Day 76 - I've got a little list

I have two lists.
One of them lists everything that I feel I need to get done at work.
The other lists everything that I feel I need to get done at home.
I'm working my way down both very slowly.

When I was writing these lists, they seemed quite easy to accomplish - a couple of days work possibly - but when they are slotted into everything else, it is quite a different matter.

The timetable for performance exams has taken me a couple of days to organise, and that's just one item on the list. It's a task I have done for the last five years I think, and one that I sort of enjoy (like a crossword puzzle), but often one that gets done when I get tired of students hassling me for it. So this year, in line with what I was talking about yesterday, I decided to sort it out now for the entire year. So that should put me ahead of the game a little. I still have to assign staff to assess the exams, but I want to discuss the workload implications with our line manager first.

I have a couple of reasonably large tasks left on my work list, as well as some pretty minor ones, but the investment in time will probably be worth it in the long run. Sometimes, I think that these tasks could be done by others, whether that's HR when it comes to writing to all of our hourly-paid staff, or someone else, but I know that I will have a better chance of getting a result with which I will be happy if I do it myself to create a template. Once I've done that, I can step back and allow others to improve it and use it for the next few years.

My list for home is moving very much more slowly. It seems difficult to motivate myself to improve the flat while there is so much work to be done. I know that has to be addressed for my own sake. The more that the flat is organised the happier I will be. I guess this comes down to the question of life-work balance, prioritising my life as much as my work, and taking action instead of treating the 'life' section of my life as an excuse to hide from a lived life.

It's funny how, even when you're 36 years old, so much of life is about taking a day at a time.

Day 63 - Considering next steps

It's always an interesting point in the year, on the brink of a new term, just catching your breath after the admin of the last academic year.
I haven't got a set workload agreed yet, and no priorities officially planned, although I have plenty in my head. A few things could change based on discussions yet to be had, but there seems no reason to hold off thinking about this until this happens because otherwise, there will not be any decisions made.

I plan to go through what I project as my workload for the year, and begin to assign it to my year in quite a specific fashion, to give myself a good idea about what I think is a reasonable division of my time. This is quite exciting for me because, although I will be losing some freedom, it will give me firmer limitations to what I am trying to do, a more realistic idea of how long certain tasks take, and the beginning of a real sense of control over what I do when.

And that can't be bad.

Day 64 - And this is why I do this job

I sponsor a child in Cambodia, and every now and then he writes to me.
Today I read his latest letter which said that his studies were going well and that he hoped to go to university because it would make a significant difference to his family's living conditions.
The power of education to transform lives is one of the motivating factors that keeps me engaged with the whole process. I've spoken before about the importance of education for education's sake, but the way in which it provides options for people who otherwise would not have any is just as important to me.
That is what makes working where I work as fulfilling as it is. If I was only interested in education for education's sake, I would crave a research-intensive post, but I do enjoy what I do and I do get a lot out of the return that I get from working with these students.

Day 58 - Just write

Today, after what felt like a long morning spent with a couple of our instrumental tutors covering a variety of topics, I went home to compose. I spent a fruitful afternoon and came up with a harmonic structure for a new piece with which I was happy.

In my inbox was an email from a fantastic performer, thanking me for an essay I had sent to them detailing some structural analysis of a piece that I wrote around 15 years ago.

I'm happy that I'm writing music, but not happy that I'm not writing words down. I've thought for some time that it was worth going back to essays such as that one, combining it with other things I have noted, and seeing if there isn't a grown up analytical paper there. But I don't.

It's easier to 'know' that you could do something if you put your mind to it, than to put your mind to it and risk failing.

But I'm writing music and trying to switch off from other pressures from work. I definitely feel like I have a way to go when it comes to compartmentalising the different aspects of my job, but at least, for one afternoon, I sat down at manuscript paper and wrote some music that I will hear soon.

And that's a great feeling.

Day 55 - Look back

I started the task of writing my programme leader's report today.
For me, that means reading every module report written by the teaching team and attempting to tease out some narrative threads that link them together.
This is an intensely annoying process because each report is saved as a Microsoft Word document on a shared drive. In order to read them, I have to download them to my computer and open them one by one. Tedious. Unnecessary.

