Simplifying 2024-25

[Marasme]

In the spirit of planning for a more peaceful year, a thread of tips and ideas to simplify the new academic year.

This could be things to give up, things to say no to, or a new attitude to the challenges and opportunities of academic life.

top of my list: I am going to take a leaf out of my team members book and will try to become "kind to myself"

no more last minute unplanned feedback on chapters and abstracts, if it s not in the diary, it s not happening.

In a similar vein, blocking out time in my diary that is non-negotiable, like lunch breaks. And that they are actual lunch breaks away from my desk so if a colleague wants to pop in for "just a quick 5 minute chat about x work issue" I won't be around!

loving your @ - out of curiosity... what's your secret to feel like a teenager again?

good idea re blocking lunch, although i ve failed to not cancel thise for the sake of "that" so exciting and interesting meeting/opportunity... i m a magpie

Yes to the timetabled draft / chapter reading. I'm asking for written work to be submitted three working days prior to supervision. If it doesn't come, then supervision gets pushed back.

And I'm going to start a decent 48-72 hour response time to student enquiries. I used to pride myself on instant responses, at any time of the day or night. Now, I recognise that I'm not an emergency service and I will respond in a good timeframe.

Disclaimer - I will always bend over backwards for my students. It's the emails that are rude and obnoxious that I will not be rushing to answer.

Logging here that I'll do no more PhD examinations, except for one HEI that pays over £500 so makes it worth it. Unless said exam is in a place I really really want to visit. Hardest is saying no to friends.

I’m not going to go to any conferences or do any talks except international invited ones, should I get any (good for prof application). I need to knuckle down and write a few papers and travelling doesn’t help

im going to try not to take any MSc students in the lab if I can get out of it. I like having them but have two new PhD students starting this year and I do not want my focus diluted

I have already stopped doing promotion references. Feel like a bastard each time I reject, but most galling was doing one for someone I vaguely know, which took hours, just so he could go on to get £25000 a year more than me in same job (,hums) because at an RG with a medical school....apparently.

This goes against the grain of what’s been said so far, but I need to work harder and be more efficient. Specifically with getting on with research. It tends to fall by the side once teaching starts, but I can’t afford to keep doing that. I’m struggling to complete book revisions and can’t still be working on them for the next year.

> Saying "No" to absolutely everything unless it (a) pays well, (b) directly and almost immediately benefits me, (c) is interesting, and/or (d) is politically sensible.

> Checking emails only once a day at 5pm, giving a maximum of 45 minutes to doing emails, and never checking emails on weekends.

> Providing good quality, professional but minimal support and feedback for students. Students are generally apathetic about or disengaged from feedback so I'll give them what they need and no more. There are plenty of support services at the university, I won't be emotionally burning myself out any more.

> Making a feasible list of "Things I want to do in 2024/25" with realistic time-frames to account for complexity, existing work and the like. Giving over time for each activity and sticking to it at the expense of everything else.

> Not working to other people's time lines unless there is a very good reason or a very reasonable request. I shall not be jumping at things like "opportunities" to be a grant Co-I that require a 500-word comprehensive review of the field within 24-hours.

> More generally, being okay with letting "opportunities" go.

> Taking two full days off every day and trying to finish work by 6pm every weekday.

Regarding feedback. I recently received some advice that we should ASK students what feedback they would like eg at submission there is a question "what one thing would you like feedback on?" This makes them more engaged in the feedback process and also more likely to act on said feedback. I am aiming to do this in 24/25 plus general cohort feedback.

Ah, unfortunately it's all the downsides of being a teenager: mood swings, random acne, gawky social interactions. It's all decided to revisit me!

I know, there's doing the thing and then there's REALLY doing the thing! :-D

That's interesting. I do something similar to this.
In the formative assessments for my modules, students are encouraged to ask me a question which I can directly respond to in feedback. So I tell them that the sensible thing is to ask a question about whatever they're least sure or confident about, and I can respond directly.

It focuses their minds and also gives me something to structure my feedback around. It works really well but I've not managed to figure out how to do the generic gubbins comments succinctly and efficiently - I end up writing too much which takes too much time.

I have already kind of started - am on annual leave the first half of August, and I have "only" replied to two e-mails during this period (one being a congrats message to a PhD student who passed their viva). Ideally this would have been zero, but it's progress compared to my track record of compulsively replying to e-mail while on annual leave telling myself that "this really cannot wait!" and "OMG they really won't be able to figure this out without me".
Many of the tips here are great. Personally I am trying to be more like my male colleagues and put my interests first, then those of close collaborators/students, then perhaps those of the department.

If only I could not be responsive right now. We have clearing duties, MA supervision, PhD supervision, uploading course materials etc etc...no breallk at all.

