This little corner of cyberspace came about after I went on a rather lovely holiday, and had the time and inclination to write about my adventures and share them via social media–which reminded me that I actually like to write.
This is essentially a personal blog, but will have a regional/South Coast (NSW) focus, because that’s where I live and work. I may sometimes link to my two existing academic blogs, Shapeshifters in Popular Culture and Autism Spectrum Disorders in Higher Education, both of which have been hanging in a kind of frozen stasis not unlike Agent Scully in those pod things (yes, there will be lots of geeky pop culture references), because I’ve been focused on my day job, and writing in order to publish, not perish.
I have some thoughts swirling in my head that are demanding to be let out.
The last time I blogged was July 30, and at the time I was all about good intentions and WordPress Wednesdays being in the calendar. I noted that I was juggling a few things and made this bold prediction for the coming week:
Next week, for example, I’ll be (briefly) juggling two subjects + a writing course + research + private tutoring + 2 jobs (including a mandatory appearance at a Sydney campus). And, breathe.
Instead, my Father-in-Law fell out of bed the following Tuesday and broke his hip. That was the day I was supposed to be heading up to Sydney in the evening so I could go to mandatory training on the Wednesday. I felt pretty uneasy about the whole thing and insisted that I was cancelling, despite my husband telling me everything would be fine: “Dad” would sail through surgery on Wednesday and I’d be back on Thursday to go visit him.
It was lucky I cancelled. On Wednesday morning the surgeon called and said he was too unwell for surgery, and that an untreated broken hip in an 87 year old was likely to be a life-ending event. Chris proved them right on the Thursday.
The Wednesday was also Day 1 of the four-week intensive writing course. And, as noted above, I was doing two jobs and two concurrent Uni subjects at the time. I got an extension on the final assignment for one subject, muddled my way through, and (somehow–I genuinely don’t understand how) kept up with the Creative Writing workload.
Three weeks later, I was down to one subject at Uni + the CW course, but I started doing marking on top of my day job and my other, smaller Uni job. So 70 hours or so per week of paid work. It was in the final week of this–and the first week of the longer term Creative Writing course, in an uncanny echo that made me very uncomfortable!–that my own Dad was taken to A & E via ambulance. Twice. This has led to some pretty invasive tests, which are still ongoing. One surgery was scheduled for literally the middle day of HSC Marking season, where I was once again working 60+ hours a week. My parents live three hours away. He needed transport to Nepean hospital, which is 2/3 of the way there.
I got them there.
Reader, it’s been a time.
I had moved on to the full year Creative Writing course and was managing (again-somehow) right through the HSC period but then they moved into a new rhythm and I’ve not done anything for about 2.5 weeks now. This is not good. My pop culture research all has to be undertaken outside of work hours because of the nature of the way my job is funded. So last weekend, I did the final edits on one chapter, due out next year; somehow, I also have to watch about 60 hours of footage and write a journal article by January 6. I have two Board meetings between now and the end of the year. My final Uni assignment is due Monday, so I’m trying to get that in and out of the way; I am continuing to plant and maintain the flowers for my daughter’s bridal bouquet and table decorations because obviously, another low-pressure thing needed to be added to the mix. 😉 Oh yes, and we’re hosting Christmas.
I also did a sustainable floristry workshop in the middle of HSC Marking, because of course I did …
These are all things I like doing, but dear Lord, when they all hit at once …
And so, we have limped through to the Silly Season. It is December 4 and my lights and decorations are not done, and if you know me at all, you are probably as alarmed by that as I am right now. But we had unpainted timbers on the front verandah after Jeff fixed our twisted verandah poles. Having paid for the roof and windows to be cleaned, I could hardly hang lights over moldy and/or unpainted poles, now, could I?
We can at least say that I’ve started …
Three days of climbing up and down a painting platform before and after work (thank you, Daylight Savings) has reminded me why I paid someone to do the roof and windows. I can barely walk today.