But. I enjoy this task every year. You may ask why I bother, because after all, I'm meeting with the teaching team throughout the year and have a pretty good idea about what worked and what didn't work (and why), but the reports give me another angle - how the lecturer, looking back, perceived things. This often includes elements that they may have not spoken to me about, that they only realised were relevant when writing the report and reflecting.

There's a widespread feeling that the module reports are meaningless and pointless and that no-one ever reads them. I want my teaching team to know that I always do. I think that one of the ideas is that I read them all, and reflect on what this means for the programme, and then put this in my report, which is then read by the department head, who reads all of the programme reports from their department, and reflects on what this means for the department, and then puts this in their report, which is then read by the Head of School, who reads all of the department reports from their School, and reflects on what this means for the School, and so on and so on.
That is the plan anyway.

And I like sharing in the reflection. Seeing what individual lecturers see as the important elements of their modules is a revelation, and enables me to support them better. Perceiving a slight disconnect between the delivery of linked modules in the reports last year, I have worked hard to bring the team closer together and to discuss shared practice. It looks like that may have paid off. Either that or they're humouring me.

I am a firm believer that the strengths of every robust team derive from the membership of the team, not from any leader, and that it is the responsibility of every team leader to bring the best elements out of their team. That is the strength of the leader. I think that it is a really challenging role, but it is one that I enjoy.

Day 53 - Changing Face of Research

Today, I'm not really talking about the actual way that the sector is changing. I don't really think I have enough experience to discuss that. It's more that I want to talk about how the way that my institution is thinking about changing things.

Currently, we have six different centres for research based around English and Creative Writing, Publishing, Design, Media, Music, and Film respectively. Some of these research groups coincide with departmental (and therefore managerial) hierarchies, but not all. Some of these research groups coincide with REF Units of Assessment, but not all. Some of these centres have defined identities that function almost as a brand, others are more amorphous.

For me, looking at these groups, it seems clear that some of these groups are built around areas of excellence, where a clear specialism has been identified, but others are there to support research activity irrespective of any top-down strategic thought. I think that both approaches have their place, but that they shouldn't be confused.

Recently, we discussed the possibility of reshaping research areas into four: Music and Performing Arts, Art and Design, English and Creative Writing, and Media. I think that it's likely that existing 'brands' will remain as centres of activity, but not necessarily centres of support. From my perspective, this is a good move, and it means that it will be easier to develop a narrative around Music, Drama, and Performing Arts for the next REF in 2020. It also addresses the confusion (mentioned above) between areas of excellence/activity, and areas of research support. Although it means that more research areas will not map on to department areas, I don't think that this will lead to more problems, but may well alleviate areas where this is an issue.

This isn't just a matter of achieving consistency, but it's a matter of achieving parity. If there are many areas where the person in charge of the research centre is not necessarily the person managing the staff within the research centre, then there has to be a protocol or shared practice for including research in their workload, rather than the rather piece-meal approach we have at present. At least that's what I'd like to think.

While there are potential drawbacks to this approach (I will have more staff to support but no more time to do it in, for example; I will also have to liaise with at least two line managers rather than one) but I believe that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

It is somewhat ironic that this is happening as the University decides to reintegrate the two parallel areas of organisation that were established a few years ago: schools and institutes. Now, all research activity will be managed within the school, and teaching and research brought closer together. The parallel path would have been to ensure that all research centres were integrated with departments, but I'm glad that the opposite has happened. I suppose it could be said that the true irony was that although the School and Institute were separate, many of our Centres were identical to our Departments (and therefore the structure did not really change what was happening at 'grass roots' level, but problematised its management and organisation), and that this proposed change could energise rather than restrict research activity.

So, there is change in the air, which is just as well because there's change in the air nationally as well. There may be trouble ahead, but while there's moonlight, and music, etc...

Day 49 - Laying the foundations

After a few days of rising panic, things are beginning to feel a little more settled.
This week is full of tasks I don't want to do but have to do, but as each day passes, I'm actually accomplishing things.
It feels as if it will all fall together and I will have a blueprint for the year.
What I hope this means is that I will be improvising less (at least academically - I hope I get more opportunities to improvise musically!), and that I will be correspondingly less stressed.
I hope that it means that I will have more time for myself, and that I use this time sensibly.
I also hope that it means that my students will have easier access to the information that they need without having to constantly come to me or other members of staff. That requires a bit more thought, but it's a definite goal.

