Personal Blogs
Long story short, I found out that a person I know has blocked me on LinkedIn.
I don't know why or when they did this. Only that they did.
I've blocked people on LinkedIn myself. But I restrict it to people that have bullied me or straight up lied to my face or been in some way abusive, who I am afraid would, if they found me, come back around to laugh at me and gloat about how much better their lives are than mine. And randoms whose pages I have accidentaly clicked on with my fumble fingers, and then I panicked and blocked in case I seemed weird (which most probably is not at all an unhinged way of behaving online, I'm sure).
I'm guessing there are quite possibly several people who have blocked me online - I don't know, I daren't go looking to be honest. My autism (and the consequent rejection sensitive dysphoria we nearly all have) means I don't dare reach out to connect to people online, I won't ask you to be my Facebook friend and I won't ask you to be a LinkedIn connection. Years ago I had a LinkedIn connection with someone else. Then one day I spotted him in the 'people you might know' section - which was weird as we were supposed to be already connections. I haven't seen him be recommended for several years now so I half suspect he may have solved the problem by blocking me. Perhaps I should have reached out earlier, but I'm not sure how well someone who has gone to the trouble of unconnecting is going to take me reaching out? Like if someone doesn't want you in their life, you kind of have to do your best to respect their wishes.
There was a really, really famous paper called The KKK won't let me play (link to OU Library source here: The KKK won't let me play: ostracism even by a despised outgroup hurts.: EBSCOhost) about how rejection always hurts. Even when it comes from someone you despise, that you don't even want to associate with. So an ostracisation from someone you like and respect and considered a friend is always going to be extremely painful.
That and my general meh-ness with LinkedIn right now meant I just decided I was better off shutting the whole thing down. I would love to work more hours and get paid more - but I want to do that here at the OU. I have no intention of trying to get a new job at another company. I really, really like being an AL. It's so nice to finally have a job where I feel useful and needed and not like a burden to the company and the rest of the team. Like I can finally do something good for other people. So if I'm not actively or passively job-hunting and my self-esteem is taking a hit, then what, actually, is the point.
I've spent the morning following up all the references to the Opera Omnia that I found in the papers I've been reading and in A History of Magic and Experimental Science. Google Translate is remarkedly helpful as a quick and dirty tool to get a quick, skim read of content. Some of the areas I followed up weren't actually useful for the idea I currently have floating around in my head. Some subject areas are far too complicated. I mean, 15 volumes of Latin is enough to keep one academic busy for a couple of lives and a dozen PhDs.
My next task is to read through Dreyer's biography of Tycho: Tycho Brahe: A picture of scientific life and work in the sixteenth century (another book from the Internet Archive, I was not happy when that site was hacked) as I read that it gives a good overview of the Opera Omnia.
I've been asked to revise and resubmit.
Apparently I needed to include more about the mechanics of how I teach. OK fine.
I also showed no evidence of awareness of the wider context in which HE operates. For example, I should have talked about why progression and retention are key to learners, their experience and the university.
Like, that's a kicker. That's all I frickin' think about. Because I want my students to have a better undergrad experience than I did. I don't want them to end up like me. But I didn't want to talk about my self-harming and suicide attempt at Imperial College because I didn't want to trauma dump. To fail because my V4 isn't good enough hurts. It really hurts.
I finished 'reading' volume 6 of A History of Magic and Experimental Science - which is to say I read the entirety of the most important chapters and then used to search functionality of the Internet Archive to skim over other relevant passages in the rest of the book.
The next step is to take what I've read in HMES and look up the references in a primary (or at least closer to primary) source and for this I need J.L.E. Dreyer's help.
Dreyer is usually best known to astronomers as the compiler of the New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars, so whenever you see a galaxy or nebula with a name that starts with NGC (such as NGC 2359, Thor's Helmet nebula), you can thank Dreyer.
Dreyer is useful to me as he also compiled a 15-volume set called Opera Omnia (also available in the Internet Archive) which contains all of Tycho Brahe's correspondence and publications that Dreyer was able to source. Beyond the HUGE length of the work, another massive obstacle is that it is (as far as I can tell) entirely in Tycho's original Latin. Now I studied Latin for the first 5 years of my secondary schooling - I very nearly opted to study A level Latin, but picked Chemistry instead. And I've been revising and regularly practising my Latin with the intention of pursuing this investigation into Tycho Brahe. But I'm nowhere near good enough to translate a 15-volume set from Latin into English within a reasonable timescale. But what HMES and the other papers I've been reading have given me are starting points and ideas for directions to go in.
I spent most of yesterday down a mental rabbit hole. We've been going through the book of Matthew at church and my pastor's sermon yesterday was on the feeding of the five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes (Matthew 14: 13-21). My pastor pointed out that before that passage we'd been reading about miraculous healings and about the parables of the kingdom. But God is also concerned with our day to day needs too. Whether we're hungry and thirsty.
