One of the duties of a full time member of staff that is completely new to me is being present at an open day! Of course you can’t work at a university without seeing the groups of A level students being herded round by student representatives, parents hovering in corridors trying to find out about the prospects for their offspring should he or she choose your university, when really, all the teenager is interested in is how many bars are walkable from the dorm! (more…)
Archive for January, 2008
Open Days…oh joy!
Friday, January 25th, 2008Lecturing
Sunday, January 20th, 2008Lectures given in this academic year: 20 so far
Times I’ve been unnerved by the students’ response: 20, I’m afraid!
As I have been employed as a ‘lecturer’ it is a pretty good assumption that lecturing will form a central part of my job. I expected this and despite having little experience previously I plunged into the world of the 50 minute undergraduate lecture with relative ease. From a teaching point of view they can take a while to prepare and are especially challenging if on a subject away from one’s specialism, but it’s from the students’ perspective that I find lectures rather…well, difficult really! (more…)
Interviews
Friday, January 11th, 2008Thank goodness I don’t have to go to a job interview for a while! I had rather too many of them while searching for this job and they can be an exhausting and dispiriting experience, although on a more positive note they can also be great ways to learn about yourself and your skills. I expect the next time I am involved in interviewing it will be on the other side of the fence, as an interrogator not victim. But as interviews and interviewing is in the news at the moment I thought I’d have a think about the experience. (more…)
Teaching Postgraduates
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008Happy New Year! Like many of us in the academic profession (well, probably most professions actually) the holiday period has resulted in a rather chaotic few days answering emails and picking up the threads of our work. So a short but challenging blog entry for you this week. I have just read an article on Chronicle, the American Higher Education journal, by an anonymous, experienced professor expressing her disquiet at having to teach postgraduates (or as Americans call them ‘graduates’). (more…)
