This week I have a minor victory to celebrate among all the news of economic doom and gloom, I am officially no longer in my probationary period. I had a long (nearly two-and-a-half-hours long) meeting with my head of department who tells me that all is going well and I have passed through my probationary period with flying colours. Thank goodness for that! But the question now pops in to my head: well OK then, but what next?
Archive for October, 2008
It’s official, I’m no longer a probationer!
Monday, October 27th, 2008A Day in the Life…
Monday, October 20th, 2008I thought it might be useful for those considering a career in academia but not actually involved in it yet to see what I do on an average working day. Then they can decide whether the working lifestyle appeals or not. Of course there is no such thing as the ‘average working day’ in academic life; every day is different. I do two sorts of work: those days I go into university and those days I work from home. So this is what a day in my life looks like….
Interview advice…an alternative
Monday, October 13th, 2008It’s funny how being in a permanent job makes it easy to get out of the ‘jobseeking’ loop. Of course I keep myself abreast of developments in my field and also the latest careers advice because I also write career development articles on this site. But that never-ending cycle of thinking about applications, interviews and potential career moves has, for the time being at least, faded from my life. So I am very excited to get the chance to offer you some interview thoughts straight from the horse’s mouth.
Seminars and tutorials: getting students talking!
Monday, October 6th, 2008Last week was our first full teaching week at MMU and mostly involved sorting out registers and finding rooms to be double booked. Chaos reigns everywhere until the second week when, in theory, all such problems have been ironed out. Hmmm, we’ll see! But if all goes to plan this week I will be doing some proper work with my students, not simply sorting out admin issues. So my attention has turned to small group work and how to encourage students to participate as much as possible: not easy when they would much rather shrink into the background and be talked to for an hour!
