- it's windy today, and blowing at the right angle that the house sounds blustery - it makes me think of FavouriteIslands. Not sure if that's entirely a positive, because it leads to thoughts like:
- I haven't sorted out whether I'm going to Outreach Event there in September. Do I want to? Is there funding? Do I have time?
- has postdocF done anything about sorting out the dates for travel in September?
- Has PostDocF even booked the ferries/vehicle for travel in two month's time??
- VeryDifficultColleague
- I need to write some sampling instructions for FairlyFamousProf, like, last month, and mail them
- Do I relaly know how to do that? Because ideally he would sample these samples so that they would be useful to a specialist in Sample as well as for me to analyse the samples, but I'm not a specialist and can't really talk to the two obvious specialists because one is a notorious Project Hijacker and the other is affiliated with an institution with which FFP has a 'polite' relationship and doesn't want anything more and he's in charge of the project. Sometimes I am SO GLAD I don't work mainly in their field. Mine may be small and muddy and not very good at getting external funding, but it has fewer of these political minefields
- book. when is the book - a mash-up of mine and PostDocF's PhD theses - going to get written? Because PDF has done not a stroke of work on it (and don't start me on her papers) - so, if I do it, do I get to be first author or would that be considered hijacking? At least if would be alphabetical order if I went first, since JaneB comes before PostDocF.
- there was a royal wedding yesterday apparently. It was on pretty much every radio station. I don't know either of these people, so apart from a vague sense of national pride in a ceremonial occasion carried off well (we are good at so-called outmoded ceremonial in the UK. And personally I don't think it's outmoded. I like some ceremonial, it's kind of like good manners writ large, reassuring and uniting) and the usual twinge when I see anything to do with weddings about how, at 42 and still single, it's pretty damn unlikely that'll ever be me and even if it is children of our own won't be feasible, it largely passed me by. I had a lazy meal catered by Messers Marks and Spencer and read three novels. WHich was very unproductive use of a Friday off...
- I did look at a photo of The Dress on the BBC website. It looked wearable - so many wedding dresses I see on the front pages of shiney mags (or on brides - I live near a large old church) look hugely insecure, loads of skirt and no sleeves or straps - and was church appropriate... I think I'm probably supposed to be more interested, but really, looking at pictures of the horses was more appealing
- Graduate students are all supposed to be doing an in-house poster presentation thing next week. I will not start on the politics/poor organisation/general self-interested showy-offy and non-leader-ly aspects of the thing and the person organising it. KeenStudent is one of those expected to do a poster, so we have been wrestling with the concept of a poster. Not his style... and made worse by the fact that it is also going to a conference in a few weeks time (I am NOT paying to have one printed twice... nor going through this process twice at such a short interval!) but that involves all sorts of soul-searching about the extent to which it should be All His Own Work, and the extent to which I should be involved beyond advice-giving - y'see, the deadline is fast approaching, and KeenStudent has Issues in his personal life (elder-care, close family member with health crisis), and this sort of thing just isn't his forte. In the interests of the group (and indeed of KeenStudent's confidence - I don't trust PersonInCharge of Graduate Students to be in any way kind or tactful about any weaknesses in the posters, and PIC doesn't usually miss an opportunity to make it clear how crap they think my research is and is without doubt the kind of person to go after a grad student in order to get at a colleague - and KeenStudent knows he struggles with various aspects of the PhD work (such as writing) and gets pretty stressed about that) I think being more interventionist than usual is appropriate. BUT this is the end of KeenStudent's third year on paper (he takes blocks of time off to work at his former profession every now and then, to avoid debt, which isn't ideal but I can see that it makes a lot of financial sense), so he SHOULD be able to write his own poster. BUT he clearly has more than one more year to go. And I will get a bollocking for that, probably in public, in a 'humorous' tone which means that if I complain or protest I will be being 'unreasonable' and 'showing that I have no sense of humor'. Yay, SO looking forward to this event!
- Also, I'm supposed to be going in the field with PostDocF at the end of the week. Which, yes, nice, field time. But my allergies are playing up badly (my sinuses are so clogged I keep going dizzy when I turn my head or stand up/sit down, and my contact lenses don't much want to stay in as my poor eyes are dry and itchy or running with tears, nothing in between), I've cracked the skin on my heel really badly so that walking hurts, and my back keeps siezing up. Plus, am just not in the mood. Not for PostDocF, or ProjectF, or wandering around with a tape measure, or anything like that.
- I want a holiday. And some cleaning, tidying and decluttering fairies. Oh yeah, and catproof grading elves/paper refereeing elves. And while I'm wishing, I'll have a pony and a size 10 figure to ride it with (I will never, ever be a UK 10 - even at a 'correct' weight, aged 16, my shoulders and hips were just too broad and my bust too generous for a 10).
Showing posts with label random academia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label random academia. Show all posts
Saturday, April 30, 2011
random observations
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
all kinds of confusing
There's been quite a lot of kerfuffle this last couple of days about an 'advice to adjuncts' post over at TenuredRadical. As an outside observer to the US system and to the humanities where the job market in the US at least seems particularly problematic, the one thing that really stood out in the wrangling was the sloppy use of terminology, which seemed pretty sad considering all parties are supposedly humanities academics and great at semantics.
As I understand it, an adjunct is a sessional worker, hired to teach a specific module for a set fee. These positions carry no benefits, no implication of future employment, minimal facilities from the hiring department and are generally very poorly paid. They make sense for a temporary shortfall (for example, my department uses a similar system to cover gaps in the teaching team arising from medium-term sick leave or a successful application for a secondment). However, using them as a strategy and to deliver core undergraduate teaching seems baffling (and is often the case here in the UK in modern languages departments for e.g. the basic teaching of the new language).
On the other hand, a Visiting Assistant Professor position (sometimes confusingly referred to as a lecturer, or even a post-doc in the humanities?) is a one-year full-time position which may or may not have an option of renewal, but which is undertaken as a fixed-term agreement on both sides. This is a 'real job', a professional contract. We also have positions like that here - often to cover a period when a faculty member is bought out, or a maternity leave. They're not ideal, because it's hard to put down any sort of roots when you are job-hunting as soon as you walk through the door, but they are generally better paid and come with access to facilities (an office matters! a photocopier code and a staff library card matter!). In this case, since the position is full-time, it is generally not unreasonable to expect the person to show some committment to the location even if they live elsewhere - among my acquaintances, those with any sort of roots or committment to one place who take on a position like this - or indeed a research post-doc - will discuss expectations about presenteeism with their boss and immediate colleagues, and will often end up with a 'toe-hold' in the new area if they don't actually relocate (e.g. renting a room in a shared house, using a relative's spare room two days a week, negotiating a special 'frequent mid-week visitor' overnight rate at a local B&B or pub), so that they can stay over some nights easily and reduce the amount of cash and time they're spending on travelling back and forward.
There are surely all sorts of variants in between these two end points as well, and some 'lecturers' obtain continuing but not tenure track posts just as some researchers obtain staff positions after a series of fixed-term post-doctoral positions. The absence of true tenure in the UK system probably also means that the divide is less marked here, because the opposite end of the spectrum to adjunct is continuing contract, not tenured (although many of my colleagues act like the worst charicature of the tenured prof anyway).
The original post talked about adjuncts whilst giving advice which, while rather patronising in tone (though that's probably in part the nuance problem I often have with US tenured-seniorish-female-academic-advises-younger-people blogging), was probably quite appropriate to a new VAP (who can easily get pulled into using all their time for job-hunting and teaching, which is often a new responsibility, and therefore let the important-but-not-urgent work drift - I mean, hell, I STILL do this and I'm in my 14th year as continuing faculty). And there, it seemed to me, was the crux of the fuss - contracted at a measly rate per module, given a bare minimum of resources, highly vulnerable and often also facing major challenges outside of that work (the dissertation, the job market, balancing relationships and the potential of children and all the stuff which comes naturally with being of an age to be finishing up with grad school), of COURSE the adjunct resents advice aimed at the person with a full-time, one or more year contract which includes research, teaching and some sort of service.
It just really surprised me that so many someones whose profession involves an intimate and sophisticated reading of the written word conflated these two very different kinds of post. Or am I missing something?
As I understand it, an adjunct is a sessional worker, hired to teach a specific module for a set fee. These positions carry no benefits, no implication of future employment, minimal facilities from the hiring department and are generally very poorly paid. They make sense for a temporary shortfall (for example, my department uses a similar system to cover gaps in the teaching team arising from medium-term sick leave or a successful application for a secondment). However, using them as a strategy and to deliver core undergraduate teaching seems baffling (and is often the case here in the UK in modern languages departments for e.g. the basic teaching of the new language).
On the other hand, a Visiting Assistant Professor position (sometimes confusingly referred to as a lecturer, or even a post-doc in the humanities?) is a one-year full-time position which may or may not have an option of renewal, but which is undertaken as a fixed-term agreement on both sides. This is a 'real job', a professional contract. We also have positions like that here - often to cover a period when a faculty member is bought out, or a maternity leave. They're not ideal, because it's hard to put down any sort of roots when you are job-hunting as soon as you walk through the door, but they are generally better paid and come with access to facilities (an office matters! a photocopier code and a staff library card matter!). In this case, since the position is full-time, it is generally not unreasonable to expect the person to show some committment to the location even if they live elsewhere - among my acquaintances, those with any sort of roots or committment to one place who take on a position like this - or indeed a research post-doc - will discuss expectations about presenteeism with their boss and immediate colleagues, and will often end up with a 'toe-hold' in the new area if they don't actually relocate (e.g. renting a room in a shared house, using a relative's spare room two days a week, negotiating a special 'frequent mid-week visitor' overnight rate at a local B&B or pub), so that they can stay over some nights easily and reduce the amount of cash and time they're spending on travelling back and forward.
There are surely all sorts of variants in between these two end points as well, and some 'lecturers' obtain continuing but not tenure track posts just as some researchers obtain staff positions after a series of fixed-term post-doctoral positions. The absence of true tenure in the UK system probably also means that the divide is less marked here, because the opposite end of the spectrum to adjunct is continuing contract, not tenured (although many of my colleagues act like the worst charicature of the tenured prof anyway).
The original post talked about adjuncts whilst giving advice which, while rather patronising in tone (though that's probably in part the nuance problem I often have with US tenured-seniorish-female-academic-advises-younger-people blogging), was probably quite appropriate to a new VAP (who can easily get pulled into using all their time for job-hunting and teaching, which is often a new responsibility, and therefore let the important-but-not-urgent work drift - I mean, hell, I STILL do this and I'm in my 14th year as continuing faculty). And there, it seemed to me, was the crux of the fuss - contracted at a measly rate per module, given a bare minimum of resources, highly vulnerable and often also facing major challenges outside of that work (the dissertation, the job market, balancing relationships and the potential of children and all the stuff which comes naturally with being of an age to be finishing up with grad school), of COURSE the adjunct resents advice aimed at the person with a full-time, one or more year contract which includes research, teaching and some sort of service.
It just really surprised me that so many someones whose profession involves an intimate and sophisticated reading of the written word conflated these two very different kinds of post. Or am I missing something?
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
Bullets of Back To Work
- There was snow on my car this morning.
- It was really, really cold in the office today. Possibly because the heating has been off for the last ten days?
- It's actually slightly colder now, I think, at the end of the day.
- I seem to have spent most of the day finding things that I need to do before I can do other things, and talking to people.
- PostDocF and I sat down to draft the report on the last 6 months... and it became very, very clear that not much got achieved. We talked a bit about reasons, in a very non-blamey way, and she has gone away to make a plan for this year. I also sent her away with the list of points for the report, despite her suggestion that I write the first draft and she comment on it. Nope, we did it that way last time, now you have a model of what the report should look like, YOUR turn to first draft.
- I found a reasonably priced hotel for the conference in CrowdedCapital... hope it's not too manky.
- All the printers in the university are not working yet, nor are the shared drives. In my department, software like word-processing packages is locally installed so no-one got to go home due to lack of any work to do (although several people sneaked off at lunch time anyway, and I've only seen three academics today).
- There were STUDENTS in the building though, and a couple wanted advice about a lab report.
- DrVisit has presented me with two draft manuscripts to turn into better English. Which is all very productive of her...
- ...especially as PostDocF has been drafting the methods and results section of a simple 'try all three of the published methods for this assay and compare the results' study since October...
- Oh yeah, and I have to write the poster for the conference by noon tomorrow... well, if I want it printed, I do. Hopefully TOMORROW my brain will work.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Waaah (in bullet points)
- sometimes my sophisticated, mature sister reverts to being a brat. Today she helpfully got in touch to let me know that the last date for sending Christmas parcels was... today. Bugger. Guess who's spending out on first class post for a large, heavy box of toys and books. Again. Assuming I ever get them wrapped up, packed and to the post office, and can cope with the queue.
- tomorrow I have:
- 0915: lecture
- 1015: lecture (last one with first years. Chocolate coins are to hand for sharing!)
- 1115: meet with project student who is a bit Hard Of Thinking (nice kid, but a classic C student)
- 1145: meet with project student who gets really wound up about everything
- 1215: go to class. Listen to student presentations, and offer helpful feedback about how to write up their projects. Last class with a nice group. (Chocolate tree decorations are to hand for sharing).
- 1515: hope brain has not oozed out of ears. Meet with irritating student (she's sweet, but still...) who has not yet started FIELD WORK for her honours project which she 'started' last MAY and which is due in in APRIL. Student says, in her last email, "I thought I would study how wave patterns vary in spring and summer". She knows how to time travel??? Student expects me to come up with miracle solution. Department will expect me to come up with alternative project which keeps the student happy. Former is fine, latter is probably not doable as student is kinda picky. So they should have done their work earlier. So? It's probably my fault for not nagging enough (though as I sent them off in May with a clear fieldwork plan on a totally different project... student came back, avoided me, dropped in mid-October to say that they hadn't done any fieldwork because they'd changed their mind about what project they wanted to do, and has not been seen since (although I have had several unnecessarily descriptive emails about a hard-to-shift urinary tract infection. Lovely.)).
- 16:15: eat lunch
- 17:15: teach last repeat of first year practical
- 18:15 hope forecast of heavy, persistent snow since noon was wrong. Shovel car out of car park, drive home very slowly.