I have no doubt I will make mistakes. I already made a minor one today that I will have to undo tomorrow. I will still suddenly realise that I haven't organised something far too late and be forced to work late just to make it work. But I sincerely hope that it doesn't happen quite so often!

Day 46 - Playing catch-up

This is Saturday's post. Which I'm writing on Sunday.
When I've finished this post, I'm going to write last Saturday's post.
I'll write tonight's post, and last Sunday's post tomorrow, before I write tomorrow's post.
Basically I'm playing catch-up.
That I've chosen to do this in this particular way for this blog has more to do with satisfying my own need for order and stability rather than anything externally imposed. It won't matter if I don't keep up with this blog, but it gives me a sense of satisfaction to do so.

But it's made me think about how much of my work in academic terms feels like I play catch-up all of the time. I've said this before, but it seems like every day I am doing things that should have been done yesterday. Part of this is (no doubt) down to a failure on my part to plan for the future, but I also think that there's an element of communication that often gets forgotten in (especially) universities. How best to communicate deadlines and expectations so that the information is available is not a priority with which many institutions are very familiar. As someone who occasionally has cause to impose deadlines for information, I'm aware that it can feel frustrating when I do not get a response to my questions by the deadline I have set - after all, it can't be that hard, can it? On the other hand, as someone who receives (as do all academics) a lot of requests for information with their own deadlines, I have to understand that everyone else is juggling deadlines that they can't possibly remember.

What can we do then? As someone who sets deadlines, I feel like I want to seek out technological solutions that make it easier for those that I'm communicating with to access this information in advance.
For myself, I need to start taking better notes of what I need to do when. I need to start dealing with email as they come in, and I need to start planning when I have time to do these tasks, rather than leaving the task for when I have time. Because this time doesn't naturally appear spontaneously. It has to be carved out, and that generally means that some other task is delayed as a result.

And then I'm playing catch up again.

Day 38 - Review of the Year

I've been putting off writing my Programme Leader's Report for this year.
What, in effect, it requires me to do is to read every single module report on my programme, diagnose themes that emerge from this, address them and a lot of other things that they want me to address, and then come up with an action plan.
The real question is then, what happens to this report?

I understand that it is read by my Subject Group Leader, and forms part of his annual report, and that it will be read by at least the head of quality for the School, but given the amount of work that it requires, it's a big investment of time for a return that is, at best, unclear.

I suppose that the only way to engage with this, is the way that we deal with everything else - how can I look at this meaningless bureaucratic task so that it works for me? In terms of the programme report, it gives me an opportunity to weigh up a number of different perspectives on how things are going and have gone. It forces me to engage with difficult questions about what we can do as a team to improve the student experience and address areas of academic rigour that might not otherwise get addressed.

It feels like a lot of work, and also feels like it makes a lot more work, because once you've observed all of these things, they then have to be actioned, but, for me at least, this is the only way to deal with things like this. You can pay lip service to them, and burrow your head in the sand and pretend that everything is lovely (because, after all, it will be fine whether these things are addressed or not - they always are ok, but I think we should be doing better than ok) but that is really not my style.

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 36 - No agenda

There are days when I have a very clear idea about which I want to write.
Today is not one of those days.

This leads me on to an (at least for me) interesting question:
How do we deal with meetings without agendas?

I think that these come in two different flavours:

1. The meetings where an agenda is present, but the chair just hasn't revealed it to the meeting
2. The meetings that are literally there for the sake of having a meeting

Flavour 1 can be countered through administrative assistance and is not really as worrying as flavour 2. When I am chairing a regular meeting, I try to ensure that there is something useful to discuss in every meeting. It might not be urgent, or even necessary, but it should be useful and require discussion, not merely reporting. I think that there is a space for reporting, but staff meetings should not turn into a school assembly.

Every agenda point should result (or have the potential to result) in an action point.
Every staff meeting should be minuted and the minutes distributed.
Action points should be chased up.

I'd like to think that all of this would go without saying, otherwise why are we doing it?
It's not just to see each other and spend time in each others' company. There are too many other things to be doing. And I'm not suggesting that the bureaucratic side of all of this is the most important thing. I've spent far too long in meetings in another institution where so much time was spent revisiting the minutes of the previous meeting that we didn't reach the agenda of the current meeting.

