Academics Chat Thread

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I believe the old Chat thread has fallen off the front page of this section, and I thought it might be time to reinstate it. I know it's only sporadically useful, but sometimes it's nice, right?

I am a lowly postdoctoral English Lit type. Finished my PhD in 2014, teaching associate for a couple of years, and now part-time while DD is a baby. I'm currently working frantically to get my book manuscript to the publisher by my deadline (October), and also trying to regain enthusiasm for the job market.

Who else is lurking around here?

I'm done in too. And I have two grants and a paper due in before end November 😩

I'm so tired. I'm so worried about things I'm not sleeping, and I'm flat out all day. Can't wait until Christmas - and this year we're going abroad so I will really have a good break.

Ack, that sounds like a lot bigkids! My brain can't even hold what I need to do in Nov. I just know there is a giant landscape of stuff - most of my teaching this semester, but also at least one grant (at least I'm not PI - I'm just doing what the PI tells me). And there's a bunch of things I got started and now need me to push and make sure they happen. And I feel like I'm being pulled in so many directions, it's easier to just lecture.

I also get frustrated that it seems a huge amount of my job is sending emails. If I think about the things I need to do, it's like: 'email X to get his revisions for grant'; 'email Y to ask if they can Z'; 'email group to remind us all what we need to do'; and so on. And that doesn't even include replying to emails, which requires at least one email and usually a few more in response or to gather the info needed. I'm not quite sure how this happened. I really want to spend some time, I don't know, writing something or researching something. I suppose I do spend time preparing and giving lectures; that's not email. Yet I also email students to tell them what to bring to class, and other people to make sure the materials are there!

Sorry, random mini rant there. :) I should go send some emails...

emails are the bane of my life murmuration!

I've just had a little flurry of emails from students asking for model essay answers (nope), if I can give them feedback on their essays before they hand them in (nope) and a bunch of essay plans that are so vague I can't even say anything about them. They have no mention of any literature at all and are just vague lists that say they will write an introduction, main body and conclusion but no detail at all of any sodding content. Argh!

lll77 Are these undergrads?

We have a little compilation of dos and don'ts for dissertations and if you want to you could just point to it. "I'm glad you ask me this. Please see page 3 paragraph 4 of the Guide."

yes NeverEverAnythingEver they're undergrads. I don't know if it is just me getting grumpier every year, but they seem to be getting less and less capable of doing even the most basic things by themselves. I'm quite happy to look at and discuss essay plans, but there does actually have to be a plan.

I may take up your suggestion of a written guide for next term!

Yes and we are held to random via virtue of the 'student voice' and the precious NSS.

Reality is you will always get people who expect to be plugged into the matrix and expect good marks without any effort on their part😡- and then complain about staff for expecting some initiative and actually make a trip to the library.

I despair at the way the sector has gone. Thank goodness there are still some committed students out there.

Yes. Put the kids in charge. Nothing can go wrong there.

Back when I did first year, I would get so frustrated - we did SO much in response to NSS stuff, and then got "do more, there's been no change, its not working" without apparent recoginition of the fact that the students who had experienced our modifications had not yet graduated and so had not yet done the NSS and so you couldn't tell yet!! Anyway, you can tell I'm sore about that :)

The handholding drives me mad! I've had two emails this week from students saying they can't find a particular set of slides on our VLE. Yes, you can, just click on the file attached to the announcement about the lecture which states that the slides for the lecture are attached to the announcement.... Or sometimes I play dumb and refer them to IT support on the basis that although I can see them (in the usual place), perhaps there is a system error they need to have investigated.

I am not feeling too overwhelmed at the moment - mostly because I am ignoring the large amount of work coming my way in the new year! Today I plan to finish off some article revisions, so I am posting here for accountability. Wish me luck!

Well this is the thing. There's all sorts of ridiculous bum wiping initiatives that totally devalue the degree as it is but it's got to the extent where it's impossible to actually do academic work as there's so much nappy changing to do.

IMO if you don't give them what they want eg a degree with hardly any work they will complain. And don't get me started on the pastoral stuff. I don't mean to sound like a monster here and I have all the time in the world for decent committed students but there's too much laziness now.

The thing about a lot of "pastoral" stuff is that we are not qualified. Well, at least I am not. I am not qualified to advise a student on mental health issues, or on financial issues. Heck, I can't even advise on career issues. What the fuck do I know about careers? < hollow laugh>

@NeverEverAnythingEver exactly.

absolutely agree with that NeverEverAnythingEver. It's properly scary how much responsibility for complex pastoral care falls to untrained people.

I'm quite capable of being pleasant and kind to students (and indeed, end up with far more than my fair share of pastoral duties because of that) but I have had no training whatsoever to equip me to manage some of the stuff that students approach me about.