- Wrap and pack like mad, hoping to find time Friday afternoon to nip to the post office. And to be able to get the car out in the morning etc. etc.
- We got an Official Announcement around today which took about two screenfuls of email to say that NorthernUni will be charging fees but we think it's a Bad Thing and will do our best to continue our Proud Tradition of supporting Students from Disadvantaged Backgrounds and Serving Our Community
- Have I ever mentioned how much I hate 'departmental retreat' type activities? Over a third of my colleagues didn't show up. I was told that I have to make my module titles sexier and more likely to appeal to seventeen year olds (and their parents. and their teachers) who are considering which university to apply to. I asked how. Was told to think about my own interests at 17. Then was told off for Not Taking It Seriously when I suggested Introduction to Chinese Poetry for Archaeologists. Or The Birth Of Stars. They would have appealed to me at 17. I was not a normal seventeen-year-old, OK? And I didn't go to uni to study Beach Studies.
- We went through various 'options' for dealing with the forthcoming upheavals in UK HE, demographic changes etc. They all involve more work. Our new HoD said firmly "they all involve more work, the only thing we control is WHICH KIND of more work we want to do, so that is the only thing we will discuss today". Which was actually pretty cool, I thought, since we all know that's the case.
- By more work he/they mean more teaching. Research, we are just expected to fit in and excel at round the edges without resources. For example, we get no workload allowance for going to conferences since they "benefit our individual careers" - so since we are 'workloaded' for full time work, we go to conferences on our own time (and the model allows 12 working days per single author publication, so we also write on our own time. It's what you might call an unrealistic system). Remind me not to mention anything I learnt at a conference in my teaching...
- Christmas is a 12 day feast, right? So if cards, packages etc. arrive by 5th January I have got them there 'by Christmas', right???
- I have indigestion from the yucky cheapy university buffet lunch we got before the Retreat Afternoon (I didn't have time to pack anything this morning), and from stressful conversations with colleagues, and just from sitting in a room listening to gloomy data and prognostications. Never mind worrying about Christmas, life etc.
- And I don't want to write about my depression in my Christmas letters because I don't want my friends to worry, I think. Also, because I have all those classes to think about.
It will all look better this time tomorrow. Assuming I'm not snowed in at the uni, or have left the car in a ditch following an accident on the way home.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
44% of the Large Master's Class have some sort of Specific Learning Disability. That's a startling figure, whatever it means.
Today I had individual conferences with 'my half' of the class (they all met with either myself or BusyWoman, since we team teach the course. We assigned them according to their chosen topic for the final report). It's odd - even though most of this class have been here for three and a bit years now, this is the first time I talked to some of them one to one. Rewarding though, as they all seemed engaged and interested in their topics, and in my advice on their outline. The logistics would be tough, but I'd really like to do this with a lower-year class too sometime.
The end of the teaching semester is in sight... tomorrow I meet with project students, and the department has an 'afternoon retreat' to discuss assessment criteria (again. Oh noes), recruitment (again, this comes up every year, and we always conclude that actually we have no idea how to encourage more students to apply to our courses at NorthernUni - once they apply, we know various things that can be done to increase the number who actually take up an offer, and do them, but we can't seem to get the applications up whatever we do... and a drop will be damn serious, and pretty inevitable given the Fees Nonsense) and my favourite, Strategic Issues (which consists of being lectured by senior people who then do whatever the heck they want anyway and blame the rank and file for things going badly). Tomorrow will be bad, despite the 'free lunch' (it ain't really free if you have that agenda to sit through).
Thursday I have two lectures, meetings with project students, three hours of student presentations, another meeting and a final class with the first years (memo to self: must buy chocolate treats for first years and presenters). Friday, more project student meetings. Then... a whole two days next week for research/Christmas stuff/administration/tidying/filing/moving office! Yay!
I think I'll try and take my group for lunch. That would be more fun!
Today I had individual conferences with 'my half' of the class (they all met with either myself or BusyWoman, since we team teach the course. We assigned them according to their chosen topic for the final report). It's odd - even though most of this class have been here for three and a bit years now, this is the first time I talked to some of them one to one. Rewarding though, as they all seemed engaged and interested in their topics, and in my advice on their outline. The logistics would be tough, but I'd really like to do this with a lower-year class too sometime.
The end of the teaching semester is in sight... tomorrow I meet with project students, and the department has an 'afternoon retreat' to discuss assessment criteria (again. Oh noes), recruitment (again, this comes up every year, and we always conclude that actually we have no idea how to encourage more students to apply to our courses at NorthernUni - once they apply, we know various things that can be done to increase the number who actually take up an offer, and do them, but we can't seem to get the applications up whatever we do... and a drop will be damn serious, and pretty inevitable given the Fees Nonsense) and my favourite, Strategic Issues (which consists of being lectured by senior people who then do whatever the heck they want anyway and blame the rank and file for things going badly). Tomorrow will be bad, despite the 'free lunch' (it ain't really free if you have that agenda to sit through).
Thursday I have two lectures, meetings with project students, three hours of student presentations, another meeting and a final class with the first years (memo to self: must buy chocolate treats for first years and presenters). Friday, more project student meetings. Then... a whole two days next week for research/Christmas stuff/administration/tidying/filing/moving office! Yay!
I think I'll try and take my group for lunch. That would be more fun!
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
A long day, even if I was only at the office for a few hours.
___________________
More car issues - this time a minor problem, the fuse had blown on the windscreen wipers, and the nice garage people fixed it for the grand price of... £0.00. There are reasons why I keep returning to the main dealer for my brand of car, the local company is very good. Yesterday, they washed my car, valetted the bits that weren't covered in clutter, and ran through a winter safety checklist on stuff like tyres and brakes, all for free, on top of installing the new sensor. It's worth the not-excessively-high labour costs on jobs I DO pay for for that sort of service - and the coffee and mince pies whilst I was waiting.
_________________________
Taught two classes. The second class persuaded me that they needed an extension 'due to the snow delays'. It was kind of a stretch case... but I know they are all behind on the assignment, and that in several cases the behind is not the student's fault (they need to meet with another colleague to make any progress and said colleague has been snowed in/not replying to emails/is notoriously crap at getting around to meeting with students), and it doesn't mess up the overall module or grading schedule. So why not be nice?
__________________________
Why will stupid clipart not past into my stupid powerpoint? I have a perfectly valid reason for needing clipart of a polar bear next to some dull equations, WHY WON'T IT PASTE???
__________________________
Many local nurserys and day cares are closed. There were multiple small children in the building today, their parents trying to sort out urgent items or attend meetings. Fortunately, they were all pretty good. One of my colleagues was clearly feeling rather fraught when I popped into her office - her toddler had just happily emptied her bottom filing cabinet drawer onto the floor, and she was snatching things away from him that she'd forgotten were in there and which weren't exactly play material, such as a minature of vodka and a scapel (fortunately one with a proper snap-on blade cover...)! He seemed happy enough, and at least her floor was pretty clean... I saw him later happily towing a plug on a short extension lead around the office making car noises whilst she spoke to a student. And it's not just the women - a male professor's little girl has been drawing pictures in the corner of his office most of the day as well.
___________________________
Mystery about the possible chair offer to my difficult colleague - he is hinting it to be true, but I texted a friend at said institution who said it WASN'T, so who knows? The other department is not good at communicating with staff, so my friend's knowledge is only via gossip, and DC may be playing games with the powers that be (or with the rest of us). Uitlander, it's not like I have any power around here you know! So there's little I can do except wait for news... and ignore the self-aggrandising.
__________________________
And since 5 (it's now 10pm) I've been internet shopping for a parent whilst reading for two seminars and working on another first year lecture, with a short break for something to eat (lazy food - a lightly microwaved chopped banana with muesli and yoghurt. The hot banana is juicy and softens the oats!). And watching the cat sink deeper into the spare duvet... it looks so cosy up there!
___________________
More car issues - this time a minor problem, the fuse had blown on the windscreen wipers, and the nice garage people fixed it for the grand price of... £0.00. There are reasons why I keep returning to the main dealer for my brand of car, the local company is very good. Yesterday, they washed my car, valetted the bits that weren't covered in clutter, and ran through a winter safety checklist on stuff like tyres and brakes, all for free, on top of installing the new sensor. It's worth the not-excessively-high labour costs on jobs I DO pay for for that sort of service - and the coffee and mince pies whilst I was waiting.
_________________________
Taught two classes. The second class persuaded me that they needed an extension 'due to the snow delays'. It was kind of a stretch case... but I know they are all behind on the assignment, and that in several cases the behind is not the student's fault (they need to meet with another colleague to make any progress and said colleague has been snowed in/not replying to emails/is notoriously crap at getting around to meeting with students), and it doesn't mess up the overall module or grading schedule. So why not be nice?
__________________________
Why will stupid clipart not past into my stupid powerpoint? I have a perfectly valid reason for needing clipart of a polar bear next to some dull equations, WHY WON'T IT PASTE???
__________________________
Many local nurserys and day cares are closed. There were multiple small children in the building today, their parents trying to sort out urgent items or attend meetings. Fortunately, they were all pretty good. One of my colleagues was clearly feeling rather fraught when I popped into her office - her toddler had just happily emptied her bottom filing cabinet drawer onto the floor, and she was snatching things away from him that she'd forgotten were in there and which weren't exactly play material, such as a minature of vodka and a scapel (fortunately one with a proper snap-on blade cover...)! He seemed happy enough, and at least her floor was pretty clean... I saw him later happily towing a plug on a short extension lead around the office making car noises whilst she spoke to a student. And it's not just the women - a male professor's little girl has been drawing pictures in the corner of his office most of the day as well.
___________________________
Mystery about the possible chair offer to my difficult colleague - he is hinting it to be true, but I texted a friend at said institution who said it WASN'T, so who knows? The other department is not good at communicating with staff, so my friend's knowledge is only via gossip, and DC may be playing games with the powers that be (or with the rest of us). Uitlander, it's not like I have any power around here you know! So there's little I can do except wait for news... and ignore the self-aggrandising.
__________________________
And since 5 (it's now 10pm) I've been internet shopping for a parent whilst reading for two seminars and working on another first year lecture, with a short break for something to eat (lazy food - a lightly microwaved chopped banana with muesli and yoghurt. The hot banana is juicy and softens the oats!). And watching the cat sink deeper into the spare duvet... it looks so cosy up there!
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
A mixter-maxter of a day
Sorting out my diary:
- SeniorStudent has a dilemma; she needs to sort out her travel for the class she is helping with next month, but that depends on knowing whether we will attend the reachout event (for which the funding fell through last month). Make decision: we will not go to the reachout event. ::relief::
- Email to let organisers know. Get email back saying "oh. Sorry. We found you funding! but we forgot to email and let you know" - wtf?
- Email back, find out funding can be transferred to next year's event. - phew!
- Therefore stand by decision not to go this year, and broach idea of fun school activity as well as talk at next year's event.
- Now, shall I book that cottage for a few days of writing... tempted!
Email things
- Hear that two of my papers have just been published! - yay! But now I don't have any at the submitted stage... must write more! (cottage sounds like good idea)
- get reminder about overdue reviewing and grant referee deadline - boo!
- get three other pieces of new work in. sigh
- Hear collaborating post-doc has a new job. Yay for her! But it's for one year, not in her preferred field and she will have to become a long-distance partner... damn stupid economic climate. (also, this will mess up our collaboration, as she will be busy learning the new field and commuting to see her other half. sigh)
Meeting with collaborators:
- Find out that their grant was finally funded - yay!
- Find out that they need my initial results by the start of December - because although the start date has moved later, the end date is still the same. - wft?
- Realise need to re-run analyses for poster for conference 1 with collaborators - sigh
- Begin to re-run analyses ::bored::
- Find quick way to do analysis that standard software will not do - yay for the internet!
- Spend hours playing with plotting software... but at least I got legible plots out of it at last ::happily distracted choosing colours etc.::
- Discover that what looks like a great result in the initial analysis is now a blurry, vague, confusing result. ::grumpy::
- Remember to transform the data. Re-run analyses. ::feeling stupid::
- Notice result is still confusing... except when I accidentally combine two datasets, then the results suddenly make sense. is it really the answer? Maybe it is... time to stop whilst I seem to be winning and go home!
Monday, August 02, 2010
Responding to my non-list post from yesterday, kjh made the good point that the symptoms I discussed are widespread in the UK academic system at the moment - the push since 1992 has been that all HE insititutions are to do research and teaching, and although nominally the balance is different at different places, most of us academics are expected to do substantial amounts of both - i.e. are in the 'squeezed middle'. It's maybe not what we expected - in fact, that would make sense, because if you were a student in the late 80s and early 90s as I was, uni's like this one were VERY different. The world has changed, the job has changed... and most academics are running themselves into the ground trying to protect the students from the worst consequences and to still maintain something of the ideals of a university as an open place, a learning place, a tolerant, debating, stimulating place, a place for creation, discovery and sharing of knowledge for the long-term and abstract good of its students and the wider society, not solely for short-term concrete economic goals.
I too thought this particular job would suit me because the uni is keen to claim a balance between teaching and research, and makes a big song and dance about how important the students are. And we aren't bad at it, exactly... but too many of my colleagues don't WANT to be 'equally balanced' and reckon they're SPECIAL. Or just don't do both parts of their jobs.
Everyone needs to do some admin. The problem, I often feel, is that the overall admin is growing, partly because of a tendency to try and deal with problems generically rather than individually. This constantly adds just one more little thing onto the pile - those who DO do their admin anyway suffer, those who don't... well, they cause the problems that lead to the continual issuing of NewNowWithMorePages forms.
For example, two colleagues were criticised at an exam board by the external, because their assessment items did not map clearly with their learning outcomes. The reaction was to make EVERYONE fill out a four page form for everything they teach in which they fit all the details of every item of assessment into a special table (which is too jargony to be given out to students, so this is in addition to writing student handouts - those have to be attached separately, and get critiqued too now as part of the new process), explain the mapping between assessment item, teaching activity and learning outcome, display these in tables, and also fill out lots of details which are available on other forms already but in different ways so cannot easily be cut and pasted. Wouldn't it have been more proportionate to, say, get the committee which checks all the assessments to ensure that the difficulty levels are appropriate and that the department as a whole uses a range of methods to also look at the module outlines as part of their checking? Or maybe get the two people concerned to meet with one or two members of said committee and discuss what they're doing for the next year? But no - everyone is clearly Doing Something Wrong and therefore Everyone must be More Accountable. Filling out the forms makes me feel irritated and childish, and takes time away from my actual teaching. As a professional, why do I have to constantly PROVE my professionalism? Why not target those who slip up, or who blatently flout the system? Incidentally, the two people who CAUSED the problem still get criticised at exam meetings, and generally fail to fill out the forms anyway. So... how does annoying the whole department, and NOT changing the behaviour of the persons who brought the issue to notice initially, merit description as 'innovative good practice'??? Universities are mad.