And my bible reading notes (I use Our Daily Bread) have been saying much the same thing for a few days now.
Here's the thing. I've always had what are known as prayer burdens. I could tell you stories that would make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. So, for me at least, prayer is something I do for other people. I never think to pray for myself. Which is remiss of me. I mean not only do I neglect myself, I don't think to thank God for all the good things I do have.
I spent a lot of time thinking about this and praying for my needs and asking for wisdom and peace and the ability to accept my situation as it currently is.
And I feel a lot better today than I have in weeks.
And I've been able to finally knuckle down and actually get on with some work - which brings me to the title.
Lynn Thorndike was a professor of history at Columbia University and wrote his magnum opus, an eight volume set on A History of Magic and Experimental Science. I picked up a secondhand volume 7 (which is concerned with the seventeenth century) quite cheaply, years ago and am reading through the relevant passages. I think I really need to find volume 6 as well - but the (non-) accessibility of the Internet Archive might be an issue here as old copies of volumes from A History of Magic and Experimental Science tend to sell for over £100 each.
I've been in a real low mood for months now. I don't think spending the whole of the summer bursting into tears over my daughter going to university has done me many favours mental-health wise.
I'm still waiting to hear the outcome of my FHEA application. I know that others have already had their (positive) results, so the delay in mine has me fearing the worse. Because the ones they're certain have passed have their FHEA awarded first and then the ones that they're less sure of or reject hear later.
I haven't been able to take on an extra module.
I just can't get motivated about my Tycho Brahe project idea.
I mean what is the point of all this?
I just feel thoroughly demotivated at this point. I have the words of that Radiohead song going around in my head, "What the hell am I doing here, I don't belong here".
Every year it's a new problem.
My first year, I used exactly the same forum posts as my mentor (whose students appeared to self-select perfectly without effort on his part) and I had students randomly signing up to groups as a fifth member of a four-person group.
Last year I had at least one student spending the whole of group-work week waiting for a group because they were leftover - they were ready to start in week 2 but I had no one else who said they were ready. Poor student couldn't even do the individual parts alone. It got to the point where I actually suggested they do the individual activity instead. They wanted to wait. But my goodness was it stressful for me and probably for them too.
This year. I don't know. I decided to do the other way of putting students into groups and assign them myself right from the start. Students asked how to handle the fact that two of their team weren't working as fast as them and well, my reply was overly verbose. I over-explained. They of course clearly skimread what I said and misunderstood and ended up doing the complete opposite of what I advised - which was to STOP they'd done enough it was great.
I know students often hate groupwork, but as far as I can tell every single tutor hates it too. It's not so bad in a face-to-face university where students are showing up every day and you can say - right this is group work time. Here at the OU where we have a much, much lower retention rate so you can't assume that every student you start out with is going to stay. You also can't assume that just because a student has not logged on for a week that they have given up. Trying to balance all that while doing a group project in week 3, one week before a TMA deadline, is a nightmare.
I don't know what on earth to do next year.
Is it me?
Maybe it is. Evidence shows that autistic-autistic groups work well and neurotypical-neurotypical groups work well. Maybe I'm too autistic for this job. Maybe I'm too autistic to communicate clearly to the majority of the class.
I've been reading one of the papers that will be discussed in Online Journal Club:
How PhD students and other academics are fighting the mental-health crisis in science
https://www-nature-com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/articles/d41586-024-02225-8At first glance it doesn't look particularly relevant to me - realistically my poor social skills, negligible network and poor performance in interview-type situations mean I'm unlikely to become a PhD student (and I mean that in all seriousness, I graduated in December 2019 with a Distinction in my Astronomy master's - my not already being a PhD student isn't for lack of trying on my part). So the experience of poor mental health due to research pressures are unlikely to ever affect me - in much the same way that I will never have to worry about my being overlooked for an Oscar or missing out on an Olympic Gold.
But a lot of what is mentioned is useful and relevant.
The article talks about yoga, meditation, mindfulness and journalling. Some of these make me wary - I'm a Chrsitian I'm never going to be overly enthusiastic about doing Buddhist practices. Mindfulness is interesting - there have been a number of reports about links to depersonalization and psychosis - basically being 'at one with the universe' sounds great to a hippy but can cause some people to have a breakdown: The Potential Dangers of Mindfulness | Psychology Today
But there is some sense here. Psychologically, christian prayer probably has much in common with secular meditation (of course I would add there's actually a whole lot more going on). Physical exercise helps to regulate the stress hormone cortisol. Journalling helps you reflect on how things make you feel and what is blogging if not a form of journalling.
Stumbled across an older (from this spring) article about the need for belonging to be better woven into curriculum at WonkHE: Time to go back to basics on belonging | Wonkhe
I've been mulling over some of the things that the author touches upon in this article. She writes as if it was a given that students my age (Gen X) would naturally have been able to belong at our institutions and that it is only the onset of new external factors that have caused students to not feel they belong.
