Well, this is the end of the second teaching term in my new job and I suppose it’s a good time to take stock of how I have been getting on and how I have developed my career over the last six months or so. The first thing to say, which I am sure all teachers and lecturers sympathise with but few others do, is how knackered I am! It’s not a contradiction that I love my job and yet still am looking forward to a little rest over the holiday.
I feel that my teaching has really developed this term because of the sheer weight of lecturing and seminar leading, not to mention the one-to-one tutorials that I have been doing. Coming to a new institution with a different sort of cohort to my old one has really encouraged me to develop new teaching techniques in order to keep the students interested. I now have the confidence to not over-prepare too: previously I fell into the classic inexperienced lecturers’ trap of spending days writing lectures! When you’re a full time staff member you soon get out of that habit!
I must admit, like many lecturers, I have found it really difficult to keep up with my research during term time. I am trying not to ‘beat myself up’ too much about this, after all, it’s my first year in a new job; it’s bound to take a while to adjust. And I have given a research paper and prepared several conference proposals and visited a research library on a couple of occasions this term, so all is not lost. And boy, am I looking forward to the summer when I can really get my teeth into projects that have been on the back burner throughout my time on temporary contracts.
The biggest change for me though has been acquiring the sort of skills that make me a really useful member of a department: running my own unit, helping out with open days and fairs, attending staff meetings and trying to work out how the university is run, keeping good records and not getting lost under a sea of paperwork. Sadly, those joys are lost to many junior scholars because as temporary or part-time lecturers, they are excluded from these processes. It makes you realise how much is involved in the job, and hopefully like me, you’ll find that you enjoy every minute of it!