Also, in my list post, I went on about poor old SeniorStudent - yes, I am frustrated with her progress and with her failing to transform into the Perfect PostDoc, but it won't be an overnight thing. She's working hard and she's got non-work demands on her time, which is fair enough. I have to remain open, and encouraging, and focus on what gets done not just on what is missing... or I'll go even more nuts than I already am!
I too thought this particular job would suit me because the uni is keen to claim a balance between teaching and research, and makes a big song and dance about how important the students are. And we aren't bad at it, exactly... but too many of my colleagues don't WANT to be 'equally balanced' and reckon they're SPECIAL. Or just don't do both parts of their jobs.
Everyone needs to do some admin. The problem, I often feel, is that the overall admin is growing, partly because of a tendency to try and deal with problems generically rather than individually. This constantly adds just one more little thing onto the pile - those who DO do their admin anyway suffer, those who don't... well, they cause the problems that lead to the continual issuing of NewNowWithMorePages forms.
For example, two colleagues were criticised at an exam board by the external, because their assessment items did not map clearly with their learning outcomes. The reaction was to make EVERYONE fill out a four page form for everything they teach in which they fit all the details of every item of assessment into a special table (which is too jargony to be given out to students, so this is in addition to writing student handouts - those have to be attached separately, and get critiqued too now as part of the new process), explain the mapping between assessment item, teaching activity and learning outcome, display these in tables, and also fill out lots of details which are available on other forms already but in different ways so cannot easily be cut and pasted. Wouldn't it have been more proportionate to, say, get the committee which checks all the assessments to ensure that the difficulty levels are appropriate and that the department as a whole uses a range of methods to also look at the module outlines as part of their checking? Or maybe get the two people concerned to meet with one or two members of said committee and discuss what they're doing for the next year? But no - everyone is clearly Doing Something Wrong and therefore Everyone must be More Accountable. Filling out the forms makes me feel irritated and childish, and takes time away from my actual teaching. As a professional, why do I have to constantly PROVE my professionalism? Why not target those who slip up, or who blatently flout the system? Incidentally, the two people who CAUSED the problem still get criticised at exam meetings, and generally fail to fill out the forms anyway. So... how does annoying the whole department, and NOT changing the behaviour of the persons who brought the issue to notice initially, merit description as 'innovative good practice'??? Universities are mad.
Also, in my list post, I went on about poor old SeniorStudent - yes, I am frustrated with her progress and with her failing to transform into the Perfect PostDoc, but it won't be an overnight thing. She's working hard and she's got non-work demands on her time, which is fair enough. I have to remain open, and encouraging, and focus on what gets done not just on what is missing... or I'll go even more nuts than I already am!
Thursday, July 29, 2010
indecision
I've not done anything with the document I wrote. I've not made an appointment to see my HoD. I don't know what to do. It feels very serious to take any kind of action... but at the same time I don't want to be at work and am sitting around in the dark with the door closed because I don't want to see that person and I don't want to talk to anyone about how the trip was, since the choice is essentially obfuscate, lie or cause trouble, and I just don't have the energy for masks today.
I am torn between thinking that I am the problem, and anger that I feel that way - why do I always feel like it must be my fault if someone elses actions upset me?? Stupid female socialisation, stupid desire to be nice, stupid low self esteem.
And I got another grant rejection letter this morning.
Pleaz can I goez home now???
I am torn between thinking that I am the problem, and anger that I feel that way - why do I always feel like it must be my fault if someone elses actions upset me?? Stupid female socialisation, stupid desire to be nice, stupid low self esteem.
And I got another grant rejection letter this morning.
Pleaz can I goez home now???
Dammit, summer shouldn't be this stressful!
I have spent most of today trying to write a reasoned, accurate, unbiased, non-hysterical, short account of various things that happened during the field trip.
Some of them are simply things-that-happened that I want to report (e.g. changes in the module activities that need documenting).
Some are more problematic. I wish now that I had kept a diary of exactly what did happen, but I chose not to... partly because it is the nature of...how shall I put this... interpersonal unpleasantness that each actual incident is tiny and written down looks petty and makes the complainee look like they're being silly, but in the mass, they become a whole different thing.
I do NOT want to make a formal accusation. Partly because I feel that the situation is specifically about two people who have bad chemistry. My reactions to certain circumstances, my history, my triggers, my weaknesses, my mental health or the shakiness thereof, mean that this other person's actions maybe have a disproportionate effect on me. This other person is particularly triggered into defensive or aggressive behaviour by me - I am female and English and younger and sound moderately posh and in all sorts of ways am seen by them as Competition and Unfairly Advantaged Competition at that. Partly because I just do not want the hassle of what is inevitably a word-against-word situation, and which will go on and on, and which will make me ill, and which (based on a series of anecdotes and single incidents which begin to look an awful lot like a partial dataset to me) is most unlikely to achieve anything to my benefit or their un-benefit in this institution and will probably label me an unpromotable trouble maker.
But at the same time I do want to put something on record. Partly because I am upset, and hurt, and I love FavouriteIslands and want to share them with students again, and feel I was excluded from teaching or using my expertise. Partly because I wonder how many people have felt like this before... and decided that it was just them. Partly because among colleagues on the field trip several people also commented on the unreasonableness of the situation, or on how hard I was trying to accomodate said unreasonableness, and at least two directly offered to put a statement in writing should Other Person follow through on some of their indications that they would make my life really difficult once we got back, or should I need it. That says to me that it wasn't just me. That I may be the most affected - because the most sensitive and the most proximate in some ways - but that what I am reacting to is not entirely within 'normal' or 'acceptable' bounds.
Partly because the person in question has ambitions to one day be Head of Department, and would therefore be my line manager. I cannot imagine coping with that. I was worried before the trip, now the trip has happened, I think it would be a resignation issue for me. If the person was appointed to that position I would seek transfer to another section for the duration of their tenure, even if that meant secondment to administration or demotion, and if that failed, well, I couldn't stay. I couldn't spend three years minimum being afraid and hair-trigger anxious, and I think that is how it would be. That is how most of these three weeks have been, and that was in a place where I feel innately safe, in a context where I feel capable and valued and effective, and where I was sharing accomodation with people I like and respect (which adds to the stress by restricting some coping-behaviours, such as staying up until the wee hours worrying or hiding under furniture (OK I very rarely do that, but the OPTION is always there...!), but also helps by providing a reality check and a distraction - for example, a good coping mechanism is cooking, but I can rarely be bothered to cook just for me, especially if I'm feeling anxious or stressed. When sharing with hungry people who don't really cook themselves, I find it easy to spend an hour or so making them a healthy and filling meal with pudding (we earn it on fieldwork!) and benefit from the soothing powers of chopping, of creating something, of doing something I'm competant at, of nurturing others - and from eating a proper meal whilst sitting around a table with nice people). I don't always feel safe, or capable, or valued, or effective at work anyway, regardless of who is HoD!
I decided to write some text because my current HoD, who is my obvious port of call to discuss all this, hates displays of emotion and incidents with drama, and I am emotional about this (and in general. The poor man finds me hard to deal with, although he seems to appreciate my good qualities such as they are, and has written some really nice things about me in appraisals). I thought that a document, with conclusions, and stating things that went well, my original expectations, and the things that concern me (with a few examples) would be a good starting point - paper is innately less emotional, I find. However, it is also more concrete. I decided to write it at home on my laptop this morning before going into work.
It took me until 5pm to begin writing.
No, I didn't go to work today. I stared at my laptop, and practised my well-honed avoidance and procrastination techniques since 08-00.
It took me until 01-30am to have something that I think might be usable.
I am sick of crying, of feeling afraid, of feeling like I'm being stupid, of OVERREACTING, of trying to find the right words.
I hate feeling stupid most of all. Stupid because my instincts told me this might, indeed probably would, happen and I went anyway. Stupid for letting it all get to me. Stupid for ever letting this other person find out about FavouriteIslands (which in itself is a Stupid thought because of course they are hardly private!!!).
At least I have done something. Even if I decide NOT to go to my HoD, I have written a document (which is probably too long). I have gotten out some of the poison - putting things on paper always gets me a little distance from them, which is healthy.
Tomorrow, hopefully, some more pictures!
Some of them are simply things-that-happened that I want to report (e.g. changes in the module activities that need documenting).
Some are more problematic. I wish now that I had kept a diary of exactly what did happen, but I chose not to... partly because it is the nature of...how shall I put this... interpersonal unpleasantness that each actual incident is tiny and written down looks petty and makes the complainee look like they're being silly, but in the mass, they become a whole different thing.
I do NOT want to make a formal accusation. Partly because I feel that the situation is specifically about two people who have bad chemistry. My reactions to certain circumstances, my history, my triggers, my weaknesses, my mental health or the shakiness thereof, mean that this other person's actions maybe have a disproportionate effect on me. This other person is particularly triggered into defensive or aggressive behaviour by me - I am female and English and younger and sound moderately posh and in all sorts of ways am seen by them as Competition and Unfairly Advantaged Competition at that. Partly because I just do not want the hassle of what is inevitably a word-against-word situation, and which will go on and on, and which will make me ill, and which (based on a series of anecdotes and single incidents which begin to look an awful lot like a partial dataset to me) is most unlikely to achieve anything to my benefit or their un-benefit in this institution and will probably label me an unpromotable trouble maker.
But at the same time I do want to put something on record. Partly because I am upset, and hurt, and I love FavouriteIslands and want to share them with students again, and feel I was excluded from teaching or using my expertise. Partly because I wonder how many people have felt like this before... and decided that it was just them. Partly because among colleagues on the field trip several people also commented on the unreasonableness of the situation, or on how hard I was trying to accomodate said unreasonableness, and at least two directly offered to put a statement in writing should Other Person follow through on some of their indications that they would make my life really difficult once we got back, or should I need it. That says to me that it wasn't just me. That I may be the most affected - because the most sensitive and the most proximate in some ways - but that what I am reacting to is not entirely within 'normal' or 'acceptable' bounds.
Partly because the person in question has ambitions to one day be Head of Department, and would therefore be my line manager. I cannot imagine coping with that. I was worried before the trip, now the trip has happened, I think it would be a resignation issue for me. If the person was appointed to that position I would seek transfer to another section for the duration of their tenure, even if that meant secondment to administration or demotion, and if that failed, well, I couldn't stay. I couldn't spend three years minimum being afraid and hair-trigger anxious, and I think that is how it would be. That is how most of these three weeks have been, and that was in a place where I feel innately safe, in a context where I feel capable and valued and effective, and where I was sharing accomodation with people I like and respect (which adds to the stress by restricting some coping-behaviours, such as staying up until the wee hours worrying or hiding under furniture (OK I very rarely do that, but the OPTION is always there...!), but also helps by providing a reality check and a distraction - for example, a good coping mechanism is cooking, but I can rarely be bothered to cook just for me, especially if I'm feeling anxious or stressed. When sharing with hungry people who don't really cook themselves, I find it easy to spend an hour or so making them a healthy and filling meal with pudding (we earn it on fieldwork!) and benefit from the soothing powers of chopping, of creating something, of doing something I'm competant at, of nurturing others - and from eating a proper meal whilst sitting around a table with nice people). I don't always feel safe, or capable, or valued, or effective at work anyway, regardless of who is HoD!
I decided to write some text because my current HoD, who is my obvious port of call to discuss all this, hates displays of emotion and incidents with drama, and I am emotional about this (and in general. The poor man finds me hard to deal with, although he seems to appreciate my good qualities such as they are, and has written some really nice things about me in appraisals). I thought that a document, with conclusions, and stating things that went well, my original expectations, and the things that concern me (with a few examples) would be a good starting point - paper is innately less emotional, I find. However, it is also more concrete. I decided to write it at home on my laptop this morning before going into work.
It took me until 5pm to begin writing.
No, I didn't go to work today. I stared at my laptop, and practised my well-honed avoidance and procrastination techniques since 08-00.
It took me until 01-30am to have something that I think might be usable.
I am sick of crying, of feeling afraid, of feeling like I'm being stupid, of OVERREACTING, of trying to find the right words.
I hate feeling stupid most of all. Stupid because my instincts told me this might, indeed probably would, happen and I went anyway. Stupid for letting it all get to me. Stupid for ever letting this other person find out about FavouriteIslands (which in itself is a Stupid thought because of course they are hardly private!!!).
At least I have done something. Even if I decide NOT to go to my HoD, I have written a document (which is probably too long). I have gotten out some of the poison - putting things on paper always gets me a little distance from them, which is healthy.
Tomorrow, hopefully, some more pictures!
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
random stuff
- it is surprisingly hard to get information about the load-bearing capacity of things like camping stools. I want to sit down in the field when taking notes sometimes, without having to sit on the ground, since the one activity that really causes me back problems at the moment is standing around (one of the nerves that run through the pelvis gets trapped because of my slightly wierd hip joint and patches - or all - of my leg go dead. Nothing serious, but it is not a pleasant sensation!). But I am substantially overweight, so I do not want to purchase a cheapo chair/stool that will crumple, tip me into the mud and embarrass me in front of my colleagues... so I wanted to buy something with actual numbers attached, so that I had a decent chance of avoiding that. Really very hard... suitable seating with load information tended to be more like jumbo recliner things for sporting events for the inactive/low mobility large person who would take them around by car, not for the not-entirely-inactive large person who will (fairly slowly) hike for half an hour into the mountains and THEN want to sit down, on something that she can get up from without problems and which keeps her off the prickly juniper/thistles etc. i.e. who wants a lightweight chair for a heavyweight posterior. I think I found one - not cheap, but the specifications looked good (weighs 800g, will hold a maximum weight of person close to double my current embarrassment). But it's taken ages.