So how do we deal with meetings without agenda?
I've read suggestions that you simply refuse to go.
I don't know how my manager would respond to that, and it's almost guaranteed that the meeting you refuse to attend will be the important one.
It would just be nice to attend more staff meetings which didn't result in me writing 'why am I here?'.

Day 43 - Dreadful email

Today is my last day of my annual leave and what bothers me most is catching up on email.
I have never been very good at dealing with email, or at least in keeping up to date with it.
I have literally tens of thousands of emails in my inbox dating back to the start of my employment (2008), and no real sense of how to deal with it all.
I've got a lot better at responding to email (still some room for improvement of course), but no closer to coming up with a sensible and systematic way of organising it.

How does anyone decide what you need to keep and what you can delete?
I've been so pleased that I've kept correspondence that seemed trivial at the time on a few occasions that I don't just want to start trashing everything.

I think I might start experimenting with adding an automatic rule to incoming emails, to initially filter them into folders for students, colleagues, and leave external mail in the inbox. I can see that this might be a system that gets polished over time, but I think that it has some merit. I'm thinking that I might even filter student email into year group, which would then mean that I could archive it most efficiently.

I think I'll start small and work out from there. No point trying to solve every problem all at once.

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 32 - Workload (part 2)

Having started off yesterday talking about teaching workload, I thought that I would finish it today.

The remainder of teaching allocations include things like module leadership, personal development tutorials, and things like programme leadership, and school-wide roles.

Module leadership and personal development tutorials come with a specific allocation – you get 15 units, and 0.1 unit per student on the module for module leadership, and 2 units per student for tutorials.

I try to see all of my tutees twice every term, and I allow half an hour for each meeting, so that works out as fine, and I’m quite happy with how that all matches up.

Module leadership involves weekly tasks like collating registers, monitoring attendance, communicating with teaching teams (where relevant), updating the VLE, and making sure that everything is in place for the next week. I think that 30 minutes a week is probably enough for most modules. There’s quite a lot of admin to put in place to ensure that modules run smoothly during the trimester, and quite a lot afterwards (assessment organisation, mark collation, writing module reports), so that doesn’t leave all that much time… Let’s suggest a class-size of twenty for a hypothetical module. That gives us a total of 17 units. If we spend 0.5 units every week of the teaching term (12 weeks), that leaves us with 11 units. Allocating 1 unit to organising assessment, 2 to collating marks, and 2 for writing the module report leaves us with a total of 6 units for preparation. That’s not bad.

We have a scholarship entitlement, which I suppose charges us to keep up to date with the latest publications in our area. That comes to 65 units for the year. If we treat this as being spread out over our entire working year, that comes to around about one hour and fifteen minutes every week. That’s not a lot, but what would you say if I proposed that you spend one hour a week in the library reading journals? I’m not sure that’s something that many of us really feel that we have enough time to do in the course of our weekly routine, but I think that we really should take this seriously. Work out when the journals you read have a new issue, and plan to spend the time reading it. And if your job involves performance, I think that it’s worth considering concert attendance, if correctly planned, as scholarship. One hour a week during teaching terms comes to around 30 hours for me, so leaves 35 hours during the summer. Not a huge allocation, but one to be sensibly applied.

Much of the rest of the teaching budget appears to be up for negotiation between the line manager and the staff member concerned. There are set allocations for specific roles such as programme leader and director of student experience, but no real transparency with the hoi polloi regarding what those set allocations actually are. The official documentation says that ‘Schools differ in their organisation structures and allowances for roles such as…’ so it’s a shame that the school doesn’t see fit to issue further documentation.

And that’s our teaching allocation covered.

You’ve probably gathered by now that I enjoy this sort of thing, and that I’m planning to apply it to my own weekly workload. This isn’t an approach that will work for everyone, but for me, it’s the beginnings of a manageable implementation of my integrated academic framework.

We’ve been told that the workload allocation model is going to change, and the final tweaks are being made to it, so, to some extent, this is all a waste of time in terms of my actual institutionally supported process, but quite aside of that, this is a useful model for me to look at how I manage my workload on a weekly basis and provides the opportunity in looking at the division into different tasks in some detail.

I’ve also been thinking about the ‘missing’ 205 hours per annum unaccounted for by the WAM, and concluded that we should see them as contingency time. I don’t think that we’re really all that familiar with the idea of contingency in HE. We allocate time and resources like bus timetables are written. You work out how long the process optimally takes, and then fill your schedule to match this. If something goes wrong, we find time from our own schedule to make this up.

