Accounting for Humanity

As a sign to my growing older, I can affirm that time is certainly moving too quickly. Out of nowhere another academic year has catapulted onto the shores of Lesley time (if my thesis taught me anything, it is clearly travelling via race-built galleon).

As a side note: This idea of time accelerating is something I personally (and coincidently) noticed when I started life as a university student. Time is split into these concentrated 12 week bursts, and before you know what’s going on, the degree was over. Annoyingly though, when I left university, time refused to return to its normal pace, and here we are 16 years later still trying to figure out what’s going on.

Returning to the main thought, another academic year swiftly approaches but, this one will not be like the others. This will be my first academic year without my thesis, which feel exceptionally odd. I doubt my schedule will change all that much, after all now I am feverishly working to make my name and place in this academic world, but technically when I am not teaching, I could be doing virtually anything. For someone like myself i.e., someone who absolutely expresses interest in too many things (see my Happening Now page), this is going to be difficult.

Thankfully, I believe my challenge is a good one to have. I am fortunate that although my thesis is done, my interest in it is not. I know for many the all-consuming nature of the PhD means that, once submitted, you never want to see it again. This can leave you a bit lost on where to go next, so I am thankful that I have managed to maintain a want to keep expanding my work. My hope is some thesis publications and a new “thesis-expansion pack” i.e., research project building on my PhD findings that I can get some funded support for.

Before, or alongside, all of that though is teaching. I’ve had one semester as a lecturer already thus, I am already actively building and developing my “lecturer persona” (or style, I am entirely unsure what to call it) to be someone students want to, and enjoy, learning from. On this note, for the first time in my 39 years of life I have an office (as in a proper room, not a desk on an open plan floor)!

As this is peak “fancy” for me, decorating the space has been a source of much amusement, so we shall end this very quick and random post with some of the additions to my office…