I think this is part of the problem with HE. That the current professors and deans and vice-chancellors are those who thrived at university. You don't get to those positions by being like me. And going back to something I learnt about network theory during my studies on H880, students like me are not connected. We do not belong. We do not fit in. The hyper-connected students are the ones that thrive. They get statistically significantly better grades than us isolated 'loners'. They are the students who thrive at university and are statistically much less likely to wrestle with a constant urge to drop out as I did, and I would hazard a guess they are significantly more likely not only to do well but to stay in academia all the way to the top. So the students who thrived because of their strong network are the ones who control and run the universities as we have them today. The other problem with these hyper-connected thrivers is that they are not connected to us loners. In H880 an image is shared from this paper ("Seeing" networks: Visualising and evaluating student learning networks | Request PDF (researchgate.net)). What happens is at the centre of networks are the highly central information brokers. These are your top students. Surrounding them are 'potentially high-performing students'. If they can 'leverage' their connections they can do well. However, they also have connections who have no other connections - these connections who have only one or two connections into the network themselves are 'potentially low-performing students'. If their one connection cannot help them with a problem or does not want to help them - there is no law that all connections are strong connections or friendships - they are in danger of underperforming. The very, very worst place to be is the disconnected student. It's game over for these unfortunate students. And nobody cares about them because they aren't even on their peers' radars.
In fact network theory tells you everything you need to know about why the students who are least likely to graduate out of all the disabled students are the autistic ones. I can look at a network diagram and tell you exactly who the autistic students are.
So here at the OU it's my job to be the connection. I was really, really bugged by how much one of my tutor-groups (as a whole) underperformed compared to the average (or indeed my other tutor-group). It was a real-time, real-life demonstration of what is described in Dawson et al.'s paper. They weren't interacting and their grades were substantially lower.
I'm really pleased with how things seem to be going so far. I had to chase far fewer students to remind them to interact with me this year. And I have referred far fewer to student support due to no response. It's only week 2 but trying to keep in mind the suggestions of the trauma-informed teaching paper I mentioned before and my own knowledge of interacting with autistic students (like me) seems to be paying off currently.
My paper is in the final stages of being prepared and I was asked to check the proofs. I've had to use an affiliation. I'm sure that in the journal I submitted to, the older papers I've read didn't include affiliations. So of course I have had to ask to be an independent scholar. Am I allowed to feel weird about this?
Like, it was peer-reviewed. I didn't just make the whole thing up. The journal I submitted it to is in the blinking OU library. My students know this paper is coming and they're absolutely going to be like, wait, but you work for the OU. Like....
Well them's the rules. My research is appreciated by the OU but please use one of my other affiliations...
I talked about this at length elsewhere. I won't repeat it here.
I've seen other academics at the OU put their recent papers in their email signatures and I thought I might like to do that with a link to the article in the OU library 😉
I googled the best way to do that and Harzing.com has a nice example, which I am totally going to steal and rework. In terms of the other things Anne-Wil mentions in the blog, well I'll mention it in Academia.edu, ResearchGate and ORCID, but there's a two year embargo so I can't post a version until that has passed. I don't mind talking vaguely about it here I guess although despite huge numbers of readers (24,000 views) I don't know the proportions of bots vs. hackers trying to guess my password vs. people who are here because they have even the vaguest interest in my ramblings.
Social media doesn't seem relevant to me. I don't do twix anymore. I've been on LinkedIn since 2010 or 2011. When I first joined I really rated it. But that was because I was coming from IT book editing and LinkedIn was populated almost entirely by programmers. I used to get a lot of work through IT book publishers finding my profile. I don't rate LinkedIn anymore and thanks to being a freelancer/working remotely as an AL/autism my number of connections hasn't really grown much since about 2015. The other thing is, as I understand it, the algorithm punishes you for posting content that people don't interact with. Well no one in my connection list is going to be remotely interested in my paper. So it would be wrong to share it. It would actually do me damage.
My paper has now been through the copy-editing process, yay!
I've been reading through a fairly recent paper on Australian autistic university students' experiences (URL works for logged-in OU library access only): ‘It’s a symbolic violence’: Autistic people’s experiences of discrimination at universities in Australia - Diana Weiting Tan, Marion Rabuka, Tori Haar, Elizabeth Pellicano, 2024 (open.ac.uk)
Reading the Discussion, several things jump out at me. The mention of the necessity (unsurprisingly) for Universal Design for Learning, which for autistic students seems largely to consist of making lecture and tutorial notes available beforehand and recording lectures/tutorials and providing transcripts. This is already done at the OU for many tutorials.
Another thing mentioned was the importance of using trauma-informed practice and that negating this approach led to academic staff that were lacking in empathy and, ultimately, breaking the law. By using trauma-informed practices lecturerers can support autistic students' empowerment and self-advocacy (things that are hindered in autistic people through no fault of their own).
