Day 44 - Out of control

Last week, I was driving back from a well known flat-pack furniture score, with a bookcase that was threatening to flatten me every time I went around a corner. It was raining hard, and I was driving around a roundabout. Suddenly, I felt the wheels slide under me and I was beginning to turn in directions I did not want to turn. I was skidding. Fortunately, I remembered what to do, and I seemed to do the right thing, regained control, and before I really thought too much, I was back on the right road, facing the correct direction, and driving home.

That is one of the best ways I have for describing how going back to work after a long(ish) period away feels like. I feel like things have the potential for completely sliding out of control, and therefore I throw myself into intense organising activity - drawing up class lists, trying to predict how some things may pan out or not - as if this frantic activity will stave off chaos.

And I have no idea if it actually does any good or just makes me feel better.

Today, I have been worrying about student numbers, replying to emails, and generally feeling important (although I'm quite aware I'm not). And I've been having that feeling that the wheels are shifting. I'm sure it's an illusion and things aren't that bad, but it feels difficult to adapt. Like when you get to the end of one of those moving walkways.

I think that this might be why I prefer not to take too many holidays, and prefer to 'keep my hand in', doing a bit of work throughout the summer. I find it difficult to adapt when I'm back at work, dealing with the quotidian outbreaks of chaos.

Lesson learned from this year is to give myself more time to get back into the swing of things. I like Lauren's suggestion of leaving July as leave time, with June dedicated to winding things up for the academic year, and August devoted to preparing the new one.

After all, most of these tasks are not huge surprises - they happen every year - so why don't I plan with that in mind?

Day 37 - Nearing the end

As I approach the end of my period of annual leave, I have to stop and look at what I've accomplished.
Have I written my book proposal? No.
Have I finished the open score ensemble piece? No.
Have I finished the new piece of virtual percussion and variable ensemble? No.
I have moved flat.

And I'm not feeling guilty. I thought I would.
I had such high hopes for this summer, and most of it has been taken up with moving and entertaining family and friends.
But that's what the summer is for. That's why we have annual leave.

Day 34 (revisited) - There must be a better way

I headed back to work today for the first time after two weeks of leave.
Two weeks of moving furniture, building furniture, cleaning the old flat.
Two weeks of my parents' company.
Two weeks of thinking about music without having to do anything about it.
Two blissful weeks of (mostly) ignoring my email.

Halfway through the afternoon, something struck me as I was answering an email query: this feels like hard work. During my normal term-time schedule, I will probably answer quite a few email queries every day. Some of them will be quite mundane. Quite a lot of them will involve me looking up a piece of information that my correspondent could find themselves if they knew where to look. There are also quite a few bits of paperwork to address, and to file where no-one will ever look at them. There will be quite a few emails I send to colleagues that will be skim-read and then forgotten.

I want to come back to email another day, but for now at least, I'm aware of this like a warning alarm.
There must be a better way.

Day 41 - Getting back on the horse

Having been interrupted by the interruption of my internet connection last week, I will attempt to return to something like a normal schedule of posting. I also intend to 'make good' on my missed posts as well, posting maybe two a day until I'm up to date.
We'll see how I get on with that.

Today was not just my day to start writing, it was also one of the islands of work days around which I have booked my annual leave this summer. We had an exam board and I had arranged a meeting to discuss criteria (more on criteria tomorrow!).
Going back to work for just a day does not fill me with enthusiasm for going back to work at all, and I will (on Thursday) be back at work, just about until Christmas. I feel like I'm going to have to make some real changes to my working life and my life life in order to make getting up in the morning not just something that has to be done, but something I want to do.

I don't quite know what those changes are yet, and I'm expecting not to really know for a while. I think that it's going to be trial and error, and I think that there are going to be times where I struggle. And I think that this is ok. We don't solve problems like this over night, whether these problems are in academia or in the privacy of our own homes.
I think that sometimes, we can kid ourselves into thinking that, as academics, we should be able to fix entire modules, administrative problems, study skills programmes, etc. in the space of one summer, and then feel alternately intimidated or like a failure when that doesn't happen. Most of us are making this up as we go along - based on experience and on our reading and discussion, sure, but it's still largely extemporised based on what gets thrown at us on a daily basis. We work our way through on the basis of advice from colleagues, advice from students (which is sometimes the best and most perceptive advice and feedback going: please listen to what your students are saying [and not just the superficial message - listen to what they mean]), empirical observation, self reflection, etc. and, generally speaking, things get better.

There is one module that I have been teaching for six years, and I have grown to hate it. The logistics of the module have been complex, and students have been frustrated by it, and frustrated by my inability to bring order to it. This year, I taught the whole thing myself. It was time-consuming (I wrote a lot of new material) and a little stressful, but I enjoyed teaching it so much. And the students loved it (at least they said they did) too. I followed the small voice I'd had in the back of my head from almost the very start of the module: the small voice that I'd ignored year after year, but the small voice that knew what it was talking about.