- and don't get me started on underwear companies who withdraw styles after having them consistently available for multiple years. Some of us get really attached to a good comfortable bra, and mourn when our remaining supplies begin to give up the ghost, and HATE the ordeal of finding a new style. Especially when the exact. same. size. from the same company doesn't fit. :-( Things like this drive some women to the ice-cream section of the store.
- ...or on colleagues who don't pass on information to the secretaries, who then have to corner anyone else who looks as if they might know stuff
- On a completely different topic, TalkyStudent defended today, and has been awarded her research masters with minor corrections - yay!
- ...and DrN 'forgot' to tell me when and where the celebratory drinks were. I found out when Talky came to ask where I'd been... oh well. She will travel back to NorthernCity to hand in her corrected thesis, and SeniorStudent and I have arranged to take her out for a meal, so we can celebrate then.
- And the weather forecast for FavouriteIslands is just perfect for me - in the 60s, light breeze, mostly sunny. Yum!
- Now if only I could find my favourite fieldwork shirt...
Friday, June 04, 2010
Why do things happen all at once?
My parents arrive this afternoon. As part of my preparations this morning, I ran out of the back door to throw some rubbish in the bin... clutching my car keys not my house keys. And the door slammed.
OK, don't panic, parents are arriving, they have keys... and even better, there are spare keys at the office. I can go to work, meet the student I need to meet, pick up some papers, and be home (and sorted) before they arrive, so they won;t know I've been a moron again.
Drive to office (being grateful it isn't raining as the house door is still open). Borrow master key to let self into office. Pull out spare keys.
Practice swearing. For some reason (I assume there was a reason?) there ARE two keys at the office... one from each set (front door = 2 keys, back door = 1 key for house, 1 for garden). And of course, the one from the back door is the HOUSE key not the GARDEN door key, and the garden door is the one that slammed. WHY?????????????
Whilst I am berating myself with this, Head of Department pops in.
Ah, he says, this is a bit awkward, but... I've been offered a new job and I'm just off to see the Dean and resign. I need a new challenge. I'm trying to tell everyone in person.
I manage suitable words, but I am very upset by this. I do not always like him, but I trust him to be fair, to pass on information, and to fight my corner when necessary. I have a simple test for Heads of Department, which he passes with flying colours and every other professor (likely replacement) fails: I have mental health problems. I therefore have to tell each new head of department that, and trust that they will continue to treat me fairly and as a valued colleague despite knowing that I'm slightly nutty (in the medical sense) and take medication. That they will NOT (as DrN is prone to) dismiss legitimate concerns or any 'emotionally tinged' response to issues [I'm female, and I care passionately about my job and my students, OK? Comments come out emotionally flavoured sometimes] as due to my health (or my gender). Potential Heads of Department pass the test if I can imagine telling them in person (uncomfortably, of course) without feeling the need for a witness, and if I believe that they will at least try their best not to allow the knowledge to affect how they treat me. I repeat, every other professor in the department fails this test. Actually, that's not quite true - one passes, but is so good at getting out of administrative duties that I can't imagine he'll be caught as potential substitute HoD. We couldn't get candidates last time we searched - current HoD was eventually talked into it. So I'm sad to see HoD go - he's a stimulating and interesting colleague, one of the few who is genuinely interested in teaching as well as research, and I trust him absolutely to think things through and make considered decisions. I'm also worried, a lot, for me - the department has become steadily less of a happy place to work over the last few years, and less of a good fit for me and my goals, and this is almost certainly another change for the worse.
Plus, I can't get into my house. Which means confessing to my parents that I locked myself out. Again. Every time that (or something equally stupid, like locking my car keys in the car) has happened in the last few years has been when they're visiting - I get distracted and flustered, and my routines are shaken up, and I just do dumb things. But it does encourage them to treat me as the scatty, funny, irresponsible child (unlike my mature, organised, slightly-scarily-grown-up younger sister).
At least the meeting with the student went well.
Stuff all the paperwork that needs attention - this morning has been very trying so I will now go into the lab for an hour at the bench, before going home to sit outside my house and wait for my parents to show up...
OK, don't panic, parents are arriving, they have keys... and even better, there are spare keys at the office. I can go to work, meet the student I need to meet, pick up some papers, and be home (and sorted) before they arrive, so they won;t know I've been a moron again.
Drive to office (being grateful it isn't raining as the house door is still open). Borrow master key to let self into office. Pull out spare keys.
Practice swearing. For some reason (I assume there was a reason?) there ARE two keys at the office... one from each set (front door = 2 keys, back door = 1 key for house, 1 for garden). And of course, the one from the back door is the HOUSE key not the GARDEN door key, and the garden door is the one that slammed. WHY?????????????
Whilst I am berating myself with this, Head of Department pops in.
Ah, he says, this is a bit awkward, but... I've been offered a new job and I'm just off to see the Dean and resign. I need a new challenge. I'm trying to tell everyone in person.
I manage suitable words, but I am very upset by this. I do not always like him, but I trust him to be fair, to pass on information, and to fight my corner when necessary. I have a simple test for Heads of Department, which he passes with flying colours and every other professor (likely replacement) fails: I have mental health problems. I therefore have to tell each new head of department that, and trust that they will continue to treat me fairly and as a valued colleague despite knowing that I'm slightly nutty (in the medical sense) and take medication. That they will NOT (as DrN is prone to) dismiss legitimate concerns or any 'emotionally tinged' response to issues [I'm female, and I care passionately about my job and my students, OK? Comments come out emotionally flavoured sometimes] as due to my health (or my gender). Potential Heads of Department pass the test if I can imagine telling them in person (uncomfortably, of course) without feeling the need for a witness, and if I believe that they will at least try their best not to allow the knowledge to affect how they treat me. I repeat, every other professor in the department fails this test. Actually, that's not quite true - one passes, but is so good at getting out of administrative duties that I can't imagine he'll be caught as potential substitute HoD. We couldn't get candidates last time we searched - current HoD was eventually talked into it. So I'm sad to see HoD go - he's a stimulating and interesting colleague, one of the few who is genuinely interested in teaching as well as research, and I trust him absolutely to think things through and make considered decisions. I'm also worried, a lot, for me - the department has become steadily less of a happy place to work over the last few years, and less of a good fit for me and my goals, and this is almost certainly another change for the worse.
Plus, I can't get into my house. Which means confessing to my parents that I locked myself out. Again. Every time that (or something equally stupid, like locking my car keys in the car) has happened in the last few years has been when they're visiting - I get distracted and flustered, and my routines are shaken up, and I just do dumb things. But it does encourage them to treat me as the scatty, funny, irresponsible child (unlike my mature, organised, slightly-scarily-grown-up younger sister).
At least the meeting with the student went well.
Stuff all the paperwork that needs attention - this morning has been very trying so I will now go into the lab for an hour at the bench, before going home to sit outside my house and wait for my parents to show up...
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Thinking about post-docs - edited
There's quite a bit of discussion around at the moment (as there often is) about post-doctoral positions, and I've a variety of comments/posts sort of fermenting around the topic, but none of them want to really shape up. So, instead, here is a rather mixed brew of thoughts and comments from my perspective.
what is my perspective?
I am a product of the UK system. That means that there was no 4 year undergrad, 2-3 year Masters, 5-7 year PhD. Three years of intense undergrad with minimal formal 'liberal arts/general education' elements but huge 'optional' ones (arguing over new testament Greek in a bible study, singing Handel and having access to a copyright library, not to mention friends taking degrees in a wide variety of subjects who were just as geekily enthused about their new discoveries as I was by science and were happy to share, all count, OK?) and straight into a PhD (since I wanted to go into a field closely related to my undergraduate discipline and had a good grade, no Masters was required), which consisted of three years of research on a general topic that was broadly set by my PI, but with some freedom to determine how it developed - no classes, no TA-ing or RA-ing, no taking part in other projects or doing scut-work, just learning about science and doing science. In this system, a post-doc not only makes sense, it's probably necessary - if you consider post-doc broadly as a fixed-term or rolling contract position undertaken in a university setting between completion of the doctoral degree and obtaining a post with a continuing/indefinite contract, then they have quite a lot of antiquity - I've read of plenty of scientists from the early twentieth century who undertook such positions, indeed probably more who did (whether that post was what we'd consider to be a visiting professor, demonstrator/lecturer/other kind of label for casual teaching, researcher, assistant, whatever) than who didn't.
I chose to do a post-doc, and I did not have personal ties that made it problematic
I wanted to do a post-doc. I wanted to go somewhere different whilst I was NOT tied by the many family and personal commitments people cite. I stand firmly by the assertion at, whilst I have no doubt you can stay in one system and indeed one university, one lab, throughout your career and make a success of it, for most people who have the opportunity, getting some breadth of experience is a Very Good Thing. Going abroad - well, it was great. it was awful. I had a major depressive episode, I had constant IBS, I had two tooth abcesses. I learnt a huge amount, I made a couple of great friends, I would do it again if I had a do-over (although I would now go and demand anti-depressants rather than just blaming myself for being feeble).
It worked out for me
I am one of the 'lucky ones' (though so far this month I don't feel lucky at ALL). I got a faculty job, at a respectable but not brilliant university, one where I am able to apply for grants in my own name (and get REJECTED in my own name, again and again and again. Even when I run my ideas past Semi-Deity Professors and get told they are innovative, original, exciting, important - I don't get funded, because there isn't enough funding to go round all the innovative ideas). I have had some graduate students - most of whom, however nice and clever they are and however hard I work to be the sort of fair, open-minded, helpful mentor a supervisor should be, cost me dearly in time, in emotional stress, in lab resources - there is no doubt in my mind that I would get more work done (measured by papers, grants etc. etc.) with a single skilled assistant than with multiple graduate students. I say to them, there is almost no chance of you becoming an academic. I say, yes, it has some good aspects. It is hard work, it is thankless, it is poorly remunerated in comparison with most of your equally-educated peers. It is fun, and exhilarating, and frustrating, and and and. That holding a PhD is often a negative on a c.v., it can make you be seen as over-qualified or likely to be bored or just 'not like us'.
Why do so many scientists, who are supposed to be good at reading the evidence not listening to the hype, seem to believe that PhD + post-doc = Faculty job (in the type of university they choose)?
No-one ever told me I'd be pretty much promised employment in my field at the end of my studies, and I was advised very clearly that the likelihood of getting an academic job was very very small. That was also pretty clear to me, just from the numbers (I'm a scientist, I look at data, OK?). At every stage, I asked myself one question: if at the end of these x years you have to begin again and train as an accountant (or work in a supermarket), will you regret having spent the time studying/doing this/carrying out this research? I had reached the point where the answer was going from 'of course' to 'maybe not'. In my last post-doc, I had set a deadline. I had come up with two alternative plans - a 'going sideways' plan (which used my academic skills in a rather poorly-paid non-academic area coupled with a steady income from a less interesting but minimal-retraining-required part time job) and a 'retrain, refocus' plan, and even attended a couple of seminars on the one and found out about job shadowing and career development loans for the other, although my 'walk away date' was still some time off (I had about 18 months to go when I started this job). This job came up; I didn't need either plan; I don't know what would have happened or how I would feel. But I do feel a mix of irritation-at and pain-for the naivety, the bitterness, of those I run into who believe that the system owes them a job, that they were promised it would work out (and irritation too with the stupid people who told them it would be like that).
Why don't my students believe me when I tell them that?
But I say this, and I say it, yet my own students don't seem to believe me. I regularly tell my students about the challenges, point out the poor job market, show them articles, discuss alternative careers, encourage them to think about options and take opportunities to try things out. Yet KhakiWearingStudent, SeniorStudent and OverseasStudent all seem to believe they will become academics at the moment. KhakiWearingStudent remains convinced that he will be more employable with a PhD because, as he says, "I'll've studied longer and I'm learning so much!" (this might be cute if it wasn't so scary... and if he wasn't older than me). SeniorStudent, who said she was interested in my field's equivalent of a 'Pharma-job' when asked during her studies and at her interview, now says that she 'has to' get a faculty job - which is nonsense, as there are plenty of other options - and seriously, I wouldn't have taken her on as a post-doc if I'd thought she saw it as a means to a faculty job only - because we all know she's probably going to be disappointed (I hope she's just being a little over-happy about having finished the thesis??). TalkyStudent, thank heavens, already has a nice industry job and is very happy with her prospects, and OverseasStudent has better reasons than most for believing she can get a higher ed job in a few years time (in her home country higher education is growing hugely, she speaks the key local languages like a native thanks to a 'mixed' family background, and her near-native fluency in English and two other European languages on top, plus the fact that she'll have published in the English language science media, will make her pretty employable) - and at the moment also has sensible alternative plans if things don't work out or she changes her mind.
Isn't it the same in other professions?
I am in no doubt that there are excellent people, some of them "better than me" for whatever definition of better or more deserving, who did not get a faculty position or who works somewhere where they lack even basic research facilities, have huge teaching loads etc. etc., and others who are "not as good" who have more prestigious ones and easier work lives (one of my colleagues teaches one and a half modules, in one semester, every year, and has 50% of a lab tech all for them all the time at no cost on their grants. That, to me, counts as easier). Getting a job has a large element of luck to it. I absolutely believe that. Even if you know the right people etc. etc. there still has to be an opening! This is the way of the world - how many acorns germinate, become seedlings, saplings, find a canopy gap and become a tree? How many administrators and junior civil servants work long hours in lower management for decades, never making it to the dizzy heights of mega-bonuses and directorships? How many people with law degrees end up making partner in a big company doing criminal work? Leaky pipelines are, it seems to me, far more common than the opposite in this world.
I think a post-doc is usually a Good Thing
A few years, or an independent fellowship - I think that's great. The confidence boost of starting a project knowing what you are doing (so unlike the PhD!), the chance to recover from the stress of writing the PhD and to reflect on what to do whilst being paid (not a lot, but more than a grad student, and usually just about a living wage even in a large city) to do something you know how to do, exposure to different places and ways of working - all of these things make a post-doc worth doing in its own right even if no job comes of it.
