Of course, the first week swiftly reminded me of some home truths. The first was that while I may have balanced a 3:2 workload, I did that two years ago, and had spent the intervening time glued to my laptop in pursuit of a completed PhD thesis. I had completely forgotten the difference between being an isolated researcher and being part of a community, in the widest sense of the word, with all the additional human interaction that goes along with it. Possibly the most obvious instance of this was when two of the dissertation students I am supervising this year came to talk to me about their proposed projects on Thursday afternoon, before a deadline to submit chapter titles and a bibliography on Friday.
That's a perfectly reasonable thing to do – but in both cases, those meetings had been arranged on Thursday morning. I became used to arranging meetings with my supervisor at least a week in advance, since I was living off-campus for my last two PhD years, so setting up meetings only a couple of hours in advance felt like going at break-neck speed.
A second realisation was that while I may have balanced a full time teaching load, I had been mercifully spared from the deluge of administrative emails that come into the inbox of a fully functioning academic.
I'm still in the process of learning how to filter out things that aren't relevant to me, like details of the MA dissertation marking procedure, and how to read standard documents that get circulated every year that I do need to know about, like the schedule for setting undergraduate assessments. A lot of the information is very helpful, but it can get a bit overwhelming, not to mention dangerously tempting – I had to stop myself signing up for absolutely every workshop that the e-Learning team is running this term, just because while learning about new tools is helpful, becoming swamped in workshops isn't
That's a perfectly reasonable thing to do – but in both cases, those meetings had been arranged on Thursday morning. I became used to arranging meetings with my supervisor at least a week in advance, since I was living off-campus for my last two PhD years, so setting up meetings only a couple of hours in advance felt like going at break-neck speed.
A second realisation was that while I may have balanced a full time teaching load, I had been mercifully spared from the deluge of administrative emails that come into the inbox of a fully functioning academic.
I'm still in the process of learning how to filter out things that aren't relevant to me, like details of the MA dissertation marking procedure, and how to read standard documents that get circulated every year that I do need to know about, like the schedule for setting undergraduate assessments. A lot of the information is very helpful, but it can get a bit overwhelming, not to mention dangerously tempting – I had to stop myself signing up for absolutely every workshop that the e-Learning team is running this term, just because while learning about new tools is helpful, becoming swamped in workshops isn't
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