Anyway, I have not come across the idea of trauma-informed practice when it comes to teaching at any level - although I am painfully aware that many of my behaviours are the inevitable result of unresolved PTSD. (Did you know that it is 'common knowledge' in the psychological profession that 45% of autistics have PTSD? So many papers, so many..) So in the spirit of trying to be the undergraduate tutor I needed but never got, my next job is to find out what the heck trauma-informed practice is so I can ensure a) I'm doing it and b) set up an eSTEeM project to investigate its value as a teaching practice.
My daughter is almost exactly 30 years younger than me so I have two events colliding currently. It's 30 years since I embarked on my first (very ill-advised) degree and my daughter is leaving home to go to university.
Truthfully, I have been in bits all summer and (I recently learned) my condition has been the subject of much prayer within my church.
Because I might work in higher education, but if I'm being brutally (autistically) honest, I don't want my daughter to go to university.
Many well-meaning people have been offering me advice on how best to advise my daughter (she inherited her autism from me) to ensure she makes friends.
I am politlely smiling and nodding and trying desperately not to cry as these sage gems of well-intentioned wisdom are imparted to me. Because I did exactly those things myself. And they didn't work. My time at my alma mater were the loneliest three years of my life. So lonely I began regularly self-harming and, on one particularly bleak night, attempted to end my own life. I made no friends at university, merely aquaintances in various social groups who (mostly politely) tolerated me until we graduated and they were able to finally rid me from their lives and pretend I didn't exist. I had no one to talk to at all and I knew it.
My advice to my daughter is different to what a neurotypical person may advise a neurotypical child. You need to be utterly, utterly transparent about who you are. The sooner that ableists discover who you are the sooner they will remove themselves from your life and the sooner you can find the neurodivergents and non-ableists that are happy to accept you as you are. Do not bother trying to do everything, to 'get the most' out of fresher's week. Focus on you - what do you enjoy. There is no point forcing yourself to try things you don't like, you won't find your people there. Go to church. The Bible literally tells Christians to be a 'friend to the friendless'. Any Christian worth their Biblical salt will be accepting of others that don't present neurotypically. Annoy the hell out of the chaplains. Their job is to care for the spiritual and emotional wellbeing of the students and staff in a university in a way that a personal tutor or line manager (however well-meaning) cannot ever hope to be because of competing demands on their time. At the open day, I pointed out the dedicated chaplaincy office at my daughter's institution with its open invitation to drop in for tea and biscuits and a chat. And most importantly of all to remember that a university degree is little different from your first job. If you are truly, truly miserable don't ever be afraid to drop out! University credits can often be transferred to a better, more welcoming institution.
I've been catching up on my 'to be read' pile and have been reading Lived Experiences of Ableism in Academia. It's a book about ableism as experienced by disabled academics, as apposed to students. But the insights regarding the mitigation of unintentionally ableist institutional practices are still useful to me in my work.
I also attended an OU event on supporting neurodiversity last week. One of the talks was regarding a recent project investigating the transition of neurodivergent students from Access courses to level one courses (Exploring the Transitions of Neurodivergent Access Students to Level One Study: Narratives of Study Skills and Support | International Journal of Educational and Life Transitions (dundee.ac.uk)). The paper mentions plans for future study - much needed for a variety of reasons, but not least because this project was only able to include one STEM student. It transpires I happen to know someone involved in launching the bigger project and have let it be known that I would be interested in taking part. However, nothing may come of it. Funding constraints, yadda, yadda. So we'll see.
This is kind of a note to self. Freshers week begins the week after next. I normally introduce OUSA to my students in my first tutorial, but I'm thinking of flipping everything on its head this year. Instead I'm planning on pointing my students to the OUSA (Home (oustudents.com)) and Student Hub Live (The Student Hub Live | The Student Hub Live (open.ac.uk)) in my introductory emails before term starts - I'm expecting to be given my student list next week or the week after.
OUSA gives students opportunities to meet others either through the OU clubs and societies or through volunteering, while Student Hub Live runs online events and podcasts about university life and succeeding as a student. These presentations cover a lot of the generic OU student ground that my first tutorial usually covers, I figure if I send students to Student Hub Live that will free up time to cover SM123 specific content including preparing and submitting TMA01 and how the group project works. I'm hoping that covering this content will make my introductory tutorials more useful.
My FHEA application was submitted at the end of August. I'm not sure exactly how long I have to wait to hear the outcome - it seems to be many weeks if not several months. I'll also get detailed feedback regarding the outcome whatever the outcome - outlining strengths amd weaknesses and, if I need to revise and resubmit (it's not a given I'll be awrded FHEA status), what I need to do to meet the required standard.
I still haven't heard back about my journal paper - I was expecting to hear back about the copy-editing process. I'm getting anxious and have started spiralling. Have I missed an email? Have I deleted something? Autism is a mixed bag - I produced a journal article because I have excellent obsession skills, I am now spiralling precisely because of those advanced fixation skills.
