Our department has three photocopiers. All three are failing to handle duplex copying at the moment. I’ve just spent 45 minutes pulling out mishandled paper and have given up. So, the library will have to wait for those overdue books until someone sorts out our equipment.
Illness and academia Wednesday, Nov 8 2006
academia 10:50 am
My lovely viral adventure last week has got me thinking about how illness affects academic work. It seems to me that, as a university lecturer, I simply can’t afford to be sick, because my workload is tied to me personally and almost all of it cannot be taken over by other people. If I look at the tasks that were delayed and the deadlines that became much more tight because I was lost five days to illness, there are few things I can identify that someone else could have helped with:
- Writing and revising the materials for two subjects I teach: Even if someone else had the time and expertise to work on these subjects, I am the one who will end up teaching them next year, and therefore I want to set the readings, plan the assignments and organise the structure of the learning materials. So, these had to sit there until I felt better and could finish them off (which left me with one working day between recovery and the deadline).
- Providing feedback to research students on their draft theses: I have been working with these students since January, I know the projects, I know the students, and I know what has been discussed previously in terms of how to present the thesis. Somebody else might have been able to give general feedback on the writing style and structure, but I don’t know that anyone could have brought as much relevant background knowledge to reading the drafts as me.
- Writing referee’s reports for students who are applying to postgraduate courses: The students chose me for a reason – because I have had extensive contact with them and can provide an informed (and, presumably, positive) opinion of their attributes. They might be able to arrange somebody else, but they selected me as the most appropriate person to approach. Moreover, because I would only agree to give references to students who I felt I could say something positive about, I want to provide students’ with the best opportunity to be considered for further study based on their performance.
- Filling out administrative documentation for my performance evaluation: The paperwork I need to generate at the moment relates directly to justifying my own contribution, so I think I am the best-informed person to do this task.
- Conducting research and writing papers: OK, I can send some things out to research assistants, but beyond that, this is my work.
One blessing is that I do not have any classes to teach at the moment. However, even if I did have classes, in many cases they would not be something that somebody else could cover. I know the activities I will use in class and what the primary learning goals are, but I don’t write complete, detailed directions for classes that I am going to teach myself.
Even if I did have a task that someone else would be capable of covering, who would be able to do it? Everyone has their own full teaching load plus research and administration to deal with, so I’d be reluctant to try to hand work off to someone else. The people who would help me out would be the ones who are most overloaded because they possess the fatal flaw of willingness to help out.
So, I (and all of my colleagues) can take comfort in the knowledge that we are irreplaceable.
Thank you Wednesday, Nov 8 2006
teaching 9:33 am
I have had an all-too-infrequent moment of acknowledgment from one of my students. This student is finishing her undergraduate degree this year and leaving to study medicine in another state. She has been one of the most pleasant students I have ever had to teach – smart, dedicated, engaged with the material, and nice – so when I needed to employ a research assistant this year she was the obvious choice.
This week, she has gone around the department and saif her goodbyes and given gifts to those who helped her along the way. I received a very spiffy Italian tie and a card that contained a lovely personal message. It’s incredibly rewarding to have a student give a genuine and meaningful acknowledgment that I have had an impact on their life. A lot of my colleagues have been talking about the lack of gratitude or even recognition of the assistance we provide – it seems that a “thank you” reply after we answer their questions is becoming an endangered species.
So, to all of those students who take the time to let their teachers know that their efforts are noticed and appreciated, I want to thank you as well.
Time to stablilise Monday, Nov 6 2006
So I’ve spent the last week catching up on the week before, and I think I am almost on track. Some of my research students will be submitting theses this week, which means I have fewer drafts to read and last-minute advice to dispense. It’s not as though I am not incredibly busy now, but I should at least have some autonomy in allocating my time, where the past week has been entirely driven by the arrival of deadlines.
To compensate, I am spending the morning developing an idea for a new subject I want to teach next year. We instituted the concept of a readings subject a while back that allowed staff to offer a semester of readings on a topic of their own choosing. And, as a reward for being the one who put forward the idea of this subject, I have been made responsible for organising it. Unfortunately, because the practical implementation does not match the vision of the subject, nobody has offered a topic to date (although I have one other expression of interest for next year). Since I do not get to spend more than a week or two in any given subject on my main research area, I am going to help myself out by volunteering to teach the subject. This means I can spend the morning mulling over the literature in my own area and pick out the readings I want to introduce to students. All the other stuff can wait until this afternoon.