As I contemplate the beginning of a new term, I'm thinking about this cyclical pattern of the years. Is it a Sisyphean treadmill, or a process of perpetual renewal, and what can we do to transform it from the former into the latter?

Day 17 - What I Did On My Holiday

When I was 19, I wanted to be a composer. From a series of childhood ideas (author, pianist, librarian, archaeologist), this one had survived.
I was at the end of the first year of undergraduate study, and had a good idea about what sort of music I wanted to spend my life writing.
I had just finished a string quartet. It was 20 minutes long, written for four performers with click-tracks, each playing part of a texture which expanded out from a central Bb to the extremes of their registers, and rhythmically derived from six possible metrical layers, each related in tempo 2:3 (hence the click tracks). Single-(bloody)-minded, and destined to be unpopular.

I looked at this piece, and I knew that it was probably never going to be considered as entertaining or get me a gig as a film composer. And I didn't care. This was the kind of music I wanted to write for the rest of my life.

Crap.

So what kind of career could I pursue? I had been reading plenty of interviews with composers that year, and it had taught me one thing about contemporary composition: if you wanted to write unpopular bloody-minded music, one of the safest career choices is academia. And so, that was that.

I did not get into teaching because I loved teaching. I got into teaching because I wanted to write music without worrying about what people thought of it. Luckily, I love teaching and I seem to have a knack for it, and it has taken over my life in ways that I never thought possible. My research now grows out of my teaching, and my research informs my teaching.

So why am I telling this story today?
I'm spending this holiday (apart from moving flat) writing music, and writing a book proposal. In short, I am carrying out the research part of my job. I am doing this because I love it. That is the true reason underneath it all.
I am lucky enough to have a job that I love, that gives me a real sense of fulfillment every day (well... nearly every day), and a job in which, in theory at least, I should be able to write music and teach alongside each other.
Except, that I am not the only person who gets to choose how I spend my time.
I have a line manager, who is supposed to allocate how my work load is divided, and he approves (or not) research time. At present, we are being told that unfunded research will not be approved, and that we have to carry it out in our own time. While this is completely against the current University strategy, I understand why he is saying it, and it's due to a stupid bureaucratic situation regarding research time that the School has got itself in, that is too stupid and boring to talk about.
But it means that I don't really have the allocation of time to find funding for the projects that I want to do.

So how do you follow your own ideas about research when your Institution (or at least the manifestations of the Institution's authority) has other ideas?

The only answer I have to give, is that you invest your own time (and money if necessary) to get projects off the ground. Nobody is going to drop some money in your lap and tell you to get on with it; you're going to have to fight for the right to write (or play, or whatever).
If you can demonstrate that you've got a project that will lead to an output of international standing, or that you have got funding that will make it happen, or whatever criteria will impress within your field, then, generally speaking, unless they are complete douche-canoes, they will get right on board and claim that they have been in your corner all the time.
This is annoying, and will make you want to get violent (Pro tip: Get a voodoo doll. It's more fun).
But you will have got where you wanted to get.

At the end of the day, you're doing this because you love it and you believe in it.
What is pretty awesome about academia, is that if you can demonstrate that people are willing to invest in your idea, you will get paid to do it.

Day 16 - Loving summer

'So are you on holiday all summer?'
I get asked that when people know that I'm a lecturer.
I explain that although undergraduate teaching stops, there is plenty to be getting on with:

• You have to organise work for the external examiners to scrutinise, and then go through the exam boards;
  There's a review process of what you've just taught to grapple with; 
• There's a load of paperwork to catch up with;
• Do you remember all of those emails that you were going to reply to when you had time? Now is the time;
• Events for next academic year need to be planned;
• You have to plan your teaching for next academic year.

There is an idea that academics have no time for research during the teaching term, and then concentrate on it over the summer. To be honest, although I do have more time over the summer, I don't have enough to comprehensively devote myself to research. If I don't try to continually carry out research during teaching term, keeping up momentum during the summer is not a given.

In my experience, no-one really tells you this, and my first summer as an academic was quite a lonely experience as I attempted to work out what I was supposed to be doing. I haven't always made best use of my summers, but I'm getting there.

I suppose I'd offer a few nuggets of advice to new lecturers about the summer:

• Plan what you want to accomplish, and set yourself targets;
• Don't leave jobs like module reports or resit marking to the last minute. The fact you have more time means that the management of this time is critical;
• Take your holiday, and be prepared to really take your holiday - stop emailing, and don't get sucked into 'just popping into the office' because that will turn into hours;
• Find yourself a mentor who has been teaching for a while and ask them about how they organise their summer.

Actually, I'm a big fan of mentors over all. A good mentor is incredibly valuable.

Lunchtime marked the beginning of my actual holiday for this year, although I am not going to take my own advice. There are a few things that I want to sort out before I can properly shut things down, and there are things I want to accomplish over the holiday that are, strictly speaking, work.
I'll write more about that tomorrow, because it touches on areas that Lauren Redhead asked about the other day, to do with the clash between the 'research imperatives' of the individual, and the research strategy of the subject area/institution.