Anyway we are now in September. I'm going to be given a list of my students soon. I've also been given a shed-load of tutorials. I was expecting to do fewer normal tutorials and take on at least one of the new 'study skills' tutorials, but it doesn't look like that is going to happen now. It looks like I've been given only regular tutorials. Whatever. At least I have so many tutorials I can only assume that I will get all the tutor groups I was expecting.
I'm thinking about how I onboard my students this month. I'm particularly concerned about what happened last year. Having two groups for SM123 it's really clear to me when differences between the two groups arise as I am the common denominator. Last year I had one group that seemed very much like my previous groups, but my other group was much, much less engaged. They didn't want to engage with each other in the forum, they didn't want to engage with the group work project, they didn't want to attend the tutorials. Which would have been fine, but their average score was significantly lower than my more average group. Of course there were outstanding individuals in both groups, but the overall dynamic was very different and the overall outcome was disappointing.
Now of course students have any number of legitimate reasons to not do these things and success is possible without doing any of these things. My best ever student never did any of those things either. I only knew of her what could be gleaned from her TMAs. But while exceptional students can thrive in isolation, I'm not sure it's best for the typical student. Heck, I'm not sure even with my autism I would thrive working in such a way.
There's research finding that undergraduate grades are directly related to the volume of reading materials read by the student. Older readers of this blog may remember that students on University Challenge would introduce themselves: My name is Kate and I'm reading .... Not studying, reading.
I'm just wondering how to communicate with the students the importance of really engaging with materials to get the best results. I'm thinking I have to communicate this early on, but I'm also worried about info dumping all over them so they permanently turn off from me and don't bother to read my emails and other reminders. Gosh are my weekly/fortnightly emails even worth it. Perhaps they're overwhelming and I should put everything in the tutor groups.
I thought I'd give a brief overview of my findings from the research project I ran in late spring this year. I said I might put my findings on Academia.edu. I've now decided against that, so am going to summarize them here. I had very small numbers of respondents, certainly not enough to generalise about the wider population but I did, interestingly enough, manage to encounter believers who identified with every single one of the 5 theories of creation I proposed (no one in my small sample propsed a different cosmology, so no one mentioned flat-Earth for example). Meaning I had both youth-Earth creationist and 'Genesis is literary and cannot be "read into" in any literal way at all' believers. I also had a significant proportion of believers who said variations on the theme of 'this is a secondary issue and not important to one's salvation and causes division' and refused to be drawn on any of the creation theories or suggestions for the nature of the Star of Bethlehem.
One of the other interesting (to me at least) findings, was that the Christians sampled believed the Star of Bethlehem to be a scientific/astrological phenomenon. I offered the opportunity to say it was supernatural (giving the example of an angel) but few respondents said they believed that.
I have to say, personally myself, since it's all done and over now that, I myself believe that it was astrological. The Magi were Babylonian astrologers and when they come to Jerusalem to worship the new-born king, Herod's palace have no idea what they're talking about - which to me at least means that it couldn't have been a comet - every ancient culture around the world feared comets as portents of doom - interestingly every culture around the world fears 'the sky falling'. I will concede that after the visit to the palace the account sounds more supernatural, with the 'star' leading the way.
This is what has led me to become interested in ancient astrology - I wanted to know what the Babylonian Magi saw that set them on their journey and I don't think it's possible to identify that without seriously understanding their astrological beliefs. Well it turns out it used to be known to Christians, a Roman writer Julius Firmicus Maternus in circa 330 was writing not only a Christian apologetics book on the error of pagan religions but a textbook on astrology in which he gives the birth chart of a divine man - Christians believe that Jesus' nature is fully God and fully man. It also turns out that while divinatory astrology has long been rejected, for example by Thomas Aquinas, it wasn't wholesale rejected until much more recently. Martin Luther's right-hand man Philip Melancthon was a practicing astrologer and Luther wrote that while he didn't agree with Philip about its usefulness, didn't see anything wrong with the way he was doing it.
Astrology was far, far more acceptable in medieval times and earlier. Which is why I'm keen to read and translate Tycho Brahe's letters regarding astrology, as he too, like every astronomer of the day was both an astronomer and an astrologer.
I have pretty much finished my FHEA application. I've uploaded my reference and my monitoring reports and reflection. My 3000-word reflective statement has been edited according to the recommendations of my mentor and staff tutor and then my mapping document is complete apart from the final wordcount of the statement. I've asked for a final read-through and then those two files will be uploaded and I'll be all done and waiting for the assessment.
I still haven't heard about the outcome of the copyediting process on my journal paper - I don't know if that's because it's not been done yet or because it's been done and doesn't need my OK for minimal changes (don't forget I'm an ex-editor).