When you're involved with admissions, there's a lot of responsiveness around now. But, the other things you've listed cab be managed - you don't need to be responsive to everyone all of the time.

Tell MA and PhD students you're away for all of August; set aside the second week of September to upload VLE materials; then take August as research-only.

I was involved with admissions for many years. I flatly refused to do anything during results/clearing times because August is the only time of year we get for uninterrupted leave and/or research time.

After finding out we have an additional 40 students to what we were told, and reduced PS staff (I am PS), I am just quiet quitting at this point.

This is great I'm stealing it

These are FANTASTIC ideas, and I am definitely implementing them.

Can I ask how often you change up your courses? Especially the larger ones? I'm heading into Year 5 of a course that I think really needs a bit of an overhaul, but it's an absolute beast of a thing already (a genre survey course, and has to be), and I don't know where - or whether! - to start. I've had a really tough time on the home front over the last two years, and that seems unlikely to change over the next year anyway. I've also taken on - been given, rather - a not insignifcant survey/pastoral role this year. I don't feel I have the bandwidth to overhaul it right now, though it is getting a bit stale and I'm conscious of the likelihood of recycling of assessment materials.

One thing I adopted last year that seemed to work is to proactively book out slots in Outlook for research well ahead of time. Now my timetable is (finally...) sorted I've already gone through and booked out a day or at least a half day every single week of the teaching year for research BEFORE the 'invites' come roaring in. Now I just have to get better at protecting it...!

@medb22 It depends what you mean by 'change up' courses.
I tinker with lecture slides, readings and seminar questions every couple of years. This would only take me a day for a whole module so I don't really count this as 'changing up' so much as just generally updating so everything's as relevant and contemporary as I can be arsed to make it.

I swap in new lecture content or change assessments whenever I think things have become stale (for me!) and/or I have an exciting idea for a new thing. I'd say I swap in new lectures every two or three years but I don't think I've ever changed assessments.

I do a full overhaul whenever there's a prompt to do so but I wouldn't bother doing this 'just because'. By 'prompts' I mean external forces or just your own desire to do so. A few years ago after six years of running it, I had a 30-credit module which went down to 20-credits so I used it as an opportunity to do a full overhaul rather than just cut bits out. Next year I'm going to do a full overhaul of another module because I've got an idea for twinning lectures and workshops which I think will work well and I'm excited to try.

I wouldn't be doing any major changes or overhauls unless I was excited to do them - maybe to try something different, to make the assessments more interesting to mark, to integrate my more current research etc. I see so many generally male colleagues with modules from the 1990s that are still limping along but getting okay scores, and I think "Why would I bother?"

I certainly wouldn't be doing any major module changes if I had a tough time going on at home.

@LittlePrecious I mean changing the content, really. It's a survey course, so basically has to cover 'major trends' in a particular genre in the 20th/21st century. In eleven weeks, with one lecture a week! So a beast. I have changed topic/texts occasionally, but obviously it misses out lots of interesting and important things. This has been mentioned at times in feedback, though not necessarily in a very negative way. Yet, anyway. But I don't even really have the capacity to change topics this year and write new lectures, with everything going on. Next year, possibly.

In the spirit of the thread, I guess the answer is to just say no to changing things for now!

I have a year 1 course that I overhaul every couple of years, and I am currently fighting the temptation of doing so again this year - I am HoD and am already overhauling another course. In my case, the reason why I've overhauled it so many times is because I want to please everyone when I know full well that that's simply impossible - my discipline is a very "disparate" one, and students arrive at it with extremely varying levels of knowledge and extremely varying expectations - imagine you're teaching an Intro to art course and you have a group of students expecting an incredibly erudite discussion of Byzantine icons, others are expecting to engage in some practical "live art" demonstrations on the streets, others want you to teach them a few drawing tricks to impress their friends, and very few of them will see any merit in engaging with anything beyond their expectations.
Since you said this is a survey (perhaps year 1?) course, this made me think whether your motivations to overhaul are similar. I think in these kinds of courses you have to assume that you cannot cover everything and you won't please everyone, because many students will be taking the module simply because they have to.
It is also my experience that colleagues who are continually banging on about how we as a department need to revamp our teaching and enter the modern world are those most likely to be teaching from slides from the 1990s. These kinds of individuals also made me feel a pressure to constantly rehaul my teaching, out of fear of falling behind the rest of the department, but if you have colleagues like this you need to understand that they are most likely projecting.

Yes, this is almost exactly the situation, @aridapricot , though it's year 2, and not core. It's a very popular genre as well, so students tend to be extremely invested in it. As am I! The overall structuring logic probably needs a look to be honest, beyond the individual topics themselves. But this is not the year to complicate things for myself - it shall remain slightly stale for another year.