Before I start…
It’s been a bit of a solitary week outside of a couple of meetings with direct team members. We did have an all unit (Academic Engagement) meeting on Monday, but it actually doesn’t feel like there was much to report. Our new director was present, which was good. I wonder what he thought about all the work we’re doing… I guess by solitary I mean that I have had not had much contact with the students, despite it being O-Week. I used to run our O-Week stalls as part of my work on the external communications team, and some weeks we would have contact with thousands of students. Now we don’t do the same kind of stall, and Academic Engagement are not involved in so many of the events that are running. I have needed the chance to work on upcoming in-class workshops, but it’s been very quiet and lonesome work.
Other things I’m thinking about…
I have an upcoming zine related event outside of work and some planning for a zine that is a submission for a Halloween zine swap. I would really like to work more on my partner’s tablet on that project which he has generously said I should share with him, but I need to dedicate some time to it to get set up and acquainted and I have just been so tired after work. I have also been going to yoga classes as frequently as possible to be a part of a spring yoga challenge. Once the challenge is over, I know I will most likely drop back down to one class a week. But maybe I will figure out how to get to two. It’s been really lovely going to THREE (!) this week but totally unsustainable. I may still fit three classes in next week so I make it to ten total for the month without stressing to get them all in the last week. Seems silly to be stressing over a yoga challenge, and a bit counteractive to the point of doing more yoga.
What happened this week that gave me a glimpse of the future?
SO much work on for upcoming presentations. I make the slides for my discipline pod, or at least I am meant to by the workflows set by our managers, so I have had a lot of that to finish up so that my colleagues have a chance to practice for their first sessions that are running next week. I personally don’t really like to use slides, especially when I only have 30 minutes with the students which is the norm for my sessions this term. We’re all about to be incredibly busy with presenting workshops, and generally more student queries and research consultations follow. That’s the next 10 weeks right there, and then it will almost be the end of the year somehow.
What would you have liked to do more of?
Talk to students! I wish we were able to be more involved in start of term events. I also wanted to read a bit more this week but totally way laid by powerpoints etc. I’m not that much closer to having a home for these notes to be published, although I did do the first little HTML tutorial that is on NeoCities. I am probably going to find a template next week and just start putting things up there though. So I have something to look at and then play with the couple of other blogs/sites I wanted to try out. I was meant to have a coffee catch up with a new(ish) colleague but he had to postpone. I should really set one up with the other new person on the team (these two people started at the same time) before the other new person arrives next week and they’re not even the true newbies anymore. The best advice/activity given to me when I started my librarian role was to book a 30 minute coffee catch up with everyone in the unit so that I could get to know them before I needed things from them when my own work picked up and it was such a great way to settle into working with a big team with such different experiences and subject specialisation. I wish there were more opportunities for socialising at work, but it feels like something that is very broken since COVID. And not because of working from home either, because I have had periods of being back in the office more and it hasn’t had the same vibe as before. Maybe I need to try and make the puzzle table a thing again, but also we’re potentially moving offices into an even smaller area with hot desking by default so it feels like the vibe will continue to deteriorate honestly.
Things I discovered this week...
How To Fall In Love With The Internet Again presented by the Emerging Writer’s festival, I particularly love the City Wide Web by River Gammon, a text adventure game with some choice illustrations.