I've got a couple of books I want to get through in preparation for my work next year - some cosmology textbooks and some feminism books.
When I was 17/18 I had a conversation with an ex-boyfriend. He was a English A-level student. Part of what English students do is learn to analyse texts from different perspectives. One of those perspectives is feminist. I mentioned something one day about being a feminist, thinking it a not very contraversial statement. My ex-boyfriend smiled derisively at me and said "Oh really, which books have you read then?" I was appalled, if the academic field of feminism wasn't concerned with the lived experiences of actual women but only with which books one read, it struck me as a worthless diversion.
As an adult in my mid-twenties I became a Christian and hence an adherent of a patriarchial faith. Because of this, some of what passes for third wave feminsim makes me want to roll my eyes so hard it hurts.
So despite regularly enduring personal misogynistic attacks from men and other women throughout my life (and with hindsight my ex was himself displaying his own misogyny while claiming feminism for his own), I've not felt that feminism was relevant to my life since I was a teenager.
But recently, I've been reading about the early feminists and the fight for female participation in the sciences and I've realised that it would benefit for me to get a better grounding in early feminism to understand the history of science better.
I'm finally making headway on my FHEA application, yay!
So I thought I'd take this lunchtime to investigate potential freelancing gigs I could use to supplement my income since I work very, very part-time for the OU and there do not appear to be many modules I can pick up (not being a computer scientist).
My husband wants to me restart my tutoring. I'm less keen as before I used to do it from my kitchen table and now my husband works from home. I'd have to do virtual only, which works OK for OU students, but is less easy with schoolchildren.
I keep thinking I could probably start editing again.
The only problem is editing generally makes me ill. Panic attack a day ill. It's been so nice to have spent the whole of 2023 and half of 2024 not having a panic attack because I gave it up in December of 2022.
Editing is also problematic as it's so concentrated. The 'average' rate is 10 pages an hour to proofread, 5 to copy-edit. That means the typical academic book is a good month's work - as despite even autistic hyperfocusing I struggle to concentrate entirely on one book at that level for 8 hours every day. There's also the issue that as it's so time consuming I can't do editing and marking TMAs at the same time, it simply won't work. Still I can earn more from one proofreading project than I can earn from a year working with one student.
I hopped onto LinkedIn and looked at the skills that are listed under the Services Offered option of the More button and saw grant writing. I have no experience of grant writing, although I have eyed up two grants/scholarships that I want to apply for this coming academic year. So I did a little googling to find out how to learn to be a successful grant writer so that I might be able to successfully win the grants for myself, with, you know, perhaps the future potential to use those skills to offer my services for payment. I found some professional looking YouTube videos about learning grant writing - they're teasers for a woman's online course and community - at a cost of a mere US$500 a month.
Nice work if you can get it.
So is the woman a successful grant writer or is she actually more successful at selling courses about learning to be a grant writer?
Anyway, I'm going back to that FHEA essay and I'm going to see if the OU library has a book about applying for grants.
I'm really struggling right now to focus on doing the FHEA essay.
Look, I'm even procrastinating by writing a blog post about this procrastination.
It's not even particularly hard. Like I've done the tough stuff already by doing the mapping tool and a postgraduate certificate in online teaching. This should be money for old rope. What's wrong with me?
I can't stop thinking that this is just like when I did the Duke of Edinburgh's award. Completed all the activities and tasks, did the trek. Then promptly refused to submit the evidence for an easy Bronze. I can't help but feel that this isn't neurotypical procrastination but autistic bloodymindedness (which is not the official term, the experts call it autistic inertia and apparently it's linked with depression and -I'm guessing- burnout. Because right now I really feel burnt out.)
Small steps - that's my answer. Like I realised in the group call that I am probably not reflecting the right way - I'm autistic, ruminating endlessly about everything I've ever done wrong comes naturally to me, but I need to talk about what/how/why not just how terrible I am. I've already 2 of the 5 sections for my essay, so I'm in a strong place. Today I'm going to revisit my already written statements and edit them and improve them based on the information provided in the session. Then I'll start on the third section, and then the fourth and finally the fifth. At which point I will email it to my mentor for suggestions.
I was searching for a book in the online library when I stumbled upon the fact that the OU library has (what appears to be) full access to the O'Reilly learning website including vast numbers of Python on-demand courses, books and videos (link only works for logged-in OU staff and students):
https://learning-oreilly-com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/search/?q=*&type=course&topics=Python
I need to add this resource to the list of Python resources I share in my tutor group forums. If you do visit this, note that in my case the cookies associated with O'Reilly seem to 'break' the automatic logging into the OU website/Moodle/intranet. Nothing a quick cache clear out can't solve, but somewhat annoying.
