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 didn't forget dissertations but I only have 1 this year (two non-returners). I'll have two or three second marking though but not that much.

How much per one-hour exam answer are people calculating in words?

Depends on your students. Mine would probably produce 300 words in an hour exam! Maybe 1000 words for a more representative sample of students.

I have approx 250 students across the year and I mark all their work. So that's 240 long and complex papers, 430 one to two pagers, and 90 in between as well as 90 very short ones. Some of the shorter papers are formative and I am expected to give almost supervisory advice towards a longer paper, so complex, especially since each student chooses their topic. It just feels a lot.

I mainly teach on M level courses. I currently teach 2 MA modules with 40 students. For each module I mark 2 drafts and a written piece of 6000 words. This makes about 480,000 words of summative work for both modules, and half the same again for the drafts. I also supervise at least 20 MA dissertations which adds another 300,000 summative words, and about the same again drafts.
I also have 2 UG modules. Each has a summative piece of 3000 words = 135,000 words.
I seems like a lot of words when I write it down!
Do you all take in drafts too?

I never look at drafts. Or plans. I’ve taken to telling them that I will look at annotated bibliographies but they never bring one of them as that would require reading.

I set peer review exercises for formative assessment, and give them a whole set of tools to help them to understand how they’ll be marked. The vast majority of students do not read or respond to my feedback so it would be a complete waste of my time to look at formative assessment.

We are officially not allowed to look at drafts.

Working it out in total number of words it's 750000, I think.

ARGH! You try to schedule things! Details probably too outing. Just I did stuff ahead of time, and was SO organised, and now someone else has changed things and my day is shot to bits. Massive amounts of work to complete, and now it's going to be even harder. Just so frustrated and I don't know how I'm going to make it through today much less this week...

Oh, murm. Grrr! That's really shit. I hope today went vaguely ok.

I've just got back from teaching to realise my colleague didn't send the students the reading I prepared for them in June. That's 8 pages of what was meant to prepare them over the summer. It's the last of several instances where this colleague just hasn't bothered, and it's irritating me. Not as badly as your colleague is irritating you, though, clearly!

That’s really annoying for both of you.

I’ve actually taken to demonstrating strategic incompetence at work. Demonstrations of competence see me punished with extra duties but there seem to be no penalties for the incompetent. I’d rather have the time to work on my escape plan.

(Admittedly, I don’t leave my immediate colleagues in the shit. But I’m not averse to letting those who are paid more than me actually do their jobs for a change rather than passing duties downwards).

I have about 500 pieces of coursework/exam papers to mark as well as UG and PG dissertations (normally around 15-20).

I am the module tutor for most of the modules I teach on and for me and for me apart from drowning under marking the challenge comes from all the student emails re assessment e.g. I have 150 first yr students, 40 2nd years, 30, final years, 30 taught MSc, 90 DL Masters students

I always forget the copious amounts of resit marking I have (because, unlike some colleagues, I will not pass them when I can’t understsbd a single sentence/they haven’t read anything other that a website/they are being outright offensive about minority groups or other cultures/they patently haven’t attended anything and know nothing that was in the module/all of the above). This year I have marked 35 first year resits, and 45 second year resits (including the surprise 3rd attempts the exam board sprung on me this month).

I don’t know why we bother offering resits. It’s the same students every year (and many of them they have resits in 1st, 2nd and then 3rd year) and they almost invariably do not respond to feedback or make any changes for their 2nd, 3rd and even 4th bloody attempt. It’s a total waste of everyone’s time. We don’t even change the assessment task for resits, so it would be incredibly easy to pass them if they actually read their feedback. But no. I get to mark essays where students think changing 4 words will somehow change their mark from a 28 to a pass.

Thanks for the commiserations, everyone. That sounds frustrating, too, LRD! Well, I got all the rescheduled things done, but now my planned work for that day not very well accomplished, and away on a trip - did a bunch in the airport at least! But need to resist working late tonight as I need to be up bright and early and all network-y-ready.

Wow, arbitrary, they get the same thing and don't get better? That's mind boggling.

Did any of you see this in the paper? www.theguardian.com/news/2017/oct/10/the-science-of-spying-how-the-cia-secretly-recruits-academics?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

I go to completely different types of conferences!

I used to go to conferences where there might just be spies, but to be honest, everyone looked a bit dodgy.

I have been reading the Mrs Smith teacher blog and really like it... so I decided to start a mild imitation.

www.facebook.com/drjonessl/

Sounds like a wonderful start to the term, worst. All going brilliantly. We’re 5 weeks in an I’ve been asked to go to an exam board because all the programme leaders and anyone else seem to be away on Friday. Alas I have a meeting that clashes with it. It’s only meeting a colleague to discuss a project we’re trying to develop so I could move it. But I really don’t want to.

As a favour to a friend, I said I’d do a mock viva for one of her (very tricky) students. I am finding it very difficult to make it through the thesis and have decided that my friend must have the patience of a saint to have put up with this for years (and had all of her advice ignored throughout). The mock viva next week is going to be painful. Hopefully I’ll manage to force myself to read all of it by then.

Good luck arbitary, sounds like a hard slog with the thesis. Can you reward yourself liberally with coffee/choc for making it through various chapters/papers?

Oh I have. And I’m skimming much of it.

I can’t imagine the actual examiners are enjoying it any more than me. Both supervisors told the student that they were nowhere near ready to submit (and should take another year) but apparently it’s entirely up to the student.

I know about PhD students... I've done 4 annual reviews in the past 2 weeks...

I’m sure they were all absolutely excellent.

I appreciate the (wonderful) people who supervised my PhD ever more the more supervision and review work I do.

They were not bad, actually. Probably a lot better than I was at that stage.

That’s good to hear. There is very little chance that the student whose work I have now managed to read will get through the actual viva with anything short of substantial rewrite. There is a decent thesis in the project, but the student has completely lost the wood for the trees.

I had a coffee with the supervisors this afternoon and (reassuringly) my feelings about the thesis are pretty much identical to theirs. Except, of course, that they’ve been trying to tell the student about the issues for years to little avail.

I really do enjoy working with PGR students, except for those cases where it’s incredibly difficult. I had a student foisted on me last year who was basically unsupervisable and should never have been admitted as a PhD candidate at all. Luckily, the review panel (in fact) 3 separate review panels all agreed that she should not be allowed to continue. But I gained quite a lot of grey hair from having to try to steer this student through 3 attempts at having the project approved at all.

Actually, "lost the wood for the trees" was said in another PGR meeting today ...