Teaching Carnival XV Friday, Nov 3 2006
teaching 1:15 pm
New Kid on the Hallway is hosting Teaching Carnival #15. I suspect I’m not going to get near this at the moment because there is too much, you know, teaching and stuff happening around here right now, but from a quick scan I can see oodles of things that resonate with me.
Friday fun time Friday, Nov 3 2006
random 1:12 pm
We need to play this game in our department – right now. Unfortunately, we’re lacking a coffee machine and an elevator.
Even I don’t know where I am Saturday, Oct 28 2006
random 10:45 am
The last two weeks have been a blur. Reasons why I’ve been unable to blog (or work effectively) include:
- Losing a weekend to drinking too many margaritas with friends, sleeping it off, then going back for more the next day.
- Driving 2000km in three days, all to sit an admissions test for something I’ve decided don’t want to do any more.
- Having a rather unpleasant virus make its way through my family so that, after spending a few days nursing kids back to health, I ended up flat on my back as well.
Anyway, I’ve managed to get out of bed and stay out of it for a few hours now. Hopefully I’m getting back on track.
Round and round and round we go Friday, Oct 13 2006
research 12:15 pm
Queen of West Procrastination is at the opposite end of the same gut-wrenching process I just completed. Mind you, I’m already circling around for another pass – I am approaching the end of “early career researcher” eligibility and so I have the extra pressure of not wanting to miss the opportunity to be considered in that group. Not that I am sure there is any advantage in it – it’s a subset of the applicant pool competing for a subset of the funding pool, so it all depends on the relative size of those two things.
The question I keep returning to is how many papers I could manage to write in the time it will take to organise an application. My teaching and administrative loads are pretty much fixed, so an taking on a funding application means diverting time away from another research activity, family time, recreation, or sleep. And I like all of those things.
Episode II: Revenge of the Spam Thursday, Oct 12 2006
tech 9:58 am
After yesterday’s post, it seems the Gods of Spam are intent on hurting me. I am being bombarded with messages that are getting past the filter this morning. Add to that the fact that the messages I tried to release from quarantine have not arrived and I’m on my way to Bizarro World.
“I think I can, I think I can” Thursday, Oct 12 2006
academia 9:54 am
As a companion to the name I have chosen for this blog, I am going to refer to the institution I inhabit as “The Little University That Could” – TLU for short. The name comes not because it is especially small in terms of student numbers, but because of its place in relation to the Australian University hierarchy.
In Australia, there are reasonably distinct classes of universities – in fact, in recent years there have been some suggestions that these classes should be made explicit by assigning universities to specific roles (e.g., teaching-only) or groupings. The story starts with the “sandstones”, universities that were formed around the beginning of the 20th century. This group consists of not more than one or two in each capital city. There are then institutions that have been around for a reasonable period (four or more decades as a university), often being converted from a technology institute. Again, most of these are based in the heart of the capital cities.
Then there are the “young” universities. These are institutions that were established in recent decades, usually with the aim of improving access to university education. Many of these have been formed by converting one or more Colleges of Advanced Education, teachers’ colleges, or other tertiary education services into a university. Generally, they are located in the outer suburbs of the capital cities or in regional centres.
TLU falls into this latter group. It is a university that is based outside the capital cities in one of the Eastern states of Australia. As a young university that has grown out of non-university heritage, it tends not to attract large amounts of research funding or the cream of the student crop. In my view it also struggles to find a meaningful identity – it wants to be a university but does not quite know how to manage it. Part of this probably stems from the fact that at least some of those who are in senior positions have been here since before it was a university and may not have experience of how other universities operate. Part of it is a result of a history, geography, and economics. But it all means that things never seem to run quite smoothly.
What this place does well is serve its geographical region. Students who might never have gone to university before, because it would have involved moving from a small town to the middle of a major city, are now getting a chance to earn a degree. We serve our community quite well.
So, that is a brief introduction to where I work. I expect I will be saying a lot more about it on this blog as times marches on.
Could Be Worse 