What if we were all going to plan our weeks but allow around 1 hour a day for which we have no plan? How much of a luxury would that be?

Day 31 - Workload (part 1)

A while ago, I said I was going to talk about how my institution calculates workloads, what that means for me, and reflections on the whole business of managing workloads.
The disappearance of my internet, and the generation of a buffer of posts to cover me until Monday seemed like a good time to actually get to grips with it, so here goes.

I am contracted to work 35 hours a week, so approximately 7 hours a day, 5 days a week.
I have 46 days of holiday every year, the timing of 14 of which are non-negotiable (public holidays, Christmas vacation, etc.).
Looking at September 1st 2014 to August 31st 2015, there are 52 full working weeks and an extra Monday. In total, that comes to 261 working days.
Less my 46 days holiday, that comes to 215 working days.
Given a 7 hour working day, that comes to 1505 working hours.

We are each assigned 1300 work units for each academic year. I have no idea where this number comes from, but it is quite clear that a unit does not equal an hour. Except it's sort of assumed that it is.
In fact it's around 69 minutes and 28 seconds.

The workload allocation model is divided into four areas: Teaching, Research, Commercial or Other, and Support.
I'll talk about teaching tonight and tomorrow, research and commercial on Sunday, and support on Monday.
On Tuesday I'll try to draw everything together and shout at it.

So. As mentioned above, each unit counts for around 69 minutes and 28 seconds of my working life.

I'm going to deal with different types of teaching first of all, and go through what they actually entail:

• Lectures: 1 unit per taught hour, with another unit for each taught hour to cover preparation/support
• Seminars/tutorials: 1 unit per taught hour, but the preparation time per taught hour decreases depending on how many of these seminars or tutorials you actually take
• Honours year projects (such as dissertations):  Here the allocation is calculated as including teaching, preparation and assessment, and falls into one of four bands. There is not very clear criteria of how to interpret these bands (and that which is given is irritatingly science-based), leaving it worryingly open to abuse. Our dissertation module includes 12 hours of supervision across the year (half-an-hour a week if distributed evenly), while another similar module on a different programme might involve only 3 hours of supervision across the year. Looking at the guidelines, they are regarded as being equivalent.

Then we look at assessment. Basically, for each student taking 20 credits, there is one unit. This means that if you are marking essays for 30 students, which is 50% of the mark weighting, you're probably going to get 15 units for your trouble (around 35 minutes per script). That doesn't seem too bad, but remember how much time you spend messing around with a marking grid, refamiliarising yourself with the topic and the specific question. Having worked that out, if you have any moderation involved, you should really be allowing some for the moderator, so you have to take that out of the allowance for each student.
Again, reflect that some modules may involve multiple forms of assessment, and may involve blind double-marking. You won't necessarily get an allocation for the time it takes you to mark.

Let's assume for a minute that we are going to be cynical about this.
Let's look at what the allocations actually mean for us as lecturers.
Importantly, for me, I can see that fewer assessments in a module will give me less work for my time. Although the calculation is apparently fair, it takes time to change gear between assessment types. One can get 'into the flow' of marking essays (as well as hitting a wall!) that will be interrupted if we also have to mark harmony exercises.
Any module that involves double-blind marking is inefficient since you are basically doing twice as much for no more time allowance.
Also, taking seminars and tutorials will not get you as much time allowance as teaching lectures. Now, I believe that the equation for working out preparation time for seminars/tutorials is generally a sensible one, but the consequence of this is that I get more allocation from teaching lectures.
The final observation to make is that if I don't change my teaching, I still get the allocation for preparation without having to actually do it.

What this means is that, according to this system:

• traditional lecture-based modules are more cost-effective than any other more interactive formats;
• it is not cost-effective to change your lectures from year to year;
• traditional essay-based assessment is more cost-effective than any other more interactive formats.

That's pretty depressing.

Let's just go back to dissertations for a second. Let's say you convince your line manager to regard the dissertation as a 'Band 2' project, which carries with it an exciting 10 unit per student weight.
You spend 12 hours across the year supervising their project, for which you will probably do some independent research on the topic yourself in order to help them on their way. You will probably mark drafts of the work, giving feedback as the year goes on. Then you will mark the thing (ours are 11,000 words and are blind double-marked). If this was a lecture-based course, you'd already be on around 25 units per student.
It's likely that we should revisit the amount of supervision our dissertation students receive, obviously!