Secondly, in my experience, faculty members who didn't do post-docs but came straight from their PhDs tend to struggle with the job - and are far more likely to have at least one of the irritating traits of over-confidence, arrogance (or talkign themselves up all the time), inability to ask for help OR inability to do anything without being told to do it, and really, really irritating on the subject of the One True Way to do something (either the way of their supervisor, or the OPPOSITE of that, depending on their experiences...). Not all of them. But a lot of people, and I include people from systems where they finish their PhDs in their early 30s for whatever reason rather than wierdos like me who submitted aged 24, mellow and mature as scientists most remarkably after a couple of years of just doing science. NOT of trying to learn the new and thankless tasks of PI-ing, but of doing science... and a post-doc is a great place to do that.
I like my field (but I'd rather like to be left alone in it to commune with nature, thanks)
My reading makes me realise that my discipline is really rather pleasant. Most of the PIs I know, have worked with or for, are human, not monsters. Most of them mean well, are good at some things and bad at others, and have genuinely good intentions to do impartial science and be good leaders. Even the people who really, really stress me out have redeeming qualities. Maybe it's the relative lack of funding, linked to a lack of medical relevance. Maybe it's the kind of people who go into it (it attracts people with relatively wide interests, generalists rather than specialists). Yes, there are arrogant clever-clogs super-stars at a few Big Name Universities, yes, there are unhappy post-docs, yes, there are politics. But it's nothing like as bad as the fields in which some bloggers, especially in the 'biosciences', are stuck. I'm glad I followed my passion rather than the sexiest, money-getting-est discipline, and I'm glad I've got a range of interests such that when one area isn't working, I have lots of others to think about.
Does anyone get a permanent, secure job?
Tenure does not offer security. There is no security. People get fired, companies go bust, people get sick of their work or they get ill or become a carer. Lives CHANGE. We have here no abiding city. It's amazing how often people sacrifice so much in their personal lives, take so much emotional abuse trying to survive and fit into a toxic environment, fighting impossible battles... YFS wrote about how little time she has to do science because she spends her time trying to run the lab, teach her juniors, 'help' her PI write grants - it sounds wretched. It sounds a little familiar - I reckon a day a week of my time in my first, North American post-doc was spent doing that sort of thing. I have to admit I rather enjoyed it...* despite the effect it had on my science... but my boss was a disorganised, unfocused and over-worked but essentially decent human being, so our two situations were nothing alike. Why do we keep believing it will all work out?? Why do I do exactly the same thing in my current post, just as a mid-career academic (13 years in, 24 to go if I retire at the 'official' age, I think that counts as mid-career) rather than as a post-doc? Why DO people want to believe the world is different, that it is stable not changing and chancy, fair not blindly stochastic or entropic?
*I like to be needed, to be useful. That is more rewarding - and more long-term comfortable - than being some kind of star expert (there's always pressure to live up to a star billing). I never wanted Captain Kirk's job - all that being-in-charge, public-face-of, responsibility stuff? So. Not. Me.
Edited to add a sort of summary, things that came to mind after pressing post:
1) I think my main confusion with 'other systems' is why people need to spend so long in grad school, being students - not being 'adults', paying fees to a university, living on 'student stipends', taking out debt... (it just seems excessive). We get to similar places by say age 35 or 40, agreed - but 6-8 years as a student (undergrad, masters if necessary/wanted, PhD) seem like plenty, if the post-doc is (as I would argue) a maturing, independence-developing phase enabling the person to go on to whatever they choose in a better state than when they finished their PhD.
2) A PhD is an end in itself. For academics, for a 'full faculty job', I think a (relatively short - sub-5 year on average) period of post-doctoral research is good, even necessary, preparation. For those who are researchers at heart, not academics, I wish there were more career opportunities - not least because their search for a regular paycheque sometimes leads them into academia and they make lousy colleagues (although often they're very nice well meaning people).
3) 'employability', general transferable qualifications that attract an employer rather than triggering warnings, probably peaks with a general taught master's degree at the moment. PhD makes you odder, and it's important to be able to dress post-doccing up in ways that make it a fixed-term job (which it often is - most post-doc positions funded by PI's grants are jobs in which someone is hired to carry out certain research tasks, not to do whatever they fancy) when looking for jobs outside. My second (short) and third post-doc stints were definitely of this type, as they involved research tasks with the same sorts of parameters and on the same sorts of questions as the type of non-academic specialist roles I was applying for alongside faculty jobs - so I could (and did) argue that the fact that I did them in a university and published academic papers was not what was important - the nature of the work, the reports to the funders, the working to deadlines and in teams, were all what I would do in industry, it just so happened that my workplace was a university.
Quote of the day:
[frustrated Dr Labrador, bewailing inability of students to complete simple task the simple way]: there's no point making the instructions idiot-proof, because they just keep inventing better idiots!
what is my perspective?
I am a product of the UK system. That means that there was no 4 year undergrad, 2-3 year Masters, 5-7 year PhD. Three years of intense undergrad with minimal formal 'liberal arts/general education' elements but huge 'optional' ones (arguing over new testament Greek in a bible study, singing Handel and having access to a copyright library, not to mention friends taking degrees in a wide variety of subjects who were just as geekily enthused about their new discoveries as I was by science and were happy to share, all count, OK?) and straight into a PhD (since I wanted to go into a field closely related to my undergraduate discipline and had a good grade, no Masters was required), which consisted of three years of research on a general topic that was broadly set by my PI, but with some freedom to determine how it developed - no classes, no TA-ing or RA-ing, no taking part in other projects or doing scut-work, just learning about science and doing science. In this system, a post-doc not only makes sense, it's probably necessary - if you consider post-doc broadly as a fixed-term or rolling contract position undertaken in a university setting between completion of the doctoral degree and obtaining a post with a continuing/indefinite contract, then they have quite a lot of antiquity - I've read of plenty of scientists from the early twentieth century who undertook such positions, indeed probably more who did (whether that post was what we'd consider to be a visiting professor, demonstrator/lecturer/other kind of label for casual teaching, researcher, assistant, whatever) than who didn't.
I chose to do a post-doc, and I did not have personal ties that made it problematic
I wanted to do a post-doc. I wanted to go somewhere different whilst I was NOT tied by the many family and personal commitments people cite. I stand firmly by the assertion at, whilst I have no doubt you can stay in one system and indeed one university, one lab, throughout your career and make a success of it, for most people who have the opportunity, getting some breadth of experience is a Very Good Thing. Going abroad - well, it was great. it was awful. I had a major depressive episode, I had constant IBS, I had two tooth abcesses. I learnt a huge amount, I made a couple of great friends, I would do it again if I had a do-over (although I would now go and demand anti-depressants rather than just blaming myself for being feeble).
It worked out for me
I am one of the 'lucky ones' (though so far this month I don't feel lucky at ALL). I got a faculty job, at a respectable but not brilliant university, one where I am able to apply for grants in my own name (and get REJECTED in my own name, again and again and again. Even when I run my ideas past Semi-Deity Professors and get told they are innovative, original, exciting, important - I don't get funded, because there isn't enough funding to go round all the innovative ideas). I have had some graduate students - most of whom, however nice and clever they are and however hard I work to be the sort of fair, open-minded, helpful mentor a supervisor should be, cost me dearly in time, in emotional stress, in lab resources - there is no doubt in my mind that I would get more work done (measured by papers, grants etc. etc.) with a single skilled assistant than with multiple graduate students. I say to them, there is almost no chance of you becoming an academic. I say, yes, it has some good aspects. It is hard work, it is thankless, it is poorly remunerated in comparison with most of your equally-educated peers. It is fun, and exhilarating, and frustrating, and and and. That holding a PhD is often a negative on a c.v., it can make you be seen as over-qualified or likely to be bored or just 'not like us'.
Why do so many scientists, who are supposed to be good at reading the evidence not listening to the hype, seem to believe that PhD + post-doc = Faculty job (in the type of university they choose)?
No-one ever told me I'd be pretty much promised employment in my field at the end of my studies, and I was advised very clearly that the likelihood of getting an academic job was very very small. That was also pretty clear to me, just from the numbers (I'm a scientist, I look at data, OK?). At every stage, I asked myself one question: if at the end of these x years you have to begin again and train as an accountant (or work in a supermarket), will you regret having spent the time studying/doing this/carrying out this research? I had reached the point where the answer was going from 'of course' to 'maybe not'. In my last post-doc, I had set a deadline. I had come up with two alternative plans - a 'going sideways' plan (which used my academic skills in a rather poorly-paid non-academic area coupled with a steady income from a less interesting but minimal-retraining-required part time job) and a 'retrain, refocus' plan, and even attended a couple of seminars on the one and found out about job shadowing and career development loans for the other, although my 'walk away date' was still some time off (I had about 18 months to go when I started this job). This job came up; I didn't need either plan; I don't know what would have happened or how I would feel. But I do feel a mix of irritation-at and pain-for the naivety, the bitterness, of those I run into who believe that the system owes them a job, that they were promised it would work out (and irritation too with the stupid people who told them it would be like that).
Why don't my students believe me when I tell them that?
But I say this, and I say it, yet my own students don't seem to believe me. I regularly tell my students about the challenges, point out the poor job market, show them articles, discuss alternative careers, encourage them to think about options and take opportunities to try things out. Yet KhakiWearingStudent, SeniorStudent and OverseasStudent all seem to believe they will become academics at the moment. KhakiWearingStudent remains convinced that he will be more employable with a PhD because, as he says, "I'll've studied longer and I'm learning so much!" (this might be cute if it wasn't so scary... and if he wasn't older than me). SeniorStudent, who said she was interested in my field's equivalent of a 'Pharma-job' when asked during her studies and at her interview, now says that she 'has to' get a faculty job - which is nonsense, as there are plenty of other options - and seriously, I wouldn't have taken her on as a post-doc if I'd thought she saw it as a means to a faculty job only - because we all know she's probably going to be disappointed (I hope she's just being a little over-happy about having finished the thesis??). TalkyStudent, thank heavens, already has a nice industry job and is very happy with her prospects, and OverseasStudent has better reasons than most for believing she can get a higher ed job in a few years time (in her home country higher education is growing hugely, she speaks the key local languages like a native thanks to a 'mixed' family background, and her near-native fluency in English and two other European languages on top, plus the fact that she'll have published in the English language science media, will make her pretty employable) - and at the moment also has sensible alternative plans if things don't work out or she changes her mind.
Isn't it the same in other professions?
I am in no doubt that there are excellent people, some of them "better than me" for whatever definition of better or more deserving, who did not get a faculty position or who works somewhere where they lack even basic research facilities, have huge teaching loads etc. etc., and others who are "not as good" who have more prestigious ones and easier work lives (one of my colleagues teaches one and a half modules, in one semester, every year, and has 50% of a lab tech all for them all the time at no cost on their grants. That, to me, counts as easier). Getting a job has a large element of luck to it. I absolutely believe that. Even if you know the right people etc. etc. there still has to be an opening! This is the way of the world - how many acorns germinate, become seedlings, saplings, find a canopy gap and become a tree? How many administrators and junior civil servants work long hours in lower management for decades, never making it to the dizzy heights of mega-bonuses and directorships? How many people with law degrees end up making partner in a big company doing criminal work? Leaky pipelines are, it seems to me, far more common than the opposite in this world.
I think a post-doc is usually a Good Thing
A few years, or an independent fellowship - I think that's great. The confidence boost of starting a project knowing what you are doing (so unlike the PhD!), the chance to recover from the stress of writing the PhD and to reflect on what to do whilst being paid (not a lot, but more than a grad student, and usually just about a living wage even in a large city) to do something you know how to do, exposure to different places and ways of working - all of these things make a post-doc worth doing in its own right even if no job comes of it.
Secondly, in my experience, faculty members who didn't do post-docs but came straight from their PhDs tend to struggle with the job - and are far more likely to have at least one of the irritating traits of over-confidence, arrogance (or talkign themselves up all the time), inability to ask for help OR inability to do anything without being told to do it, and really, really irritating on the subject of the One True Way to do something (either the way of their supervisor, or the OPPOSITE of that, depending on their experiences...). Not all of them. But a lot of people, and I include people from systems where they finish their PhDs in their early 30s for whatever reason rather than wierdos like me who submitted aged 24, mellow and mature as scientists most remarkably after a couple of years of just doing science. NOT of trying to learn the new and thankless tasks of PI-ing, but of doing science... and a post-doc is a great place to do that.
I like my field (but I'd rather like to be left alone in it to commune with nature, thanks)
My reading makes me realise that my discipline is really rather pleasant. Most of the PIs I know, have worked with or for, are human, not monsters. Most of them mean well, are good at some things and bad at others, and have genuinely good intentions to do impartial science and be good leaders. Even the people who really, really stress me out have redeeming qualities. Maybe it's the relative lack of funding, linked to a lack of medical relevance. Maybe it's the kind of people who go into it (it attracts people with relatively wide interests, generalists rather than specialists). Yes, there are arrogant clever-clogs super-stars at a few Big Name Universities, yes, there are unhappy post-docs, yes, there are politics. But it's nothing like as bad as the fields in which some bloggers, especially in the 'biosciences', are stuck. I'm glad I followed my passion rather than the sexiest, money-getting-est discipline, and I'm glad I've got a range of interests such that when one area isn't working, I have lots of others to think about.
Does anyone get a permanent, secure job?
Tenure does not offer security. There is no security. People get fired, companies go bust, people get sick of their work or they get ill or become a carer. Lives CHANGE. We have here no abiding city. It's amazing how often people sacrifice so much in their personal lives, take so much emotional abuse trying to survive and fit into a toxic environment, fighting impossible battles... YFS wrote about how little time she has to do science because she spends her time trying to run the lab, teach her juniors, 'help' her PI write grants - it sounds wretched. It sounds a little familiar - I reckon a day a week of my time in my first, North American post-doc was spent doing that sort of thing. I have to admit I rather enjoyed it...* despite the effect it had on my science... but my boss was a disorganised, unfocused and over-worked but essentially decent human being, so our two situations were nothing alike. Why do we keep believing it will all work out?? Why do I do exactly the same thing in my current post, just as a mid-career academic (13 years in, 24 to go if I retire at the 'official' age, I think that counts as mid-career) rather than as a post-doc? Why DO people want to believe the world is different, that it is stable not changing and chancy, fair not blindly stochastic or entropic?
*I like to be needed, to be useful. That is more rewarding - and more long-term comfortable - than being some kind of star expert (there's always pressure to live up to a star billing). I never wanted Captain Kirk's job - all that being-in-charge, public-face-of, responsibility stuff? So. Not. Me.
