At a social event, a
student made a comment on my recent circulation of conference
information: “I have now finally realised how much more professors
do than just teach”. This was a generous acknowledgement, as
people, especially outside academia, tend to believe
that professors are those lucky, lazy people who pop into classrooms
every now and then, deliver a lecture and then go out for a beer. And have long summer holidays. Even
people within academia, who know that instructors also have to
prepare for their lectures, supervise written coursework, grade exams
and papers, and console students who fail the course; even these
people can hardly imagine how much work is done in between these
obvious activities. In addition to my previous descriptions of a
typical day or week, here is what I do, whether it is a part of my
job description or not.
As the head of an academic
group (or research team leader), I regularly meet up with my team
members for informal conversations. These can happen over lunch or
coffee, which does not mean that they are relaxed and necessarily
pleasurable. Some of them take place in my office, with a box of
tissues within reach. I also need to do formal staff reviews at
regular intervals. I hold three business meetings and an awayday
every year, preparing agendas and checking minutes. I represent my
group's interest in various committees and I report back from these
committees. For this, I need to write papers, often running them
through colleagues for comments and approval. I have limited
financial responsibilities within the group. I have 0.2 secretarial
support, which means that I can ask my secretary to book meeting
rooms and catering, keep accounts, produce flyers and posters, collect information
for the monthly newsletter, circulate papers and take minutes. Yet it
is still me who needs to tell them what to do. I take care of
visiting scholars and make sure they feel welcome. Some are more
demanding than others. Sometimes I have to remind them gently that I
am not their supervisor. I also assess all applications from
prospective visitors before I reject them, pass them on to a
colleague or explain in message after message what I need from them.
There is a secretary who takes care of visitors, but I need to
compile files for her to process.
The past few years I have
been working hard on the national university assessment (known by its
most recent euphemism REF, Research Excellence Framework). The amount
of time and effort put into this pointless game is unimaginable.
It could have been spent on research. Not to menion all trees cut
down to produce the mountains of paper.
As a member of several
committees, one of which I chair, I attend meetings, read
documentation, prepare arguments, take actions, exchange emails and
occasionally talk to colleagues face to face. During term time, there
is at least one scheduled meeting every week and innumerable urgent
meetings of all kinds and shapes. I am also on College Council and
several College committees, which sometimes clash with Faculty
committees, and I need to decide which to prioritise and to remember
which hat I am wearing. For some reason, I have not been asked to be
on any University committee. Not that I am eager to, but when I was
new in Cambridge, a female professorial colleague warned me: “You
will be in huge demand as a female professor”. (Only 6% of
Cambridge professors are women). Apparently something is wrong with
me, but I let sleeping dogs lie.
As a member of the
children's literature teaching team, I attend planning meetings and
evaluation meetings, write course descriptions for the webpage and
maintain the education platform. As an internal masters examiner, I
attend two exam board meeting per year – these are the occasions
when you need to produce your own death certificate to be excused.
There are also Masters Management Group meetings and Quality
Assessment meetings, to which I this year managed to send a younger
colleague, bless her; and Doctoral Management Group for which I have
put myself forward because I feel it is important. This term I am
replacing a colleague as a course co-ordinator, which implies
checking that all students have actually arrived, allocating
supervisors, re-allocating supervisors, disentangling the tangled
allocations, seeing students with additional questions, making sure
that the register is in place, and, the other day, fetching the key
to open the lecture room. Later on I will have to allocate
assessors. There is an array of admin support for all these
activities, and I need to keep track of who is doing what. Sometimes
I have to apologise in my email: “This may not be your
responsibility, in which case...”
I am Graduate Admissions
Co-ordinator in my academic group, which is such an ungrateful job
that this year I couldn't find anyone to do it. Which means that I
first do the GAC (wonderful word, isn't it) job, and then sign it off
as Chair. We receive about a hundred masters applications and fifty
PhD applications, and I must read them all, forms, recommendation
letters and project descriptions, deciding whom to pass them on to. Then
I have to rank candidates who also apply for funding. There is a
jungle of funding out there, and all procedures are different. It
seems that the University has recently realised it and will
eventually make it more comprehensible.
As a director of the
Children's Literature Centre, I plan activities, allocate bits of our
tiny budget to them, invite guest speakers, approve student-run
events, complile mailing lists and decide what drinks should be
served at Open Days. I arrange the Jacqueline Wilson Award ceremony
which includes the nice moment of notifying the winner to make sure
they can attend, booking room and refreshment, printing out the
diploma, issuing a cheque and taking care of the sponsor. I know I
should be doing more about the Centre, but I simply cannot. This is,
by the way, not included in my job description and therefore regarded
as hobby.
Every now and then I take
Professional Development courses, preferably online. Most of these
are very helpful. I also attend in-house workshops if relevant.
I am sure I have forgotten
half of it (because I really try to get it off my mind as soon as
possible). And I haven't even mentioned “service to the profession” which I do more or less every day.
No wonder I can only do my own research when I am on study leave.
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