Post-Graduation Lull – it’s important
The Faculty of Management and Law graduations took place last week. I like graduations. There is something really quite special about watching your students walk across that stage, shaking hands with the (in this case) Vice Chancellor and collecting their certificates. It’s the end of a journey we have been privileged to be part of and the start of a much bigger journey for them. You can feel the sense of excitement, the sense of a future to come.
This year, like every year, I feel a little lost after graduation. It’s not that I don’t have anything to do – I am weeks behind with my own work, my inbox is out of control and there is next academic year to get prepared for. I miss those students leaving us, I sort of miss the last academic year and I can’t quite bring myself to really focus on the new academic year. I’m inbetween. I suspect this time of year used to be real academic downtime and that downtime is being eroded. You can now find academics on campus between the end of June and end of September and mostly they are quite harassed academics. The academic hamster wheel seems relentless. We finish teaching, we finish marking, we finish exam boards, we finish revision sessions, we finish re-sit marking, we finish re-sit exam board and suddenly it is August and we’re into clearing, then induction, then teaching… repeat…
But that downtime is important, really important. More important that I had really registered before. We need to be able to recharge our batteries, we need to be able to take time to reflect on the academic year just gone by and we need time to prepare ourselves mentally (as well as practically) for the new academic year. We need time to think, to read, to do nothing, to think about what the next year will bring, what we want to achieve and we need time to plan and we need time just to be.
So, my post-graduation lull comes at a time where I really don’t have time for it but then I never do. My job seems ever more relentless (if it is possible to be more relentless) so I am embracing the lull whether I have time for it or not. I’m just allowing myself to drift for a week, to just see what happens, to do the things I want to do, minimise the crappy paperwork as much as possible, reduce the hours to a more manageable level and to put the last academic year behind me and get ready to be part of a whole set of new journeys and dreams.
The Law Teacher:…
…The International Journal of Legal Education and now also the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) Law Journal of the Year for 2015. How exciting is that!?! It is a real honour and pleasure to be part of the team that makes this possible. The journal’s editor is the wonderful Chris Ashford (Northumbria Uni) and I am the deputy editor. Neither of us could go to the dinner where the award was given so our consultant editor Nigel Duncan (City University) went. This seemed absolutely perfect as Nigel was the editor before Chris and really the journal’s success is down to his work. Chris and I ( well Chris mostly) have been lucky enough to be able to build on that foundation. Nigel sent this picture from the dinner (thank you Nigel!):
The journal is published by Routledge and they have been fantastically supportive and really do help us produce 3 fantastic issues every year. So if you teach law, whether in a university , college or school I think The Law Teacher is worth a look. I know this sounds like a shameless plug for a journal I am involved with and in a way it is. But it is a shameless plug for a great journal that I enjoy reading and which makes a genuine contribution to my teaching and therefore my students. So if I haven’t convinced you to take a look, maybe the contents of Issue 2 of 2015 will. Take a look here and judge for yourself whether the journal makes your list of top journals. It is certainly on mine.
Thank you BIALL!
Running to feel better – no really.
Here’s a post from my running blog but I think it is useful here too. Academics are often rubbish at looking after themselves and I am no exception. There is a trigger to me feeling as I do but the trigger would be nothing if I wasn’t already so exhausted, irritated and disillusioned with so much of Higher Education. More on that another time.
I seem to have managed to keep the worst of my depression at bay. Let’s keep the black dog metaphor going – I have shut that stupid black mutt out but it is still hanging around outside. For only the second time in my academic career (which now spans well over 10 years) I have withdrawn from a conference. I was due to fly out to Sweden tomorrow but I just couldn’t get my head round flying out there on my own, I couldn’t get my head round exploring somewhere I’d never been before and I couldn’t get me head round giving two papers and putting my research out there for comment. I’ve cancelled. I shall miss seeing some great colleagues and friends but I need to look after myself.
Running and yoga seem to be becoming a part of that. I went to work today and mostly it was…
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