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?

Ha, murmuration I did get as far as looking up the equality rep, but in the meantime the invitation has been rescinded. Apparently it was made "in error". perhaps someone has had words. We'll see if a more sensible date is suggested (any votes for 25th December?)

Oh and sympathies for your conference travails. I've finally seen the positives in my (not any more prematurely) grey hair with matching grey face.

Seriously, one strategy that sometimes works for me is to email someone who's work I admire to say I'm looking forward to hearing their work, then crossing fingers they'll take the hint and suggest meeting in a coffee break. It doesn't help that scary feeling when trying to enter conversation circles when everyone knows each other, not helped by the fact that I'm frequently at conferences where I don't know people as I'm quite interdisciplinary.

worst, I know what you about tidying - there is this in-between stage where to get stuff to the right place you need to take it all out and look at it. Unfortunately my efforts often end about there, and things just get messier... Sorry you're feeling hopeless. I think now is your time to take a breather and not try to think about it too much (if that's possible!), as your brain is likely to paint everything in the worst light right now!

imposter, "in error", how funny! I bet someone or someones did say something. Thanks for you sympathies. I did finally manage to have an extended conversation with another faculty member, and emailed him on the trip home to make sure I kept the contact up! A lot of money for one contact, but I suppose that's the way it goes. Enjoyed yesterday's talks much more than the day before too. Nice idea about the emailing ahead of time - I may try that in the future!

Promotion news finally in.....

I'm a Reader!

Phew.

Oh, yay! Congratulations to you.

Hurray, ghislaine! That's super! So glad to hear it. :)

Congratulations ghislaine

Hope nobody minds me having a whinge...I just can't seem to switch between teaching and research at the moment. I've only got one module to teach (and just 5 contact hours per week. It's 1 x 1 hour, and 2x 2 hour). I've taught the module for years so I have everything ready to go.

I should be getting loads of research done, but I'm finding it so hard to move between the two activities. For example, today I taught 11am-1pm. I got some writing done before I taught, but I haven't been able to get my head in the right place this afternoon. It's so frustrating that just 2 hours of teaching seems to have destroyed the whole afternoon.

I've never had the luxury of such a light teaching load so this hasn't really been a problem before. I'm conscious I have 5 modules to teach next semester so I won't get much research done from January. How do other people manage to turn research on/off?

I have to say I tend to leave boring admin work for days when I'm teaching. It really is a performance especially bigger classes and longer sessions.
But five modules in one semester is a lot! Are you in the UK?

Yes, that's my strategy too. Emails, meetings, emails, meetings, emails on teaching days. I'm not the sort of person who can do an hour here or there, unless it's something like editing.

Second week off, I've done an exercise video rather than a daytime TV binge this morning. I have remembered some marking I did but didn't return so I'm going to have to get the laptop out but I've worked out I can just look in my sent emails box rather than the horror that is my inbox, and still check things arrived.

CheckIng in again, I am still panicking a bit about what I need to do/have missed/will have waiting for me. I met a friend in a similar position who has ended up resigning and says she wishes she hadn't rushed back. I'm also very worried about one of my DCs who is really struggling and probably needs me more just now. So I'm not sure about going back and I'm wondering about extending a few weeks. This also means they may reassign more stuff.

Hi worst - do what you need to for yourself and your DC. Work is dealing without you, if you can't manage it right now they'll figure it out somehow.

I'm freaking out about leaving on a bunch of trips right now and several deadlines occurring while I'll have unknown internet access. But I'll do the best I can.

Also someone else is ready to head straight into the same administrative quick-sand I did in my recent grant (we appear to have found a workaround, but I won't relax until it's all absolutely sorted). I warned her about the things that took me by surprise and offered to help with any fighting with admin structures she might want to do. I think we need an institutional change to fix this problem. Perhaps two of us back-to-back might make a difference? Not sure.

Thanks murmur, I think DH agrees with me/you/my friend.

We had a big infrastructure failure on campus a while back and I remember a grant deadline was moved. Worth giving people a heads up.

Just popping on to say I've been signed off for 3 more weeks. Another friend came out of the woodwork who was also signed off (there's a lot of it about!) but she's gone back after talking to occupational health and getting an additional risk assessment.

So, worst, how do you do it? Is it a matter of making an appointment with a GP (any GP? as to get my own it normally takes 1-2 weeks) and saying you're overwhelmed?

I think I'm going to manage, but I'm slightly worried I could reach breaking point. I've got so much to do and am just sort of foggy at times - earlier this week I mistook a post-it-note for cheese! (and where you wouldn't expect cheese at all) Just concerned I'm not quite "all there" when I should be.

Person at the focus of my big grant-issue has started today. Everything isn't quite yet resolved. I'm finding it a bit weird, in that I should be excited about a new project, but there is all this stress around it, and I'm also somewhat embarrassed about our Uni's reception for the new start. I'm trying to keep most of it from them, but I'm unsure what they might pick up from around.

I self certified for a few days and booked a GP appointments ahead while I tried to go back into work. We have a "within the week" option which opens each morning e.g. Fri am for the following Fri.

Hello, all. Hope it's ok that I join here. I need somewhere else to talk about work (aka venting, sorry) before my husband and friends start wearing ear plugs. I'm currently on a research week, during which I had planned to finish some writing up of an article that is long, long overdue. Have I been able to do that? No. Instead, I have spent two full days investigating, marking up, and writing reports on plagiarism cases in my mid-semester submissions for the academic integrity board next week. I understand that students plagiarise. I can even have sympathy for some students, who clearly do it out of desperation and panic. But the whole process of dealing with it is so laborious now. I mean, I understand why - regulations and fair hearings and representatives and so on - but it just takes so bloody long and we have to pussy foot around and not say the word 'plagiarism' until the Board has ruled on the case, and have our doors open and witnesses to student meetings and HONESTLY. I feel like screaming. I'm in a protracted stand off with a student who has been referred to the Board but keeps showing up at my office to plead his case - all this, for a 500 word close reading (which, by the way, was lifted almost verbatim from the very first google result for "XX poem analysis" and was terrible).

