Things you love/hate about the job that others hate/love

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DP has pronounced me a weirdo because I admitted this week that I enjoy marking and, perhaps more shockingly, I enjoy doing revise and resubmit 😱

I know, I know.

I enjoy both of these because they feel very tangible, processual and outcomes-oriented.

On the other hand, I absolutely hate conferences. I don't just mean the travel and being away from home, but the actual content itself. I find hearing about other people's work in progress really, really dull and pointless 🤭 So many of my colleagues talk about conferences as enriching and supportive and generative but I absolutely don't get this!

What about you? Tell me what you love or hate that your colleagues seem to hate or love.

I am the same with marking! There is a lot of satisfaction in seeing a pile of assignments (real or virtual) becoming smaller and smaller.

I am HoD this year. What everyone seems to hate (budgets and other monetary stuff, allocating people to courses and admin roles, doing e-mail) I don't mind it at all - in fact sometimes I do it when I need to relax or wind down from quite intense research writing. The "people" side of the job however, particularly if it's in person and/or involves conflict, I just find it so much more difficult - I think I sound like 10x more articulate and intelligent in writing than I do in person (doesn't help I have a foreign accent).

Conferences are good for the travel & foreign food, no?

I Like that others seem to moan about
I like writing. I am baffled that this is a chore or people procrastinate about it. Writing is the best. It may be tiring, but oh so satisfying.

Keeping my email inbox tidy.

I also prefer being on FTC to being permanent.

To a small extent I like data cleaning. I mean it's the stupidest use of time, often entirely pointless, but I embrace the fantasy that it's achieving something, whack on the raucous music & let hours idle away... and they pay me for this?! omg, Nirvana (in every sense)

Others may like but I don't
I never lecture & would hate to do so. Any moment of public speaking or performance is awful. I don't want to be anyone's boss or to to be talked about. I grit my teeth thru media interviews & any moment being centre of attention or praise.

@aridapricot Ooooh, yes, I think I'd love the budgets and adminny stuff of an HoD role. When I'm PI on a project, I really like those kinds of tasks 😳

@MedSchoolRat Writing's a weird one. I absolutely love it when I know what I'm trying to say, when my argument makes sense, when I'm on top of my data and I feel like my writing is well-pitched. But I work in a very theory-heavy discipline so getting to that point of ducks in a row is very arduous. By the time I'm there, I'm often drained so the actual sitting down and writing then feels a bit "meh". Plus, I only really like writing when I have a clear spell of a week or two to get into it. Between teaching, supervision and citizenship, I rarely get that kind of time and I don't enjoy writing when its squeezed between other things.

International conferences?! What is this black magic you speak of... I'm a social scientist, our main conference this year was Manchester 😕

I hate presenting at conferences but enjoy catching up with colleagues I haven't seen in a while and meeting new people in general. I find papers can be really hit and miss so I go with very low expectations so it is a nice surprise if some happen to be good.

I enjoy teaching students :)

I don't like marking and really loathe all kinds of admin - so I have slid sideways, professionally a couple of times as anything like a HoD position would be the death of me (and probably the dept as well!). Being allergic to admin is the kiss of death to rising up in any profession.

I'm with you on the writing. I love it - but the early stage of 'getting the ducks in a row' can be quite painful (I'm doing that this week - hopefully). And I also like proper stretches of days to do it.

I love conferences - but I don't go to many so the novelty would probably wear off if I went to a lot. I especially like conferences in Europe - some foreign travel but no tedious jet lag. I like to present - but probably because I do it rarely and I like lecturing and teaching. Been a while since I did much media but I quite enjoy it.

Yes to data cleaning - it's a kind of mindfulness 😀

Marking - quite enjoy, sort of switch off time, you just have to get through it. It's time out from hard thinking activity but it has to be done, so I don't feel guilty.

Conferences - Hate. Find them exhausting, lonely, isolating, difficult. No idea how to network and hate doing it. But still go to them (in my field, lots are international).

Writing - love/hate. Latter because I think I'm crap at it, former because it's like solving a lovely puzzle and is the only time I get that sense of 'flow.' Sometimes.

Teaching - love/hate - love when students respond and we have a nice time, obviously, hate when most of the time they don't turn-up, don't seem interested, etc.

Impact - love/hate - I spend a lot of time critiquing a very powerful interest group in my group. I think (know) many members think I'm pointless and a trouble maker and I find that very hard.

Public Engagement - as above.

Overall - hate the competitiveness, individualism, elitism and exclusion amongst a bunch of researchers who are ostensibly about equality and inclusion. Love the autonomy and freedom to research what I want.

I genuinely like small talk at conferences. I talk to people I coffee queues and have made great friends through conferences!

I don't love teaching very often at all. People tweet things like I love my students, I learn so much from them. I don't! Sometimes there's a surprising idea or fresh thought that is brilliant. One great exercise I did a couple of years ago was to get them to critique a paper I'd just published. The comments were amazing! The rest of the time, I feel like we are plodding through the same arguments, the same theories, I'm trying to prod them to think when they just want to know how to get a 2: 1 minimum. It's not inspiring at all. The worst is repeating a seminar three times in a week, by time three I have absolutely lost all interest.

Strangely, my teaching is extremely highly rated so I guess they can't tell.

I think lecturing is good for presentational skills though so I wouldn't give it up even if I had the chance, just do less teaching and perhaps have smaller classes like in the past so that I really got to know the students better.

things I love - doing research (analysing data / writing code etc). writing grants. going to conferences & chatting about interesting academic ideas. supervising students IF they are good / interesting, and even the weak ones have something to say.

things that are OK - teaching, writing papers,

things I hate - admin. marking. any kind of paperwork / claims forms / ethics etc.