Recently, on Twitter, there was a very entertaining account of a nightmare experience of giving a paper by Duncan Wilson, a historian at the University of Manchester. Just remembering the time I gave a talk in a uk university, 3 people turned up and 1 fell asleep after 10 min. They then told me there… Continue reading The glamour of the academic life
Category: lecturing
Am I a ‘teacher’? Apparently not.
Is what central academics at The Open University 'teaching'? Apparently not. Just wondering why we write all the teaching materials, then...!
Continuing to retire (sort of/not)
Even without an official 'catalyst', things precipitate other things. They react together in an intellectual chemistry which unites all the different areas of life which most interest me.
On sleep and nightmares
So, subconscious mind, get used to it: I'm still an academic, but I'm not going back to the Day Job, ever!
The travelling academic (1)
I'm republishing here something I originally wrote for my department's newsletter, in 2015. It's about another side of being an academic: the travelling. I'm at the career stage at which I'm lucky enough to be invited to give lectures - public ones - in interesting places. But I want to preface my travel account… Continue reading The travelling academic (1)
The times I taught well
Some students love the way you teach: others don't. That's just a fact, and if you're going to survive the end-of-module evaluations, you'd better accept it. I've been thinking again about teaching after an exchange with one of our MA students last week. He was mildly concerned that he wasn't taking many notes from the… Continue reading The times I taught well
The nightmares at the end of the long vac
Every year without fail, while I was working in the normal university sector, I had a nightmare round about now, in the last weeks before a new academic year began. It would go like this. It's the first day of term. I arrive at the university campus and head for my office. But it's not… Continue reading The nightmares at the end of the long vac
When to go and what you’ll miss
When are you going to retire? Have you thought about it yet? And what will you miss the most? First, the 'when'. If I didn't go now, when would I go? 65, on a full pension? Or even later? At the moment, I find it hard to imagine why anyone would want to go on with… Continue reading When to go and what you’ll miss
The retiring academic 