Edited to add a sort of summary, things that came to mind after pressing post:
1) I think my main confusion with 'other systems' is why people need to spend so long in grad school, being students - not being 'adults', paying fees to a university, living on 'student stipends', taking out debt... (it just seems excessive). We get to similar places by say age 35 or 40, agreed - but 6-8 years as a student (undergrad, masters if necessary/wanted, PhD) seem like plenty, if the post-doc is (as I would argue) a maturing, independence-developing phase enabling the person to go on to whatever they choose in a better state than when they finished their PhD.
2) A PhD is an end in itself. For academics, for a 'full faculty job', I think a (relatively short - sub-5 year on average) period of post-doctoral research is good, even necessary, preparation. For those who are researchers at heart, not academics, I wish there were more career opportunities - not least because their search for a regular paycheque sometimes leads them into academia and they make lousy colleagues (although often they're very nice well meaning people).
3) 'employability', general transferable qualifications that attract an employer rather than triggering warnings, probably peaks with a general taught master's degree at the moment. PhD makes you odder, and it's important to be able to dress post-doccing up in ways that make it a fixed-term job (which it often is - most post-doc positions funded by PI's grants are jobs in which someone is hired to carry out certain research tasks, not to do whatever they fancy) when looking for jobs outside. My second (short) and third post-doc stints were definitely of this type, as they involved research tasks with the same sorts of parameters and on the same sorts of questions as the type of non-academic specialist roles I was applying for alongside faculty jobs - so I could (and did) argue that the fact that I did them in a university and published academic papers was not what was important - the nature of the work, the reports to the funders, the working to deadlines and in teams, were all what I would do in industry, it just so happened that my workplace was a university.
Quote of the day:
[frustrated Dr Labrador, bewailing inability of students to complete simple task the simple way]: there's no point making the instructions idiot-proof, because they just keep inventing better idiots!
Monday, November 02, 2009
a busy day
Oh dear I am tired. I went into the office today to a meeting with FairlyFamousProfessor, GoldenBoy, SeniorStudent and a few others about possible future work in FavouriteIslands. I also got distracted into a couple of other things, and I am Wiped. Out. (even after a 33 hour nap). So here are some bullets of update:
- The Human Resources people have excelled themselves. They have no idea who is in charge of Science at the moment, and have been buck-passing merrily. To add to the complication, I need an HR rep on the (somewhat farcical, since myself and the other academic panel member have already agreed that SeniorStudent, the only candidate, is perfectly capable of doing the job) interview process for the Bequest Project. And they can't agree who it should be. No wonder it's taking an age...
- Meanwhile, SeniorStudent has another interview for a post-doc position at another uni next week. aaaahhhhhh!!!!!!!
- the colleague who was going to supervise his partner's PhD? Is saying it's definitely going ahead. Even though he and the partner are no longer together. Although they MIGHT be getting back together as they were seen being really cosy in the pub. This is farcical. It would be funny if I didn't have to be on the panel - but when they've split up and got together what, three times in the last few months?, it's a bit worrying for the dynamics of the project...
- The meeting was... interesting. GoldenBoy has been really crap at communicating what's going on but refuses to admit it and the visitors were too polite to really come out and challenge him so people kept saying 'Communication is KEY' without ever coming out and talking about the problems.
- GoldenBoy is well on course to really upset some of my more important local contacts in FavouriteIslands, so it's a good thing I did go in; I might be able to head off the worst of it.
- GB and I are supposed to be taking a student field trip to FavouriteIslands this summer. It kind of came out that he's expecting me to sort out accomodation and cook for the students to keep the costs down because that's what one of his other colleagues (aka GB's lapdog) does. Now, OK, I'm a competent cook for numbers on fieldwork. I'm the logical choice to organise a rota or get in stores (although I still think the most logical move is to make sure they have self-catering facilities and stay near a pub, offer them lifts to the supermarket and/or stops at village shops every few days, and tell them to get on with it - they're adults and they normally feed themselves and it's not like we'll be camping on a mountain 300 miles from a shop. But it would have been nice to be asked...
- I really really wanted to be able to speak today! Tried to get SeniorStudent to step up and talk about her thesis work and how she envisages extending it and how it might relate to the project our visitors are setting up, but she was all quiet and tentative for some reason today, so our area wasn't that well represented. I need to write some longish emails to people I think, so that I've contributed. Tomorrow though.
- I set up the forum for the master's option module yesterday. Only two students have posted so far. I added a few question posts and started some threads to try and get them going - I know they're not used to this mode of learning but they all agreed to it, and all agreed to post, so... I guess it will take some time, and I'm going to need to do a lot of encouraging and leaning... sigh. It's the best I can do for them but I have a sinking feeling it won't achieve what it needs to.
- No-one can find SeniorStudent's examiners form. I did a new one today, and sent it off AGAIN for signing. All appendages crossed...
- Secretary who knows everything is definitely leaving. I am SO SAD. She's so NICE, as well as knowing everything...
Sunday, November 01, 2009
A quiet day
Happy Birthday to me... I turned 41 today, and it was literally a quiet day as I still can't speak - plus of course having been off work I hadn't organised any drinks or lunch or cake, and my local non-uni friends tend not to do stuff on weekends (families, kids, couple outings, the usual). I will have a spread out birthday this year as thanks to the postal strike I only got a couple of cards today - which gave me an EX-cellent excuse to heat up my credit card on Amazon buying a few frivolous books for myself, and to wander into town for a fancy coffee and a bit of browsing (and to treat myself to a toffee apple sponge pudding in lieu of a cake - thank you M&S!). But I didn't get much work done. At all. And it's not like I was out having fun (although I got up late and had a lovely 3 hour nap and read a novel, so it wasn't all just 'failure to work' stuff). However, I think this officially counts as a Not Very Good Birthday and an Ill Birthday, which means (at least, would have meant when we were kids) that I am entitled to a Half Birthday with all the trimmings on May 1st (since my sis has a birthday in February and mine is in November, we were often sick on our birthdays, or lots of our friends were, or measles or chickenpox or something was going around at school and half the class was ill or in quarantine) messing up birthday party plans. My Mum would compensate with half birthday parties if our normal ones were no-party days, mine in May and my sister's in August. A tradition that I think should be revived...
On my last post, Professor in Training said...
Yeah, I do have a lot on my plate. But I think it's a normal level of 'lot'. We have a workload model in our department and, once corrected for my part-time status, I come out about on a par with my peers - this year (when my research load is just my study leave, not the usual complicated calculation based on grants held and papers written over the last three years), I'm about one-third from the top of the list, ranked by 'load units'.
However, the load model only rewards certain types of activity, and especially in research that can be an issue - for example, it only reflects grants actually awarded, so grant applications don't count. It only reflects papers published, so all conference attending is 'extra' and not counted. It allocates something like 12 days per graduate student, divided among the supervisors - so going in the field with a student wipes all the time allocated, and when you count up lab training, meetings, reading work, that's short.
There is little doubt that I'm my own worst enemy because I continue to go to meetings, to give more time to my students than I'm supposed to, to apply for multiple grants each year (because I have lots of ideas, dammit - and IF one of them gets funded, that would have positive work load consequences), to contribute to unfunded activities like InformalWorkingGroup, to spend time talking about research and helping out students and colleagues from other places (and sometimes they help me out too). I'm trying to build a reputation which might lead to me getting funding, and I'm doing some quite unusual research stuff (especially with WierdBugMan and the software we've developed) which people often want a piece of (but aren't SO sure they want to write me into a grant - but that sort of thing takes time to build up to, I find). I do my job so that I'm happy to look myself in the face in the morning. Maybe I shouldn't any more - but I'm afraid that if I cut back below the minimum (which is what I work at now, pretty much) that 'feels right' in terms of doing my job as a scientist and academic, I'll end up like some of my colleagues - still nominally as heavily loaded, but a sloppy teacher always looking for short cuts, a lazy grader, someone who expects their grad students to work stuff out on their own then blames them for taking a long time to get their work done, who complains about how hard it is to get funding and uses that as a reason not to apply... and also, the more time I spend just with my colleagues the more lonely and stupid and incompetant I feel as a scientist. Not how it should be - but how it is. I need the outside contacts to keep me going, to provide a valuable external check on my own negative self-perception. If I had a more supportive group of colleagues, I'd probably actually do less than I do now (or maybe that's self-delusion).
The other thing is that, from talking to others, unless you are absolutely ruthless about sticking to one narrow research area and about completely ending projects and collaborations after a set time, or when the paper's published, I think this happens to everyone - you get involved in a wider community, a wider net of ideas and relationships, the longer you stay in the job, and that keeps you steadily working at your capacity - your capacity grows with experience, but so does the workload! Yeah, I need to deal with the fact that my capacity is ovewhelmed at the moment. But it's not a unique problem.
On my last post, Professor in Training said...
Glad to see you're starting to make progress, JaneB, but don't overdo it and
make yourself ill again.Quick question: you seem to have an extraordinary amount
of work on your plate, particularly for someone who isn't full-time ... do all
of your colleagues who are on an equivalent level have a similar workload or do
you take on more than you should?
Yeah, I do have a lot on my plate. But I think it's a normal level of 'lot'. We have a workload model in our department and, once corrected for my part-time status, I come out about on a par with my peers - this year (when my research load is just my study leave, not the usual complicated calculation based on grants held and papers written over the last three years), I'm about one-third from the top of the list, ranked by 'load units'.
However, the load model only rewards certain types of activity, and especially in research that can be an issue - for example, it only reflects grants actually awarded, so grant applications don't count. It only reflects papers published, so all conference attending is 'extra' and not counted. It allocates something like 12 days per graduate student, divided among the supervisors - so going in the field with a student wipes all the time allocated, and when you count up lab training, meetings, reading work, that's short.
There is little doubt that I'm my own worst enemy because I continue to go to meetings, to give more time to my students than I'm supposed to, to apply for multiple grants each year (because I have lots of ideas, dammit - and IF one of them gets funded, that would have positive work load consequences), to contribute to unfunded activities like InformalWorkingGroup, to spend time talking about research and helping out students and colleagues from other places (and sometimes they help me out too). I'm trying to build a reputation which might lead to me getting funding, and I'm doing some quite unusual research stuff (especially with WierdBugMan and the software we've developed) which people often want a piece of (but aren't SO sure they want to write me into a grant - but that sort of thing takes time to build up to, I find). I do my job so that I'm happy to look myself in the face in the morning. Maybe I shouldn't any more - but I'm afraid that if I cut back below the minimum (which is what I work at now, pretty much) that 'feels right' in terms of doing my job as a scientist and academic, I'll end up like some of my colleagues - still nominally as heavily loaded, but a sloppy teacher always looking for short cuts, a lazy grader, someone who expects their grad students to work stuff out on their own then blames them for taking a long time to get their work done, who complains about how hard it is to get funding and uses that as a reason not to apply... and also, the more time I spend just with my colleagues the more lonely and stupid and incompetant I feel as a scientist. Not how it should be - but how it is. I need the outside contacts to keep me going, to provide a valuable external check on my own negative self-perception. If I had a more supportive group of colleagues, I'd probably actually do less than I do now (or maybe that's self-delusion).
The other thing is that, from talking to others, unless you are absolutely ruthless about sticking to one narrow research area and about completely ending projects and collaborations after a set time, or when the paper's published, I think this happens to everyone - you get involved in a wider community, a wider net of ideas and relationships, the longer you stay in the job, and that keeps you steadily working at your capacity - your capacity grows with experience, but so does the workload! Yeah, I need to deal with the fact that my capacity is ovewhelmed at the moment. But it's not a unique problem.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Duh
I had something I wanted to post, but it's disappeared whilst waiting for the system to log me in. So, some random bullets of stuff instead of anything more meaningful.
today I have to go into NorthernCity to sit with OverseasStudent during her interview for funding (all her potential supervisors are supposed to be there) - it will be via Skype so we hope the technology works. I wish students would email the module leader with general queries like 'is today's class on' when I am off sick, rather than me I sent in my "response to reviewers" for that grant application - I hope it was OK, it was the best I could do. So now I wait again, with that mixture of 'that referee loved it' elation and 'the other referee hated it, it'll get a dreadful rating' gloom whenever I think about it. Sigh. I just have to try not to think about it!
- I went into the office yesterday to:
- sign some papers for DrVisit (who's going back to ExoticCountry for a few weeks to do some fieldwork and, now she understands our analysis methods better, collect some more data from her colleagues - plus see her family)
- DrVisit gave me some ExoticCountry throat medicine - the lozenges have cute little flowers on them, but I'm still a little wary - I worry, does that make me a bit racist? They have a strong medical tradition which is rather different to ours, and I don't know how exactly to say 'what's in this? is it compatible with SSRIs, fluxetine, antibiotics, paracetamol?' without coming across as rude - but I know I need to be careful when mixing European herbal medicine with 'conventionals', so am even more cautious about adding a different medical system again to the mix.
- met with DrSabb and WierdBugMan to start off that project
- found out that WonderfulSecretaryWhoKnowsEverything is retiring at Christmas. I am so sad!!
- see OverseasStudent and went through her presentation
- and all without really speaking (I did whisper a little, and then paid for it with coughing fits and total knackeredness last night. At least I know I'm not just not talking out of habit, there really is still something physically wrong!)
Thursday, October 22, 2009
The Problem of the Temporary Bureaucrat
Commenting on my last post, Comrade PhysioProf said...
I read this thinking, oh yes, of course, this is all true, but what does it have to do with my post? Then reaslised that PP was saying that my appraiser/Head of Department is a bureaucrat therefore why had I not listened to all their comments through the relevant bureaucrat-filter?
Answer: because he wasn't/isn't really a bureaucrat. Why not? The hierarchy here goes something like Vice Chancellor to Senior Management Team to Faculties (headed by Deans and Deputy Deans who are seconded from academic departments for periods of 3-5 years, not appointed separately - DDs aren't even seconded full time) to Heads of Department, and in the case of our department to a Department Executive Committee consisting of all Professors (in the UK sense) plus the major admin roles (Teaching, Research, Assessment and Admissions (Recruitment)) plus 'staff reps', and then to the rest of the department, faculty and support staff alike. Yes, there's a senate and a council and other stuff that technically checks and balances the VC-SMT, and Committees for just about everything. Anyway. The point is that to me 'bureaucrat' means 'works for centralised service in university' (e.g. Graduate Student Office, Central Admissions Office) or 'person on administrative career trajectory' - some Deans, Directors of various Offices or Centres or Institutes, people Seconded to Central Offices with the intention of moving off the academic career path into the administrative one.
