is pretty patronising. If we are expected to put in lots of work, then even brief feedback would be appreciated.

Also, just returned from a major two day conference in my area. Usually, I feel energised and happy to have met new people. But this one was weird. One lecturer I've ran into at conf's a few times just blanked me when I dared to say 'hello' (!), and the more established names in the field kept to their own little group. I realise people are sometimes shy and gravitate to who they know, but these events can be pretty nerve wracking for people like me just starting out. Being made to feel welcome isn't difficult.

So, going through another down phase. It makes me sad that I feel this way: I (usually) love my subject, but I'm becoming increasingly unable to cope with the machinations of academia. And that is precisely what they are if one dares to enter the profession as a minority of some description. I dunno if it's just my field that's unusually hostile.

This is a good place to vent. I wouldn't dare say some of this stuff to the academics I know IRL. I'm usually quite a positive person, and don't like how depressed all this stuff is presently making me feel!

Thanks everyone, lesson definitely learnt - I will be a lot tougher about reasonable email expectations next year, and try not to feel pressure to do otherwise!

I'm sorry you're having a tough time Godstopper - the job hunt process (as well as the initial TF jobs) are so demoralising, so it is not just you. I have been really lucky this year as my new job was a 2-year post, so I have a break from it all this summer, which has helped keep me at it - but you are definitely not alone in finding it all a bit much. And I do think that the intensity of the job market does start to colour your tolerance for the other niggles of the profession as a whole. It's much easier to look past those when you're not desperately writing lengthy apps for 1-year jobs during which you won't even get to do the research you enjoy!

Godstopper: the job search and grants applications sounds rubbish. I'd be very annoyed about the fake job thing too. On the plus side, it sounds like you are being much more productive than me.

I am drowning in admin this week and also second hand student complaints about their marks. One student (whose mark was actually raised from 48 to 51 in moderation) wants an 'independent review' apparently because she's looked st another student's work who got a higher mark than her and she thinks she has met all the learning outcomes better than the other student. She should just accept that it's not as good as she thinks it is because she hasn't learned enough to tell it's crap. It's been looked at by 2 academics already (I had to second mark it).

Luckily I don't have to teach this year group again - I will be really delighted to see the back of them. They've been horrendous.

I've just done my first batch of proper marking (as a GTA we only did first years, now I'm lecturing it's been work that counts towards the degree) and am wondering if I'll get complaints like that Milady! It was a very odd batch of scripts: either the marks were excellent or they were really bad - at times I kept checking that the candidate did not have a declared disability so as not to penalise for spelling/grammar. I wish I could quote the more egregious errors, but that risks trouble.

I do worry that, with the rise in fees, some students will expect a certain grade, and complain loudly if they do relatively poorly.

Thanks Deanira/Milady. That's exactly it. The awful process has tuned me into things I've overlooked in the past. Mine is a discipline that sometimes receives criticism for being especially irrelevant (it has a real image problem), and I'm becoming intolerant of some academics who see fit to work on some obscure aspect of, say, Aristotle for three years whilst not publishing anything, whereas people in my position are now expected to have multiple publications just for a temporary job.

It is insane and I resent it.

I feel shut out of a subject I used to (still do?) care about by people with their own agendas. It's turning me into someone cynical and I don't like it. Desperately need to regain some balance. Someone needs to write a guide about how to preserve one's mental health whilst navigating academia!

I've never had complaints like this before. This group of students are a complete pain in the arse and really seem to dislike me. It's particularly annoying as my colleague marked it but it's my module. My colleague is a bit of a maverick and the feedback is idiosyncratic. I didn't have time to redo all the feedback so had to leave some of them to stand and only change the ones where the mark had changed radically.

Regardless, the student thinks she knows better than the judgement of the entire module team. We actually had the most rigorous moderation process I've ever had in this job in this module so I am completely confident that the marks are fair.

Annoyingly the programme leader didn't send her away with a 'you can't question academic judgement'. She told her some nonsense that the procedure was to discuss your mark with the marker and put your case across!!! Honestly, I despair.

I'm really sorry that you're feeling a bit shut out of your discipline. That's crap. The conference sounds disheartening. I once went to a workshop where not a single person spoke to me. I did make efforts to start conversations but everyone was in their own groups and really weren't interested. I'm used to going to conferences where everyone is super friendly and welcoming so I felt thoroughly miserable (and glad it was only one day).

Our faculty registrar provides us all with a standard response to complaints about marking which makes life easier. I also find saying I could have another look at your work/show it to the externals but remember that until the exam board the mark can go up .....or down gets rid of some of them.

I hope things get easier Godstopper

I'd love some generic text for students.

I just wish that I didn't end up with colleagues who (possibly unintentionally) sabotage everyone else. I'm pretty sure the programme leader thought she was being kind to the student but she needs to step back and think about how it affects everyone else. And, indeed, how it creates and exacerbates unrealistic expectations.