What is clear to me, is that these things are never discussed when it comes to discussing module design. Actually, nothing is really ever discussed when it comes to module design, but that's a rant for another day. It also isn't discussed when it comes to the PGCert for teaching in HE, but it's a reality of managing staff, managing a programme, and managing one's own workload. Why is this?

I have a depressingly easy answer to that one. Nobody really understands these numbers. Academic managers (and I mean heads of department or similar here) are in the position that they are in because they published a couple of books, or have been around the block a few times, or made the mistake of catching someone's eye in a meeting when they should have been looking at their feet, not because they're skilled at admin. Some are (thankfully) but (in my experience at least) most aren't. Calculations like I have been discussing today scare many academics because they aren't (except when they are) accountants. They are musicologists and pianists and experts in literature.

The other problem is that induction programmes and PGCert programmes are not designed to train you for the realities of teaching. They are idealistic in their outlook. Which is all very well, but it's a bit like teaching a child that the world is a wonderful place full of welcoming and innocent people and then dropping them in the centre of town.

I've talked about cost-effectiveness, but how much does an hour of an academic's time cost? For anyone on my salary point (so basically anyone who is a non-probationary lecturer), the price including estates and indirect costs, is £56 per hour. That is the Full Economic Cost of my time - how much I cost the university to work for an hour.

Finally, I want to come back to this idea that we have 1300 units, but work 1505 hours per year. If we regard the difference as being spread out across the year, it comes to around four hours and a quarter per week. How much time do you spend in staff meetings, or in other similar meetings? As we will see, there is little allocation for this sort of activity, so it's probably fair enough to start viewing a unit as equaling an hour.

Isn't it? This is probably one of those questions it's not wise to ask.

Day 30 - Admirable and adorable hobbies

Today, I was sent a link to this article written by Patience Schell from THE entitled 'World less, do more, live better'. It makes a lot of good points, variants of which I have been making gestures at in my posts.

An element that immediately jumped out at me though was to think about how, in music and in other fields where performance plays a part, the time we spend organising and performing in concerts, productions, and other events becomes almost invisible.
I don't just mean the time that we spend going to concerts (although there's an argument for including at least some of that in your workload - it's not an argument I agree with 100% but I can see the logic), even when those concerts are given by your students, but I mean the time when  you are conducting the university orchestra, or stage managing the production of Orfeo, or even examining a final year performance.

The reason it becomes invisible is, I think, two-fold:

1. We do it because we love it
2. Music is still frequently viewed as an admirable and adorable hobby - a free-time pursuit

The time we spend at our desk earnestly whittling away at our latest magnum opus regarding the use of double-sharps in Peter Maxwell Davies' earlier Orcadian period (not something I'm planning to do, but it sounds like it could be fun), or even noodling away at a composition, or a teaching plan seems real, tangible, and like 'proper work'; working up a sweat directing a bunch of students making ephemeral music seems less worthy somehow.

And that's not something that is easy to change. It isn't just to do with how we think about our own work, but has a lot to do with how the society around us views work in general. The identity and role of work is determined through use, and so it's something that is in flux, and not something that can be changed by any one person. So we have to stop complaining about it, accept that it's going to happen, and get on with things.

What does this mean for the music academic? I think it means that we have to be sensible. Take care not to take too much invisible time as part of your workload. You can allow some to slip in, but if you take on a considerable amount, it will be assumed that you can do this (no sweat) on top of everything else because you're driven by our admirable adorable dedication to your art.

And it's not enough to blame management for this. Blame management for many things, but having a Machiavellian grasp of your workload is probably not one of them (and indeed, you may wish to blame management for not having more of an idea what is going on with your workload). This is something that you're doing to yourself. It's up to you to stand up and count your hours and be sensible about what you're going to expect yourself to do.

Day 27 - Idealism, realism, and sheer bloody-mindedism

Sometimes, you commit to something, and you think that you have plenty of time.
And then you realise that you really don't.

You have a few options.

1. Cancel the project
2. Postpone the project
3. Bluff

Now I'm allergic to 1. I just don't like admitting defeat, and I prefer to make sure that the project happens one way or another. My default position tends to be 3, and I have had a lot of success in throwing projects together without sufficient lead-in time or rehearsal. But that only gets you so far, and if you want something to be as good as you imagine it can be, it's a shame to not deliver the project that you could deliver.