In this university, Head of Department is a three year position, awarded competitively (in theory - in practice, it's advertised and everyone plays musical I'm-Not-Suitable until someone blinks and is inveigeled into applying and, lo and behold, 'selected'), after which the HoD returns to the ranks of the faculty and someone else has a go. Some people will actually want to be HoD as a boost to their application for promotion to Professor (you don't have to be Professor to be Head of Department - it's just that if you aren't, you better be both charismatic and machiavellian, or the Professors will all ignore you or block every reform you propose) or because they want to be a Deputy Dean/Dean/Administrator. These people, you expect to drink the KoolAid, go to the Dark Side and generally become bureaucrats, to be treated with the caveats PP outlines. However, other people do HoD because someone has to - either out of idealism, or a fatalistic acceptance that it's Buggins' turn (typically this someone has a departmental or established chair, so knows it's expected that they'll do a stint on rotation), or just the sense that the alternative of being a member of a department headed by one of the other candidates is actually worse than being HoD themselves.
The current guy is clearly HoD for a mix of the last two reasons, with maybe a small dash of the first - he's a research-active, teaching-active mid-career Chair-holder. When he did my appraisal, he was Director of Research for the Department and had led the submissions for the last RAE, and not yet appointed HoD although he was clearly the probable person - hence he was in a good position to judge my research relative to the rest of the department and to future RAE-replacements.
By becoming Head of Department, though, he has to partly take on the concerns of the bureaucratic layers of the system, the bits of the system away from the front line of lab and lecture room - he has the unenviable task of mediating between the two, of being the connection (although our Dean is VERY unusual by continuing to teach a first year core section every year), of in theory at least balancing the department's needs and his staff's needs with the Centre's strategies and competing needs. Not a fun job - one I certainly never want to undertake.
I can't say I like our current HoD or agree with some of his principles - but I respect him as an academic, know him to be fair and rational, and to put care and thought into his decisions, even if I don't always agree with those decisions. He is irritatingly reluctant to make commitments or promises, but if he does make them he follows through and delivers. None of these qualities lead me to think of him as a bureaucrat, yet PP is right - for these three years, at least, he has to become part-bureaucrat, to subscribe to some of the tenets of 'the centre', to shift his thinking and consider departmental colleagues as human resources and means to ends (more than usually, I mean). It's not a fun job.
Thinking this is a useful reminder that I have to stop thinking of him as 'slightly irritating but straight-talking colleague' and turn on my 'bureaucrat-filter' in dealing with him, or at least when dealing with his statements and directives.
Sigh.
Wouldn't it be nice just to go to work and, I don't know, do some science without thinking about people at all???
Bureaucrat administrators care about you *only* in light of their *own* concerns. This leads to two key corollaries:
(1) The only way to make sense of bureaucrat statements and actions is to figure out what their concerns are.
(2) The only way to induce a bureaucrat to say or do what *you* want them to is to lead them to the conviction that your desired statement or action will inure to the benefir of *their* concerns.I always laugh my fucking ass off when people talk about their dealings with bureaucrats using moral language like "doing the right thing" or "doing the decent thing" or "I deserve {X}".
I read this thinking, oh yes, of course, this is all true, but what does it have to do with my post? Then reaslised that PP was saying that my appraiser/Head of Department is a bureaucrat therefore why had I not listened to all their comments through the relevant bureaucrat-filter?
Answer: because he wasn't/isn't really a bureaucrat. Why not? The hierarchy here goes something like Vice Chancellor to Senior Management Team to Faculties (headed by Deans and Deputy Deans who are seconded from academic departments for periods of 3-5 years, not appointed separately - DDs aren't even seconded full time) to Heads of Department, and in the case of our department to a Department Executive Committee consisting of all Professors (in the UK sense) plus the major admin roles (Teaching, Research, Assessment and Admissions (Recruitment)) plus 'staff reps', and then to the rest of the department, faculty and support staff alike. Yes, there's a senate and a council and other stuff that technically checks and balances the VC-SMT, and Committees for just about everything. Anyway. The point is that to me 'bureaucrat' means 'works for centralised service in university' (e.g. Graduate Student Office, Central Admissions Office) or 'person on administrative career trajectory' - some Deans, Directors of various Offices or Centres or Institutes, people Seconded to Central Offices with the intention of moving off the academic career path into the administrative one.
In this university, Head of Department is a three year position, awarded competitively (in theory - in practice, it's advertised and everyone plays musical I'm-Not-Suitable until someone blinks and is inveigeled into applying and, lo and behold, 'selected'), after which the HoD returns to the ranks of the faculty and someone else has a go. Some people will actually want to be HoD as a boost to their application for promotion to Professor (you don't have to be Professor to be Head of Department - it's just that if you aren't, you better be both charismatic and machiavellian, or the Professors will all ignore you or block every reform you propose) or because they want to be a Deputy Dean/Dean/Administrator. These people, you expect to drink the KoolAid, go to the Dark Side and generally become bureaucrats, to be treated with the caveats PP outlines. However, other people do HoD because someone has to - either out of idealism, or a fatalistic acceptance that it's Buggins' turn (typically this someone has a departmental or established chair, so knows it's expected that they'll do a stint on rotation), or just the sense that the alternative of being a member of a department headed by one of the other candidates is actually worse than being HoD themselves.
The current guy is clearly HoD for a mix of the last two reasons, with maybe a small dash of the first - he's a research-active, teaching-active mid-career Chair-holder. When he did my appraisal, he was Director of Research for the Department and had led the submissions for the last RAE, and not yet appointed HoD although he was clearly the probable person - hence he was in a good position to judge my research relative to the rest of the department and to future RAE-replacements.
By becoming Head of Department, though, he has to partly take on the concerns of the bureaucratic layers of the system, the bits of the system away from the front line of lab and lecture room - he has the unenviable task of mediating between the two, of being the connection (although our Dean is VERY unusual by continuing to teach a first year core section every year), of in theory at least balancing the department's needs and his staff's needs with the Centre's strategies and competing needs. Not a fun job - one I certainly never want to undertake.
I can't say I like our current HoD or agree with some of his principles - but I respect him as an academic, know him to be fair and rational, and to put care and thought into his decisions, even if I don't always agree with those decisions. He is irritatingly reluctant to make commitments or promises, but if he does make them he follows through and delivers. None of these qualities lead me to think of him as a bureaucrat, yet PP is right - for these three years, at least, he has to become part-bureaucrat, to subscribe to some of the tenets of 'the centre', to shift his thinking and consider departmental colleagues as human resources and means to ends (more than usually, I mean). It's not a fun job.
Thinking this is a useful reminder that I have to stop thinking of him as 'slightly irritating but straight-talking colleague' and turn on my 'bureaucrat-filter' in dealing with him, or at least when dealing with his statements and directives.
Sigh.
Wouldn't it be nice just to go to work and, I don't know, do some science without thinking about people at all???
Monday, October 19, 2009
comments on comments
Comrade PhysioProf said...
Of course I let my cat outside (she was spayed, the adjectival activity holds no particular interest for her any more). I have a house with a walled yard/small garden, and she has a cat flap so she pops in and out as she likes. She could climb the wall if she really wanted to but she doesn't seem that bothered - there are a few cats around here so most 'beyond the wall' is in another cat's territory anyway. She loves it - lots of interest to a cat in a small but rather overgrown garden, things to climb on and lurk under and watch and stalk, places to lie in the sun and sniff the breeze, actual puddles of dirty rainwater with real flavour, unlike that tap stuff I keep giving her indoors. The only downside is that she likes to bring worms indoors and put them in her toy basket... and when it rains she likes to get pretty wet then come in and roll on my bed or on me to get the wet off rather than shaking herself off.
post-doc said...
If I lose my sense of humour I'm really in trouble! I do fall into traps - and writing out the thoughtline makes the traps visible in a way that they aren't when it's all tied up with emotional responses... Laryngitis is definitely a depressing virus, for me. Which makes a kind of symbolic sense, since it forces me to shut up and stop for a while, to reassess, which is also what depression does.
exactly!
I agree 100% with the sentiment. As a faculty member, it's not that straightforward... I'm not working for myself or in charge of my own destiny, no matter how much it looked like that might be the case when I was a post-doc watching faculty! There's a web of obligations and responsibilities... and of course NO TENURE in the UK, so I do have a real, getting-paid reason to at least produce serious evidence of aiming to conform to "the system"s requirements in any one appraisal period. If hitting KPIs is the measure the system chooses to use when identifying areas or individuals for cut-backs, then it makes sense to try and hit or exceed a few. I'm not saying my job is currently at risk, because it isn't... but tht can change very very fast. Over the last 12 years several units within the university have gone from fully supported to being downsized, merged, reduced to service roles in other programmes - with loss of multiple academic jobs - within 18 months or so. So I need to balance what I want to do with at least looking like I'm working for the 'greater good', whatever that may be...
You let your fucking cat OUTSIDE!?!?
19 October 2009 04:03
Of course I let my cat outside (she was spayed, the adjectival activity holds no particular interest for her any more). I have a house with a walled yard/small garden, and she has a cat flap so she pops in and out as she likes. She could climb the wall if she really wanted to but she doesn't seem that bothered - there are a few cats around here so most 'beyond the wall' is in another cat's territory anyway. She loves it - lots of interest to a cat in a small but rather overgrown garden, things to climb on and lurk under and watch and stalk, places to lie in the sun and sniff the breeze, actual puddles of dirty rainwater with real flavour, unlike that tap stuff I keep giving her indoors. The only downside is that she likes to bring worms indoors and put them in her toy basket... and when it rains she likes to get pretty wet then come in and roll on my bed or on me to get the wet off rather than shaking herself off.
post-doc said...
This may not apply so feel free to disregard. But it sounds like you're kind of
stuck, much like I felt in my post-doc, and it turned out that moving offered an
opportunity for (professional) reinvention that's been very positive for me. My
issue was never that I was incompetent, but that I didn't feel passionate about
any of it. I hated the politics and had zero energy to change the environment. I
had negative feelings about many colleagues and those were returned in kind. But
the new job offered an opportunity to be reliable and active and an important
member of the team...
19 October 2009 11:06
Yeah, I am feeling kind of stuck, that's a good way to put it. But I'm not ready to give up on academia and look for something different yet, because the passion is still there for most aspects of the job, just not all the time. I'm semi-actively job-hunting, but being very picky about where I apply, because I don't want to add extra stresses (such as a very long commute, or moving somewhere where property prices would prevent me from buying a house in a small town on my single salary), because there are still many positives about my department compared with others in the UK, because I like where I live... I want to have a clearish vision of what I want to go towards, and at the moment however I describe it it comes back looking like some form of faculty job. Reading your blog through your transition actually helped me see that I wasn't done with academia yet, which was really useful - thanks!
DrL said...It is interesting to see how your thinking goes about the recent appraisal. I
have been reading about cognitive distortions recently, and how it is warped in
low mood. You are falling into some thinking traps. But given you have a cold it
is only natural. I hope you get some distance and perspective soon, and the
humour at the ending of your post suggests you are on your way.
If I lose my sense of humour I'm really in trouble! I do fall into traps - and writing out the thoughtline makes the traps visible in a way that they aren't when it's all tied up with emotional responses... Laryngitis is definitely a depressing virus, for me. Which makes a kind of symbolic sense, since it forces me to shut up and stop for a while, to reassess, which is also what depression does.
There is nothing as good as getting the crazy thoughts out to evaluate how distorted they are.
exactly!
...So my advice would be to ignore that comment made by your HoD :-) You
know yourself the best and it is you how knows what is best for you.I also agree
with CPP. Do what gives you satisfaction, and if you are productive and enjoying
your job, the university will benefit.
I agree 100% with the sentiment. As a faculty member, it's not that straightforward... I'm not working for myself or in charge of my own destiny, no matter how much it looked like that might be the case when I was a post-doc watching faculty! There's a web of obligations and responsibilities... and of course NO TENURE in the UK, so I do have a real, getting-paid reason to at least produce serious evidence of aiming to conform to "the system"s requirements in any one appraisal period. If hitting KPIs is the measure the system chooses to use when identifying areas or individuals for cut-backs, then it makes sense to try and hit or exceed a few. I'm not saying my job is currently at risk, because it isn't... but tht can change very very fast. Over the last 12 years several units within the university have gone from fully supported to being downsized, merged, reduced to service roles in other programmes - with loss of multiple academic jobs - within 18 months or so. So I need to balance what I want to do with at least looking like I'm working for the 'greater good', whatever that may be...
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
students
sorry for last, very wet, post. Upper lip a little stiffer today... the only way out is through, so I just have to keep going.
In the meantime I have been amusing myself by composing unsendable replies to some of the day's emails:
---------------
Dear ProjectStudent,
It's week 2 of semester. Your email says you haven't signed up for a meeting because you are still at home [several hours drive away]. Isn't there something wrong with this picture? I mean, like, I dunno, but it kind of seems odd that you, like, don't need to be here to go to classes.
your confused supervisor, JaneB
---------------
Dear OtherProjectStudent,
When you emailed explaining that you hadn't signed up for a meeting because my office is inconveniently located relative to your classes and you've had to rush off to work after class, you clearly forgot one simple fact. My office is next door to the lab where your class was held yesterday, and I watched from my open door as you sauntered in with your mates ten minutes before class started. Sorry buster, you're busted, you FORGOT, right??
Your observant supervisor, JaneB
------------------
Dear Visual Identity Team,
OK, you changed the university's 'visual identity' again. As a mere academic with little interest in visual presentation or branding, I don't pretend to understand why it's necessary, or that my opinion (new logo is ugly and new writing paper looks cheap and nasty, but colour scheme is less depressing) counts. You sent us all a colourful, peppy leaflet featuring multicultural photographs and telling us to use the new logos on everything, so I'm trying to add the new logo to the conference presentation I'm giving later this week.
Why is it that, on the staff intranet, when I try to download the new logos from the visual identity section I can only get the 2003 version? Making it harder for me to add the ugly to my presentation is not encouraging me to conform.