So tonight I have looked at the students' essay and ascertained that she had misunderstood her feedback. She thinks it says 'you have met all the assessment criteria' when I actually says 'you've included all the basic elements but your essay is limited by both breadth of scope and depth of analysis' or 'you've had a go at the task but actually it's all superficial description and you don't understand what issues are important (so you've missed out x and y)'. She's lucky we were so generous when we moderated the grade boundaries. I will email her tomorrow to make this clear.

Sorry to hear you've got a depressing bunch of students, milady.

Something I came across recently, which irritated/bemused me, was students assuming that because something was double-marked, therefore the markers must have been 'unsure'. Rather than seeing it as a mark of a rigorous system (and we double-mark everyone), they saw it as a sign that a single academic's judgement couldn't be trusted. I wonder if your student has the same misconception? I found it really odd, but it wasn't just one student.

I'm jumped guiltily when you mentioned colleagues who make it harder for the rest of you by trying to be 'nice'. But now I read what happened I don't think I'd be guilty of that one!

We have a standard response too and close down anyone who talks about changing the grade. It's been marked and moderated so it's been through the correct checks. Come and discuss how you could have improved it, find, but the mark will not change.

I can very much imagine this group of students getting the wrong idea about double marking too. They're particularly difficult and hype each other up on Facebook all the time. The most frustrating thing is that where they have a problem they completely refuse to go to their module leader. Even when they've been redirected to the module leader, they just find someone else to complain to (and by this time it's a social media fuelled monster that bears little relation to the initial misunderstanding where they've vilified the module tutors). They were the same last year and are even worse this year.

The people they keep going to don't seem to realise that by being 'nice' and not shutting things down, they're almost certainly creating an NSS disaster for next year when this group are final years.

Ugh, the NSS! I hate how so much is tied to that. And for me, being (having been!) in charge of first year it was doubly frustrating: we'd make changes, and then get told the next year "But it didn't do any good! The NSS scores on X haven't changed. You must be doing it wrong! Do more! MORE!" but the students who experienced the changes hadn't taken the NSS yet! How can the Uni admin be so dense as to not realise that a survey of graduating students will not immediately reflect changes we make for students who will not graduate for several more years yet?

NSS scores are stupid aren't they? At the very least they should control for gender bias and student performance. That would stop the grade hiking.

There is nothing that is not stupid about NSS scores. But since we're stuck with them, it's best not to let the students' expectations get wildly out of hand.

Milady - I'm heading into London for a big meeting where I fully expect noone to speak to me all day.
It's shit - especially when you make effort to go toward people in little cliques, and they blank you out.

If I feel a bit hyper tomorrow, this will just no make much of an impact. But if I am feeling down (which is very likely with election results) it will truly finish me :(

That sounds horrible Marasme. Let's hope the election result is less depressing than I'm imagining it will be.

I find that I'm getting more and more introverted as I get older. I try to avoid going to things where I won't properly know anyone now because I really can't face spending days sitting on my own wondering why I'm so abominable at networking.

I always assume everyone else likes networking and it's just me that doesn't! I do usually end up chatting to someone, and I really like meeting new people if it's in the right type of event, but it's just so nerve-wracking. If you go to a big conference and have to sit on your own, it' s always a bit horrible. I only go for very specific reasons now, if I really need to present or do something for a grant, I never go to anything for the fun of it or if I've already been somewhere recently.

I find I need a reason to network and without that it just feels embarrassing and nothing comes of it. So I can speak to 100 people at a conference and nothing will happen, but if I say, organise an event and invite people I've not met as speakers I have a reason to talk to them, and that means they actually remember me and it is more likely to lead to something.

I've only had about 5 complaints from students about their mark in the 13 years I've been at my institution. I've only had 1 student who really pushed it. The last complaint was about 3 years ago. I'm at a mid-level post-92 institution in Scotland & get a fair number of local students. My only explanation is the absence of fees (for a good proportion of the student body).

I never had complaints about my marks until I came to work at this post-92 in England. And this year, my second years (who were quite bad when I taught them last year) just seem desperate to complain about everything rather than accepting that they're just not doing enough work. Obviously they're owed a 65 regardless how little effort they put in themselves.

I went to a really good writing workshop today. I was a bit apprehensive (having been to plenty of pretty useless training in the past), but it was really good. I now need to sit myself down and write a draft of the paper I planned out for next week. It does mean than I can't put it off or let anything else get in the way, which has to be a good thing. Annoyingly, my paper needs to be multiple times the length of everyone else's (due to disciplinary differences) so I need to find more time to write between the sessions than I had anticipated (the instructions said I'd need at least half a day for writing between the sessions, so it didn't even occur to me that the task would be producing a whole draft). The time pressure might actually be a good thing though as I'm my own worst enemy when it comes to writing.

Obviously it's not all the second years. Some of them are really hardworking and produce some great work. It's just there are enough very difficult students, and an awful lot of stirring up anger for no good reason on social media, to make them a cohort I'll be glad to see the back of.

They're happy with 65? You were lucky!

It's daft though, to be serious.

On a nicer note, milady, that sounds great - would you have any tips to share?

I met up with a colleague today and had a good chat about publishing, which has made me feel more purposeful, too. Good times.

Yes. I'll PM you because it'll be long.

If anyone else wants the same info just PM me.