100 Days of Wonder – #11
Ah Deadlines. Let’s ignore for a second that I look ridiculous and talk about deadlines. Anyone who has ever worked with me knows that I struggle to take academic deadlines seriously. Generally, if it is research related, I am likely to be late and if it is anything else, what I would call a real deadline with real consequences of not doing it on time, I am likely to be very last minute. Often that’s because I am overcommitted because I can’t say no. It’s not actually because I like the whooshing noise they make as they go past (sorry Douglas Adams). But Walt Disney wasn’t wrong. If I didn’t have a deadline I would faff forever. I need a deadline to get things done and focus the mind. I have accepted this as a way of working that sort of works for me. I faff around, I stop and start and never really get into it, I have ideas, I might even map them out, I procrastinate and then, with the deadline looming (or having arrived), I snap out of it and get shit done. It’s not pretty, sometimes it’s way more stressful than it needs to be but it’s how I have been getting stuff done all my life. I marvel at people who are organised, have an accurate sense of time and how long things might take and seem to be able to glide through life with a distinct lack of chaos. Deadlines can’t do that for me but they can at least ensure that I keep building my dreams – even if rarely on time.
100 Days of Wonder – #1
I have Covid so I have been both bored and incapable of actually doing anything useful for the last few days. Yesterday, to cheer ourselves up, we booked tickets for Disney on Ice: 100 Years of Wonder for next spring and as it happens, today it is 100 days until we go on our next Disney Adventure. As a result I have been daydreaming, reflecting, thinking… whatever, about the idea of wonder and of escapism. In my induction talks to our new students I also talked about finding the joy in what we do, particularly when we are having a hard time. So as I have been drifting in and out of conscious thought staring at random stuff on TV and coughing my lungs out, I was trying to look for wonder and joy. Here’s number 1 of what may or may not be a 100 day series of finding them and using my Disney or Disney related photos to do so. Of course it is Disney based, that’s where my brain goes when it needs to either escape or is bored or needs cheering up. But in scrolling through photos and closing my eyes and mentally flicking through memories I have thought about so much more than Disney. So bear with me over these post, some will be about work, some will be about running, some will be about life. I hope some will make you laugh and some will make you think but most of all I hope they inspire us all to pause and find joy in the wonder of our lives. I remember the first time I saw Disney World fireworks. I had never seen anything like it. I had never seen anything like Disney World and I was already pretty overwhelmed after a day of having my mind blown repeatedly. I remember standing at the edge of a very busy Main Street USA. I remember that it should have been noisy but that it felt like I was in my own bubble and everything else faded into the background as I was completely in the moment. When I am trying to write or really focus on something, that’s the feeling I try and re-create. It’s both happy and joyful and completely focused. The Disney Fireworks can still do it for me. Here they are from our last trip.
The Law Teacher: The International Journal of Legal Education
Last month, Professor Chris Ashford and I stepped down as General Editors of The Law Teacher and handed over the journal to Dr Emma Jones. Honestly, it’s a funny feeling. The Law Teacher has given me so much over the course of my career, working with Chris has been such a joy and such a rich learning experience and in one way or the other I have always somehow worked on something related to the Law Teacher. I wasn’t going to write anything beyond a quick tweet to mark the occasion but since then, my time linked to the Law Teacher keeps popping into my head.
I published my first book review in the Law Teacher in Issue 1 of 2008, just a few months after starting my first lectureship. I published my first article in the Law Teacher in 2009 (Issue 2) – A Case for Timeturners. I look back on that paper now it and it is somehow completely naive and yet hopeful at the same time. I should maybe write an update. The Editorial of Issue 1 of 2010 welcomes me (and others) to the board and I had forgotten that Chris and I joined at the same time. Over the next few years I had a go at editing book reviews as well as the Policy and Educational Developments sections. Then in 2014, Chris took over as General Editor of the journal and I joined as his Deputy. I remember thinking that I really wasn’t quite sure how I had found myself in that position and hoped that nobody would notice that I didn’t really have a clue what I was doing. in 2018 I got the chance to edit my first special issue (a reflection on the Legal Education and Training Review and a great change to critique the thinking on the SQE as it was then).
We found our feet fairly quickly, we did battle with Editorial Manager, our new online submission system (and if it is possible for a system to actively dislike a person, EM hated me) and we sort of dealt with stuff that came up. We bounced ideas off each other, stepped in to support each other, sense checked each other and reminded each other that we’d also need other voices because we are too similar in our approach to most things. We expanded the editorial board, we established a peer review college, we drove up the quality of work submitted and published and we actively tried to support the legal education community through workshops and being available for conversations. We introduced social media editors to raise the profile of the journal…We did a lot. It’s hard to know now where the ideas came from, I would probably say Chris but actually maybe it was the combination that worked and we had a fantastic team who made the magic happen (and still do).
I think we’ve always care about our authors as much as our readers (because often they are the same!). We read submissions with care and encouraged our reviewers to do the same and respond with constructive kindness. Reading work submitted to a journal is a huge privilege, the author is trusting you with it, probably feels anxious about how it will be received, wants you to like it and in return you get to shape it a little, help make it better, sometimes encourage the re-think it needs to be amazing. We did all of this, mostly without major glitches and mostly just getting on with it – although we definitely had our moments… and then Covid hit.
Lots happened in that time that showcased the nasty side of academia but also the kindness of colleagues, friends and strangers and to cut a long, horrible and for most other people rather boring story short, I wasn’t well. I tried to keep functioning but I wasn’t. As is so often the case in situations like that, I tried to first resign from all the nice things, the things that actually made it possible for me to survive in academia. Chris and the Law Teacher Team encouraged me to stay on, just step back and take the time I needed. When I returned I returned as Co-General Editor alongside Chris with a strengthened and fabulous Editor Team. And now, 10 years after working on the first issue as General and Deputy Editor, we have delivered our final issue as Co-Editors. 10 years just flew by and now there is a Law Teacher shaped hole appearing in my working life – appearing slowly because I haven’t vanished from the journal. For a start both Chris and I stay on as Consultant Editors but I am also seeing through the articles that happened to still be assigned to me and I am also co-editing a Special Issue (more on that another time – it’s shaping up to be fabulous though). The journal is in safe hands with a brilliant team of editors now led by Emma so I am excited to see what the future holds for the Law Teacher and what it feels like to view it as just another academic interested in legal education.
My Conversations 