And by the way, why pick an 11 point font as the official one?
Yours, curiously, JaneB
---------------------------
Dear Facilities Staff,
I carefully read your memo about all the different facilities available in the different lecture rooms on campus before choosing which rooms to request for my timetabling. However, the reality does not match the memo.
In BigRoomWithBadAcoustic, there is a lovely microphone setup. But it isn't actually WORKING. Possibly, just possibly, because the little electronic box bit that usually sits under the desk and flashes green when it picks up sounds is in three pieces?
NewlyRefittedRoomInConcreteBuilding is listed as a lecture theatre... but there is a large piller in the middle of the second row of seats which blocks the view of at least a third of the rows behind, plus the projector is set up so that only the top third of the image is visible to anyone sitting anywhere other than the first row, and its acoustics sound like you're under water (which goes well with the sauna-like steamy heat). What kinds of lecture are we meant to have in there?
And BigComputingRoom had no computers in it this morning.
Maybe next year I just shouldn't bother reading the memo, eh?
Yours, hoarsely, JaneB
--------------------------
Dear GoldenBoy,
Get lost. Seriously, forget you ever knew the way to my office. If you come in ONE more time and say "oh you've got a lot of books in your office considering you're a scientist" then make some bad joke about how it'll take me years to become a Reader (next academic rank) and in the mean time they're useful room insulation, I will demonstrate that books also make effective missiles. Also, DON'T BORROW MY BOOKS WHEN I'M NOT ACTUALLY IN THE OFFICE AND LEND THEM TO YOUR GIRLFRIEND WHO LIVES AT THE OTHER END OF THE COUNTRY.
Thank you,
Disgruntled MudPieGirl
--------------------------
Dear SeniorStudent,
Thank you for not laughing too much when I stuck my thumb in my own eye by accident whilst gesturing dramatically to accompany my 'I've got too much to do' wails and flipped out my contact lens, and thank you VERY much for borrowing a pair of tweezers from DrN so I could fish said lens out of the gap in my computer keyboard, without telling DrN what they were for.
Happy-To-Be-Able-To-See-The-Screen-Again supervisor
In the meantime I have been amusing myself by composing unsendable replies to some of the day's emails:
---------------
Dear ProjectStudent,
It's week 2 of semester. Your email says you haven't signed up for a meeting because you are still at home [several hours drive away]. Isn't there something wrong with this picture? I mean, like, I dunno, but it kind of seems odd that you, like, don't need to be here to go to classes.
your confused supervisor, JaneB
---------------
Dear OtherProjectStudent,
When you emailed explaining that you hadn't signed up for a meeting because my office is inconveniently located relative to your classes and you've had to rush off to work after class, you clearly forgot one simple fact. My office is next door to the lab where your class was held yesterday, and I watched from my open door as you sauntered in with your mates ten minutes before class started. Sorry buster, you're busted, you FORGOT, right??
Your observant supervisor, JaneB
------------------
Dear Visual Identity Team,
OK, you changed the university's 'visual identity' again. As a mere academic with little interest in visual presentation or branding, I don't pretend to understand why it's necessary, or that my opinion (new logo is ugly and new writing paper looks cheap and nasty, but colour scheme is less depressing) counts. You sent us all a colourful, peppy leaflet featuring multicultural photographs and telling us to use the new logos on everything, so I'm trying to add the new logo to the conference presentation I'm giving later this week.
Why is it that, on the staff intranet, when I try to download the new logos from the visual identity section I can only get the 2003 version? Making it harder for me to add the ugly to my presentation is not encouraging me to conform.
And by the way, why pick an 11 point font as the official one?
Yours, curiously, JaneB
---------------------------
Dear Facilities Staff,
I carefully read your memo about all the different facilities available in the different lecture rooms on campus before choosing which rooms to request for my timetabling. However, the reality does not match the memo.
In BigRoomWithBadAcoustic, there is a lovely microphone setup. But it isn't actually WORKING. Possibly, just possibly, because the little electronic box bit that usually sits under the desk and flashes green when it picks up sounds is in three pieces?
NewlyRefittedRoomInConcreteBuilding is listed as a lecture theatre... but there is a large piller in the middle of the second row of seats which blocks the view of at least a third of the rows behind, plus the projector is set up so that only the top third of the image is visible to anyone sitting anywhere other than the first row, and its acoustics sound like you're under water (which goes well with the sauna-like steamy heat). What kinds of lecture are we meant to have in there?
And BigComputingRoom had no computers in it this morning.
Maybe next year I just shouldn't bother reading the memo, eh?
Yours, hoarsely, JaneB
--------------------------
Dear GoldenBoy,
Get lost. Seriously, forget you ever knew the way to my office. If you come in ONE more time and say "oh you've got a lot of books in your office considering you're a scientist" then make some bad joke about how it'll take me years to become a Reader (next academic rank) and in the mean time they're useful room insulation, I will demonstrate that books also make effective missiles. Also, DON'T BORROW MY BOOKS WHEN I'M NOT ACTUALLY IN THE OFFICE AND LEND THEM TO YOUR GIRLFRIEND WHO LIVES AT THE OTHER END OF THE COUNTRY.
Thank you,
Disgruntled MudPieGirl
--------------------------
Dear SeniorStudent,
Thank you for not laughing too much when I stuck my thumb in my own eye by accident whilst gesturing dramatically to accompany my 'I've got too much to do' wails and flipped out my contact lens, and thank you VERY much for borrowing a pair of tweezers from DrN so I could fish said lens out of the gap in my computer keyboard, without telling DrN what they were for.
Happy-To-Be-Able-To-See-The-Screen-Again supervisor
Sunday, October 04, 2009
random idiocies that need blogging about
WARNING: this post is spleenetic. It is about some of the dumb things that dumb people have done that are making a difficult start of term (you're right, Marmoset and PropterDoc, the start of the year is always a challenge, and this is a tough one) more difficult, and which are annoying me.
First, NaiveColleagueRunningCoreModule. NaiveColleague, it's not cute that your oh so sexy and high-powered research area means that you haven't been near a lab for years and therefore that you can claim total ignorance of most of the basic material to be covered in this module... and therefore dump teaching it all onto me. It just... isn't. I know you were put in charge because you need to build up your teaching portfolio away from the small bits of Oh-so-sexy-research-related teaching that you (very successfully) have delivered to upper level undergrads, we all do. But that's no excuse for not taking on some of the grunt work - I mean, surely Machines-That-Go-Ping and Expensive-Computers-With-GoFaster-Chips also require some basic grasp of statistics? You could at least have taken on that bit of the teaching (and the grading).
Given that NaiveColleague is basically just running the course, not teaching most of it, he could have done the paperwork right. This is a core module for continuing students. Therefore it is very very easy to look at the previous year's records, find the number of students registered for the degrees for which this module is core, and use that number when booking rooms and graduate teaching assistants. For practical work, one room has a maximum capacity of 24 students (that IS a max, as it assumes that everything is working and 100% available, usually at least one unit is broken or we're waiting for more consumables or not available for a group for some other reason). We have between 70 and 80 students on the module. So booking the 24 student room just twice was not helpful. Asking if I couldn't let the rest of the students 'just stand around and watch' or 'work more quickly and use the session in shifts' (presumably he's never encountered the issue of needing to clean everything between users or protocols which take a fixed amount of time due to the underlying (bio)chemistry) was NOT exactly a useful solution...
I feel guilty 'cos I should've checked this ahead of time. But... I assumed that the module leader was, well, leading, and left it to him. I thought, how hard is it to ask how many students will take this core course next year and fill out the room request list accordingly? Guilty not about HIM, but about the students who don't yet have a timetable and want to fix their work shifts or child care, about putting extra work onto the departmental timetable coordinator and the central timetabling team - and also rather cross because it's about 99% sure that the only way out of this will be for me to teach the overflow groups on one of my 'non-teaching' days... (as part of my 80% contract and "stress management plan" agreement, I am supposed to only have timetabled classes on three days of the week, giving me one day 'off' and one day for research/research students on which I can rest my voice, work from home if I've having a bad patch, and generally this arrangement is meant to help me balance my duties without straining my voice unduly. It's a great plan... but rarely actually works out).
Then there's the second year option. As a result of rearrangements 'agreed' by the teaching team (we gave our opinions then a decision was made by a sub-group. The decision does not reflect my views, but, well, OK, life in a stupid poxy team teaching environment can be like that), I am attempting to cut two-thirds of the material out of the stuff I taught at this level last yeaar. It's not as simple as just picking out one third of the classes, though - first, the material I taught last year covered both my areas of expertise and was fully integrated, but now one of those areas will be taught in a different module by DrN next semester, so those strands must be largely unwound. Second, the stuff I taught last year (and for several years before) was linked to stuff taught by DrS, who retired last year. And oh, how shocking if a BeachStudies department didn't cover topic S! But not to worry, JaneB can include that material with her stuff. I do mud-pies... DrS does something like 'patterns on rocks'. Mud can make patterns on rocks. Some rocks were once mud. Some rocks, very rarely, look like mud pies and even more rarely are fossilised mud pies. His rocks often occur near the bits of beach where I make mudpies. But that doesn't mean I can/want to teach about patterns on rocks! I have also in the past briefly covered sand castles, fine sediments on beaches, the burial of male parental units in fine sediments and sand or mud racing cars/boats in my teaching. Of course, people who teach later courses which cover sand castles or buried parents or fine sediment are adamant that I should continue to cover the basic intro stuff for their needs. In addition, this course follows on from a first year pre-requisite course. Which changes THIS year so that NEXT year's second years will not have the same grounding so any second year teaching I prepare THIS year will have to be rewritten anyway for next year's group. So why couldn't we leave the second year as it was for one more year???
Changing this first year course is also a nightmare. But one that starts in early November. So I will rant about it later.
I am very very tired and tomorrow I have mountains of work to do because today I did very little (apart from meet with TalkyStudent (who's having trouble getting time off from her full-time job so I agreed to meet her on a weekend) and write a short report for DrN on her samples which she will not like one little bit). So I shall stop here. There WILL be more... I'm not sure if that's a threat or a promise though.
First, NaiveColleagueRunningCoreModule. NaiveColleague, it's not cute that your oh so sexy and high-powered research area means that you haven't been near a lab for years and therefore that you can claim total ignorance of most of the basic material to be covered in this module... and therefore dump teaching it all onto me. It just... isn't. I know you were put in charge because you need to build up your teaching portfolio away from the small bits of Oh-so-sexy-research-related teaching that you (very successfully) have delivered to upper level undergrads, we all do. But that's no excuse for not taking on some of the grunt work - I mean, surely Machines-That-Go-Ping and Expensive-Computers-With-GoFaster-Chips also require some basic grasp of statistics? You could at least have taken on that bit of the teaching (and the grading).
Given that NaiveColleague is basically just running the course, not teaching most of it, he could have done the paperwork right. This is a core module for continuing students. Therefore it is very very easy to look at the previous year's records, find the number of students registered for the degrees for which this module is core, and use that number when booking rooms and graduate teaching assistants. For practical work, one room has a maximum capacity of 24 students (that IS a max, as it assumes that everything is working and 100% available, usually at least one unit is broken or we're waiting for more consumables or not available for a group for some other reason). We have between 70 and 80 students on the module. So booking the 24 student room just twice was not helpful. Asking if I couldn't let the rest of the students 'just stand around and watch' or 'work more quickly and use the session in shifts' (presumably he's never encountered the issue of needing to clean everything between users or protocols which take a fixed amount of time due to the underlying (bio)chemistry) was NOT exactly a useful solution...
I feel guilty 'cos I should've checked this ahead of time. But... I assumed that the module leader was, well, leading, and left it to him. I thought, how hard is it to ask how many students will take this core course next year and fill out the room request list accordingly? Guilty not about HIM, but about the students who don't yet have a timetable and want to fix their work shifts or child care, about putting extra work onto the departmental timetable coordinator and the central timetabling team - and also rather cross because it's about 99% sure that the only way out of this will be for me to teach the overflow groups on one of my 'non-teaching' days... (as part of my 80% contract and "stress management plan" agreement, I am supposed to only have timetabled classes on three days of the week, giving me one day 'off' and one day for research/research students on which I can rest my voice, work from home if I've having a bad patch, and generally this arrangement is meant to help me balance my duties without straining my voice unduly. It's a great plan... but rarely actually works out).
Then there's the second year option. As a result of rearrangements 'agreed' by the teaching team (we gave our opinions then a decision was made by a sub-group. The decision does not reflect my views, but, well, OK, life in a stupid poxy team teaching environment can be like that), I am attempting to cut two-thirds of the material out of the stuff I taught at this level last yeaar. It's not as simple as just picking out one third of the classes, though - first, the material I taught last year covered both my areas of expertise and was fully integrated, but now one of those areas will be taught in a different module by DrN next semester, so those strands must be largely unwound. Second, the stuff I taught last year (and for several years before) was linked to stuff taught by DrS, who retired last year. And oh, how shocking if a BeachStudies department didn't cover topic S! But not to worry, JaneB can include that material with her stuff. I do mud-pies... DrS does something like 'patterns on rocks'. Mud can make patterns on rocks. Some rocks were once mud. Some rocks, very rarely, look like mud pies and even more rarely are fossilised mud pies. His rocks often occur near the bits of beach where I make mudpies. But that doesn't mean I can/want to teach about patterns on rocks! I have also in the past briefly covered sand castles, fine sediments on beaches, the burial of male parental units in fine sediments and sand or mud racing cars/boats in my teaching. Of course, people who teach later courses which cover sand castles or buried parents or fine sediment are adamant that I should continue to cover the basic intro stuff for their needs. In addition, this course follows on from a first year pre-requisite course. Which changes THIS year so that NEXT year's second years will not have the same grounding so any second year teaching I prepare THIS year will have to be rewritten anyway for next year's group. So why couldn't we leave the second year as it was for one more year???
Changing this first year course is also a nightmare. But one that starts in early November. So I will rant about it later.
I am very very tired and tomorrow I have mountains of work to do because today I did very little (apart from meet with TalkyStudent (who's having trouble getting time off from her full-time job so I agreed to meet her on a weekend) and write a short report for DrN on her samples which she will not like one little bit). So I shall stop here. There WILL be more... I'm not sure if that's a threat or a promise though.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
