CHERTSEY

BOATS, BRIDGES, BOILERS ... IF IT'S GOT RIVETS, I'M RIVETTED
... feminist, atheist, autistic academic and historic narrowboater ...
Likes snooker, beer, tea, rivets and solitude, and is strangely fascinated by the cinema organ.
And there might be something about railways.
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Friday 11 March 2011

That four-letter word

The one in question, naturally, being 'work' (I think some people on CWF occasionally take the idea of this as an obscenity a bit far by rendering it as w**k, which leads to all sorts of confusion as that could of course also denote something quite acceptable and pleasant.... still, I digress.)

My work, of course, is neither unacceptable nor unpleasant; in fact I am incredibly lucky to have a job which is reasonably well paid and which gives me a lot of autonomy and flexibility. It is, however, expanding to fill the time available as cuts bite and more work has to be wrung out of fewer people. We full timers have been fortunate inasmuch as the promise of 'no redundancies' has held so far, but this has been possible at least partly because a lot of people on temporary contracts have not had them renewed, or have had their hours cut, and we now have to take their place. In practice this means a lot more teaching, and the associated preparation, which is far more time-consuming than you might imagine. Hence, I have not only not been writing lots of erudite articles and pushing back the frontiers of knowledge, I've not been doing a lot of blogging either.

However, the end of term nears, and next term is all dissertation supervision rather than classroom teaching, so hopefully I will be a bit more flexible again, and will be able to get up to Chertsey for a grand spring clean next weekend, and then even some boating over Easter.

2 comments:

  1. Ah yes, work - I remember it well, although admittedly not all that fondly. In the nearly 6 years since I gave it up I cannot honestly say I have woken up lamenting that I didn't have to attend a committee meeting or worse still, a team awayday. I would perhaps go back and visit, but I hear that at my place everyone I knew and admired has left and been replaced by a new wave of eager young executive types. I also note that the organisation's official rating has dropped from "excellent" to "fair".

    Enjoy your next term, and I hope your students give you something entertaining to read.

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  2. Sarah just loves committees so much so that we have recently both got involved in yet another! and don't mention constitutions - she will be there like a rat up a drainpipe :) especially a constitutional committee :)))))

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