I think that a good approach is that if you feel that the project will be substantially better if you have more time, go for a postponement. Most times, it will be your project anyway, and the only person that you're really reporting to is you. Admittedly that can be a pretty scary person to report to, but you get used to it.

If you can see a way to make the project happen anyway, to a standard that you are happy with, then bluff your way through; improvise and make decisions on the hoof. I think that's a really good skill to have as an academic but also as an artist. Life frequently doesn't go to plan, and being able to make adjustments that deliver an uncompromised result without destroying your life will ensure that you can pull almost anything off.

I will also have to learn when it is appropriate to cancel, but I refuse to really engage with that at present.

I'm reflecting on this today, because I've realised that I have to be realistic about a deadline that I have looming. There's a concert coming up for which I have to write a piece (involving software that I don't know), organise performers, organise a competition (complete with panel), and organise some publicity. There is no way it will happen when it is planned to happen in the way that I want it to happen. I'm pretty sure I can finish a piece with which I'll be happy by the end of this month, and I'll be able to find people to play it, but getting others to write to the same schedule, finding players, organising a rehearsal schedule, and organising, advertising, and administering a competition is most likely beyond me.

So tomorrow I have to write a difficult email, because I have already postponed this concert once. I have to ask if we can hold it later in the year (but it has to be this year because of annoying things like the specific anniversary that this marks). I dislike having to show weakness in this way, but I also intend to send a plan of campaign with a schedule and timings for all the constituent elements that have to occur. This is useful for me, obviously, but also lets the other people involved know that I'm not going to let this happen again.

If another postponement isn't possible, I'm not sure what I will do. I'll have to improvise. As usual.

Day 24 - Ambition

Another busy day, another short post.
Just briefly, I wanted to talk about my ambitions.
Where I want to be.

In one sense, I want to carry on doing what I'm doing - only more so. Writing more music, writing more words about music, and talking to more performers and composers; teaching interesting and engaged students.

In another sense, I want to be higher up the academic food chain. I want to be a head of department one day. I want the administrative responsibility from which I have seen academics flee for my entire university life. In other words, I want to take this idea of the integrated academic with me through the promotion route.
I don't want to just do research, with no teaching or no administrative responsibilities; I want to be able to facilitate decision making, support other staff members, and enable them to work as integrated academics as well.

I want to have a Chair one day, and I really want to be an emeritus professor after I retire. I cannot see myself retiring to sudoku puzzles and orchid breeding. I want to be writing music until I drop. I want to be writing about music until I can't remember the beginning of a sentence that I'm writing. I want to be listening to music until I can't really hear it any more. I want to be teaching for as long as I have something useful to say.

This may well all change if I settle down and have a family, but right now, I want to be doing this for the long term,

This may be a bit of a sad admission in some eyes, and in others, a breaking of the social contract regarding how we talk about our ambitions. Neither of these really bother, or indeed, interest me.

Music has become so much a part of my life, that I cannot really visualise it continuing without it.

Day 23 - Towards a manifesto

Tonight, I just wanted to establish the beginnings of a manifesto - what I think I'm aiming for in my job.
I've hinted at it in previous posts, and it's become a theme of my interactions with colleagues recently.

I want to become an integrated academic.

• This means beginning to smooth over the crises and hiatuses of the academic year and approach something like a consistent even keel;
• This means carrying on research projects throughout the year concurrently with teaching, to the detriment of neither;
• This means establishing the groundwork for a sensible work-life balance;
• This means not being a slave to email;
• This means fire-proofing my life from the disorganisation of others and from a culture of last-minuteness;
• This means being in control of my workload.

At the moment, I have no firm idea of how I am going to accomplish these goals, and many of them are going to be trial and error. It may turn out that it isn't possible, but I won't believe that until I fail.

My biggest concern with the amount of pressure that academics are put under is where this pressure really originates. I know colleagues who have been put under intolerable pressure to fulfill bad interpretations of university policy, or just bad university policy, but for the majority of it, we do it to ourselves. And on a larger scale, as academics, we do it to each other.

I have to believe that we have the power to change this, even if it is in small ways.
And when we do, we will be on the road to professionalising a career that is in danger of becoming industralised.