The correct thing to do is clearly to direct them to the university welfare people/careers office. This is what I do.

yes I refer them all to our wellbeing team, which of course is tiny, chronically underfunded and has a long waiting list :(

I know. :( :(

@III77 ditto.

Gosh I somehow got unsubscribed, I thought you'd all done very quiet... I have an unusually short to do list ATM which is YAY. By end of next week I should just about be caught up with myself. I've just put in an application for a sabbatical, so fingers crossed for that too, I could do with a break...

On the emails: I've made a policy of - whereever possible - answer an email with a phone call or pop into the person's office.

Then I can send a three word email to the person afterwards if needed, but the important things have been decided in only a couple of minutes without any typing. Increasing numbers of colleagues are phoning me rather than emailing, too, and things get decided and sorted SO much easier :)

Great idea, ommm! Unfortunately, that's rarely possible for me. We're so spread out and have to travel for teaching/meetings/etc that people are rarely in their offices, and me too - I spent maybe 3 hours in my office last week (and thus near a phone!) and this week I'll be here a bit more, but not so much. So email is often the only way to reach people much of the time.

Yeah, I worry about the pastoral stuff too. We were supposed to get some training, and they had one day available last year but it was when I was out of town. So I missed it. I hope they repeat. Also what frustrates me is the lack of closing the loop - I know I don't have right to any personal information about someone I pass on to the welfare people, but it would be nice to at least let me know whether they've successfully engaged with the student. I remember one semester when I passed a student on to the them, then got contacted at the end of the semester by a concerned staff as the student didn't show up to an exam and wasn't replying to email: I contacted the welfare people, and they said "Oh, we emailed him and he didn't reply". And that was it! Argh! The student had actually been coming to see me, but I assumed he was being taken care of by those who knew better at that point. I guess I could have continued to follow up, but I had a lot of other students I was dealing with more acutely. Actually, I have just followed up about a student this semester, and the welfare people haven't replied to several of my messages, even to let me know if they know anything or nothing (and this time the student isn't communicating with me).

And ugh. Our workloads were just released. Just the bump I needed to make me feel worse. :( At least I'm not on the bottom this year. They put us in "bins" and last year I was in the bottom bin, despite doing the same stuff as the year before (when I was in second from the top!). This year, I actually swapped a really big admin role for a less big one, and I'm in the second-to-bottom bin. I hate how it is all relative - what you do depends on what other people did. So I guess I can guess other people did a bit less, since I moved up and yet did less too? But the problem is, even if everyone was working all-out amazingly hard, half of us would still be in the bottom half. I understand that it helps the Head assign tasks to those with less responsibilities, but I'm not sure knowing where I rank in relation to everyone is really any help at all. It'll make at least half of us feel bad for being in the bottom half, and I bet some in the top half feel like they should be in higher bins!

Godstopper - it's great to hear that things have turned around for you! I've got a similar story to tell. A few years ago, before the birth of my second son, I was ready to throw it all in and was looking at what I might do outside of academia.
After I came back from maternity leave, things just started falling int o place. The most crucial thing that happened was the arrival of a new colleague. She is in a different department, but we share so many research interests its unreal. We now practically live at each others' desks and completely share calendars as we have many different projects together, including a funded research project (which is going to pots a weeny bit at the moment, but I am much more resilient than I would have been a few years ago and just think it will be ok.... ). What has been most crucial about this colleague is that she validated a lot of my work which I'd been unsure about so far.
Within the first year back at work I got the research grant (small and not full economic costing but who cares...), achieves Senior Fellowship of the HEA, got a paper published after a three! year gap, and a technical project really took off, which might lead to new interesting things. I've also contributed to a institutional policy and how to shape my university's practices in this area further in the near future.
So things are looking up - I can only hope it stays that way!

Just dropping this off as we could probably all use a bit of a boost: www.bbc.com/news/uk-46247776

I used to work with Olivette, it's richly deserved. Well done lass!

Well done on it falling into place dodi. Is it worth it though? I've had approaches to do something else research-related with manageable hours and lots of working from home. At the moment it's mostly a question of whether I go soon or after a sabbatical. I don't mind the work rate - it's more that I've just lost interest in the student-facing side and dealing with their worsening mental health.

LaDaronne thanks for that- Professor Otele looks inspiring.

I thought I'd revive this interesting thread with a dilemma: I'm increasingly being invited to speak at events which charge for entry, from corporate training type conferences (charging 300-500), to evening talks (charging 5-20). I don't mind speaking for free - I see that as part and parcel of sharing my public-funded research - but am I right in not wanting to have my labour exploited by others, however worthy (the first examples are not particularly worthy, of course, the latter is typically a society, some more transparent in their charitable aims than others).

Proper university-based seminars are fine, it goes without saying, though an offer to pay my expenses wouldn't go amiss, now that I think about it!