I discovered that there was a student survey run in May of this year into student perception of online tutorials, the results of which have just been released as an internal report. There's lots to think about and I will be coming back to it a lot as I contemplate how to improve my own tutorials. Several things stood out, there was mention of going deeper than the materials and preparing for the TMAs, the need to avoid it becoming too lecture-like (which is actually easily done if the students aren't chatty) and that they're often tired at the end of a long work-day. This is something I talked about with my Staff Tutor. After some discussion with my husband (a fellow Christian) I'm going to attempt to run all my tutorials next year on Sunday evenings. I know this is going to lose some potential students who would prefer a day of rest on the Sunday. I'm thinking that probably though this day/time will be more beneficial for more students than my normal Tuesday and Wednesday evening tutorials. And personally, Sunday hasn't been a day of rest for many, many years. My husband is a deacon in our church so we always are among the first to arrive at church to set it up (we meet in a school building and have to set up the seating, PA system, Sunday school, creche, refreshments, Bibles and other literature, etc. equipment every week) and always among the last to leave after everything has been put away. Saturday has long been my rest day.
Oh yes, and I have to write that FHEA statement. My mentor and my husband assure me I am 'on it', I feel less convinced and if honest I am struggling to motivate myself to knuckle down and get on with it. I think I need a holiday.
Here's one for sharing at the next Journal Club. Or perhaps not. We may start a feminist uprising...
Leaving aside all the debate on adjunct staff vs tenured academics and the marketisation of higher education, what really lept out for me was the student evaluations of the (possibly autistic) less feminine physics contingent teaching faculty (CTF) member (i.e. non-tenure track teaching staff). Indeed the university is so concerned that they put in place an improvement plan when a male CTF shows her how to do typical lectures (like him) rather than the student-centred active-learning syle with lots of science demonstrations that she had been doing. Her students actually had better grades than his.
One of the things mentioned as an issue was her presentation. That teaching is 'female' stereotyped. By not presenting herself in as feminine a way as the other female CTFs she was getting lower scores. The paper gives a Judith Butler reference to back this up, who I'm vaguely aware of as a gender academic, I'm not saying the conjecture is right or wrong, I just wish there were some references to research into student evalutions of staff based on appearance and maleness and femaleness. I know there has been much research on students evaluating female teaching staff more harshly especially if they do not present as warm. And there has been research finding that you learn better from staff you like, so you should not dismiss how you come across when teaching as, sadly, it is important.
I'm just struck by the thought I might need to be worrying about my lack of feminity. I'm autistic, I hate the way makeup feels on my skin so don't wear it. I try to pick a nice presentable blouse/shirt/top to wear onscreen. Maybe I should invest in some chunky necklaces to serve as stimming objects and signifiers of my feminity. And then I think, why am I even having to worry about my feminity. What does it even matter? But apparently it does. Urgh!
I'm finally starting to get the hang of ResearchGate. Yay, I guess.
But I've hit another snag.
My paper is going to be trapped behind a paywall entirely for 2 years. Two years after publication I am allowed to make my publication available via my institution repository because the embargo will have lifted. Except I don't have an institution. Which I know sounds weird on an OU-hosted blog when I'm an OU employee, but it's because I'm on a teaching-only contract. There is this thing where I can apply to be like an honorory research fellow or something, but that is restricted to research conducted with the OU itself - so if I published a paper as a result of an eSTEeM project I could apply to be a research fellow - but I can't just apply on my own, I need a reference from an OU-approved research academic saying, yes, this person is conducting research connected with the OU. My research on the history of astronomy and archaeoastronomy is not the 'right' sort of research to get honorary fellowship.
So that means I don't know where to post my paper after the embargo. I'm fairly sure the contract explicitly rejects the option of making it publicly accessible on sites like ResearchGate and Academia.edu (to be honest it's been a while since I signed it so may have misremembered, besides it's not like I can do anything until the summer of 2026 anyway).
So I decided to go hunting to see if I could find some sort of institution that I could affliate with formally that would allow me to upload my research somewhere.
It's not looking great, you guys.
There's the National Consortium of Independent Scholars (yes, they go by NCIS), they seem great. Except I can't join them as membership is restricted to people with PhDs or people studying for PhDs, which is not applicable to me and is basically the reason why I'm doing this whole thing anyway.
Then there's the Ronin Institute. They'll let anyone(ish) in - I think. I'm not sure because they're not letting anyone at all in right now because they've been overwhelmed with new joiners and their website doesn't seem to have been updated since 2021.
Some blogs suggest putting my first draft on arXiv. I can't join. I don't have a PhD. I'm not doing a PhD. I need someone to vouch for my academic and research abilities who is already a member of said arXiv and I do all my academic work alone. I wish to God people did want to work with me, but they don't, they never did (where do you think my social anxiety comes from?).
Then there's IGDORE (the Institute for Globally Distributed Open Research and Education). They'll let independent scholars join them. But you have to agree to publish all your research open source. Hahahahahaha. So it's closed to most humanities independent scholars if they want actual respect for their ideas. My husband recommended I just publish everything on the web and not bother with peer review journals at all. So I'm going to be an unhinged crackpot without even the credibility of being published in a legitimate peer reviewed journal (i.e. not some predatory outfit on another continent).