I'm very disillusioned with everything this semester. I came back from maternity leave at the end of the summer and was a bit shafted, to be honest - a fairly important service role I had been enjoying was reassigned to someone else (I suspect to help his promotion prospects), and that 'gap' in my workload was filled with new modules which I had no hand in designing and had to scrabble to fill with content that made some degree of sense. And one of the new modules is going really badly and I can't see how to turn it around at this stage, and I just feel completely depressed whenever I think about it.

Bleurgh. Anyway.

Vent away medb22 that sounds rotten. The plagiarism thing is maddening. You’d think they did have a simple process form for clear cut cases, wouldn’t you? I can’t believe they’ve dumped teaching on you that you haven’t had a hand in shaping. How immensely frustrating. All I can say is I hope matters improve, and try and see how you can delegate stuff that’s not necessarily yours to do, such as form filling.

Nearly halfway through term...

Back at work this morning, just a half day. I'm heavily relying on pomodoros and have promised myself two for a paper that is nearly finished. Seeing my HoD tomorrow but there is so much to say that I don't feel able to say to them. It's very frustrating but I do feel less panicky and reasonably positive about adjusting my working hours which has been agreed in the short term at least.

Good luck for HOD meeting worst!

Yes, hope it goes ok, worst.

We have only four weeks of teaching left. Thank goodness. I am not at my best, even without taking the new and extra teaching into account. I'm getting thrown by things in the classroom that would normally not affect me too much. There's an older student in one of my classes who keeps picking up on minor remarks I make in class, unimportant things really in the grand scheme of things, and contradicting them. Usually something historical, or contextual, and especially if I am suggesting an ideological context that might be 'hidden'. Generally I find that some older students do this because they feel they have ownership over a time period because they 'lived through it', and thus know better than me. Anyway, last week I was wrong about something factual and she made a big deal of 'correcting' me, and even though I acknowedged it in the next class and explained why it actually didn't change my reading of the text, I still feel wrong-footed and irritated with myself and the whole module. Grr! I cannot wait for term to be over.

Those of you who manage to be research active while teaching too, HOW do you do it! I am so, so late with a chapter for a collection - and really, I cannot see how I will carve out the time to finish it until term is over. I seem to spend every minute of the day prepping, teaching, posting things to poxy cms, marking, emailing, meeting with students, reading dissertation drafts. Gah. I

I am going to try and be strict about timetabling even just half an hour for research (I have 15 mins before lunch timetabled for looking at some spreadsheets and then 2 x 1/2 an hour after lunch for a paper I've nearly finished).

Meeting went OK, HoD is usually fairly straight down the line and did sound panicky when I suggested a couple of things outside routine (I had a contingency for them) which was a bit stressful but they have also suggested some things that can wait quite a while to ease my stress.

Also found out yesterday I didn't get a grant, haven't looked at the feedback yet, it might be a while before I can.

Hi worst, hope things continue to go reasonably smoothly.

Sorry to hear about the grant. That sucks. And it just happens so often...

I'm just back from an extensive teaching activity (overseas, all weekend, a good 14 hours a day!!) where I planned to do lots of marking, but didn't, so have 4-5 hours of marking to do this week, but also teaching each morning and PM, plus DH is out of town so I'm doing childcare. Argh!! Feeling really run down, never mind the cold I picked up on the airplane.

medb22 - I must say I'm not sure. I seem to run from urgent item to urgent item, and sometimes the urgent items are research-related, but usually they are teaching. Only when I've managed to get into collaborative groups where a number of us have our eyes on a deadline do I really seem to manage - on my own, research often doesn't get done. I'd planned to write a paper this summer and autumn (based on promotion feedback), and I did a lot of actually research this summer, but it was interrupted by my administrative crisis, and I got as far as making a poster for a conference but basically quit after that. Need to get back to it! Oh, and reminds me a research group sent around a deadline in Nov 20-something, which back in Sep seemed plenty of time but suddenly is right around the corner. I'll see if I can send a reminder email to the group - we've already applied to two things on the same topic, so shouldn't be too hard to whip up another application - but only after I finish my marking!! As I seem to be able to spend hours on email and barely accomplish anything.

Medb22 I am not teaching much at the moment (mostly bought out) but in the past I've managed to be pretty research active with a full teaching load / big admin job. To be honest I did it by prioritising research and having a cast iron rule that I did some research activity and preferably some actual writing every single day, and usually first thing (eg before even reading emails). For 18 months I had a faculty job which meant hours each week in meetings and I used to write, format and edit footnotes during them. I also kept teaching prep to a minimum, which I think is only really doable once you are mid career ish and have a certain amount of experience to fall back on and not lumbered with teaching loads of random modules designed by someone else. For me keeping up research was the bit that kept me sane.

Thanks everybody. Being more ruthless about scheduling some research time each day is probably a good idea - I can be a bit defeatist and think, what's the point of just half an hour? But it's better than nothing. I have no non-teaching days this semester, and I have classes scheduled at 9am three mornings a week. But I could be much more organised on the other two days - do all admin and as much marking as possible on the days I teach in the morning, since I'm fit for nothing creative after teaching, I find.