At this point I gave up and have decided to use the affliation of Gentlewoman Scientist because I now realise I am a throwback to the Victorian age and need to find work that is more appropriate to my crinoline undergarments. Like, every door is shut to me.
Please tell me you do not want want me in academia, without actually telling me you do not want me in academia.
Suggestions? Comments are fully open on this.
EDIT:
I've finally found FIRE UK (The Forum for Independent Research Endeavours UK). I had dismissed them because their page on NCIS says that there is a website coming but not ready yet and they were partners to the NCIS and therefore I probably wouldn't meet their standards. But the website is live (if you google them you'll find it, I'm not linking to them, I'm not linking to anyone in case they tell me to never darken their doors again, I know right, paranoia much - this is what this whole debacle has done to me) and they appear to not have restrictions on entry to non-PhDs. No mention of a repository.
It also occurs to me that my long-neglected website where I keep meaning to provide links to useful open resources, kateblackham.space linked on the right, would serve perfectly well as my 'institutional respository' since my institution is me. That will be my solution.
I finished off my second 'reference or equivalent' for the FHEA process. Because I'm an AL I do very little work with colleagues in a manner that would ordinarily allow a person to write a reference. So ALs are allowed to provide our line manager (known as a Staff Tutor) for one reference and create a second using the alternative method. Basically I have to take 5 monitoring report forms (these are sheets that we get on a regular basis where someone usually a peer, reviews our marking work, tells us what they they like and didn't like and suggests improvements), screenshot them and then include them in a Word file with a page of reflection about how I improved my practice as a result of the monitoring reports and what I intend to do going forward to further improve.
My Staff Tutor signs off all these monitoring reports and has witnessed firsthand my teaching and met me in person and is happy with my work so he's the obvious choice for the first reference (doing this FHEA process was also his suggestion anyway so I'm hoping his reference will be positive).
That done and dusted I decided to go look at joining ResearchGate. I don't know if it's me, but I'm not getting it at all. I can't have more than one master's degree (or if they do they must both be of the same type, i.e. both MSc or MA not one of each) so I quit trying to have an Education. Because it is largely work related I joined with my OU email address, at which point it tries to make my OU job my primary affliation. But that doesn't work as the OU are quite strict about non-research staff not claiming OU affliation for research papers - it's one thing for me to put OU on academia.edu as that's where only humanities types hang out, but ResearchGate is full of physicists from the OU who may understandably take offence at my claiming to be one of them - so I really ought to be primarily an independent scholar. But I can't easily add my correct education. So now I look like a wild-eyed crackpot with no academic background and unhinged ideas. (I may also be overly down on myself.) I also can't find anyone. Like, whenever I'm searching via Google for something vaguely HE related I can't help but stumble over ResearchGate threads with people (of varying degrees of sense, knowledge and experience). But now I've actually joined ResearchGate I can't actually see anything. It's an enormous site of nothingness. I thought it would be like Reddit and instead it's like joining Facebook circa 2001 (Facebook launched in 2004, for those not sure what I'm driving at). So I nearly deleted it, but have decided to keep it for a rainy day and the next time I need to track down an obscure paper.
For Fellowship of Advance HE you need to evidence all 5 Areas of Activity (A1-A5), all 5 Core Knowledge (K1-K5) and all 5 Professional Values (V1-V5).
The way they get us to do these at the OU is to give us a mapping tool (which to me looks like the enormous paperwork files I had to fill in to prove that GCSE and A level textbooks did indeed meet the syllabi and detail whereabouts in the textbooks that content could be found - except this mapping tool is tiny in comparison, a mere 11 pages long) and ask us to briefly state what we've done that meets those criteria in the mapping tool. Then when we have completed that we can use the mapping tool as a sort of essay writing guide ensuring that we include everything we need to say. Then we delete the content from the mapping tool and just say which paragraph of which section in our essay is meant. I've made it sound more complicated than it actually is.
The upshot is I have everything filled in apart from K5: Requirements for quality assurance and enhancement and their implications for practice. Now the PSF standards have changed (to make them so that academic-related staff without teaching duties can have their contributions recognised) so K5 used to be Methods for evaluating the effectiveness of teaching. But I'm hoping that what used to be covered by the old K5 can still apply under the new K5, because I wrote a load of reflective notes during H880, which I'm hoping are still going to be useful.
In H880 the first point at which I can find reflections that map to the old K5 are during week 1 of the 21st century open TEL educator section. We had to do a lesson observation for the assessment of that section and so the reflection was tied to that. I was thinking about the value of being able to watch my peers' recorded lectures as a way of picking up new ideas, new approaches to tackling problems, etc. I wrote a bunch of thoughts in OneNote that I shan't repeat here, but may be worth employing as an example of K5.
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