Sadly, there is more painting in my immediate future. On Monday, Child the Younger told us that he and His New Love were looking for a flat together. By Monday afternoon, they had secured one and he’d given notice. So when Open Agent called, I spoke with them, rather than putting them off as I usually do, and now it seems we need to sort out a Contract for Sale and get the place spruced up PDQ.
So, the obvious question is WHY? Why do I do this to myself?
And the answer is: because I am once again getting unemployment for my birthday this year. Does two years in a row make it an annual tradition? Both work contracts end in December; I have 6 more hours to work in one Uni job and 9 more days in the other.
This is why I take on the marking shifts and subject myself to working days, nights and weekends at least three times a year, for two to three weeks at a time–those are WFH jobs I might actually retain next year, when my “main” jobs over the last three years have been extremely insecure. Why push the sale of the flat through so quickly? Same reasons. We’re making hay while the sun shines–I’m not going to have any salary come January, so settling on the flat puts money in the bank that we can then draw down for living expenses.
And why add the study/gardening/creative writing/sitting on Boards to an already-full plate? Well, if you’re going to have early retirement thrust upon you, you’d better have some stuff to fill your days …
What’s one more side project between friends?
So, no promises around what may or not be achieved, let alone what may or may not be published, over the next three weeks. But as they sing in the Rankin Bass Christmas classics; I will put one foot in front of the other …
I love Wednesdays. They’re my “day off” from my main day job, or as we jokingly call it around here, the mid-week weekend. Wednesday basically means that I can dress comfortably and feel slightly less guilty when I’m snoozing the alarm and hiding from the cold mornings.
My Wednesdays, however, are no less busy than my “work” days. I swear I spend just as much time–if not more time–moving blocks around in my diary in an attempt to keep on top of everything.
I put work up there in scare quotes because one of the big things I do on Wednesdays is my other job, for another Uni. (Also, my main Uni colleagues can’t always manipulate the calendar adequately so I sometimes end up with work meetings I can’t quite avoid on Wednesdays. I could get all legalistic about it, but I’m on a short-term contract and sometimes it’s easier to roll with it and take an early mark on another day to compensate).
The way my job is funded means that I can’t do my Gothic research on the company dime, so that’s also been pushed to the mid-week and conventional weekends. I doubt there are many GenXers out there with Teen Wolf regularly blocked in to their Outlook calendars, but here we are.
Calendar entry = commitment.
Wednesdays are also used for any appointments like Physio or medical or hair. Last week, we crammed in a past minute meeting with the Jeff the Wonder-Builder who helped me redesign part of the garden for improved bridal bouquet production. His team brought that idea to fruition the following day.
The Birdies vege patch has been here about 15 years. Now moved so a shed can go in this spot.
Four hours later, flanked by brand new rose beds …
While I was unemployed and then underemployed, I thought it made good sense to lean into my (bonus)Granny/(pre)retirement/(sporadic)gardening phase. So I recently enrolled in a Creative Writing course–which both terrifies and excites me–and, as I’ve mentioned in passing before, I am once again doing some study. Now that time is in much shorter supply, I am regularly questioning my own sanity. There are significant financial and logistical imperatives for doing each of these things at the times I chose. It’s just unfortunate that there are times when they are all stacked on top of each other. Next week, for example, when I’ll be (briefly) juggling two subjects + a writing course + research + private tutoring + 2 jobs (including a mandatory appearance at a Sydney campus). And, breathe.
“It’s not the load that breaks you down; it’s the way you carry it.”
Lou Holtz
Wednesdays are also, of course, supposed to be WordPress Wednesdays, which has become more of a stretch goal than a habit over the years.
And so to conclude, I’m going to cheat a bit and thus reduce the “Blog” block in today’s calendar. (Or, perhaps we can reframe that and say I’m utilising a fortuitous coalescence of gardening, writing and studying). So here is a brief Uni piece that I shared last night, around personal, significant cultural objects:
This display is where I can see it last thing at night, and first thing in the morning. On the left is a leather case containing my late grandfather’s binoculars. I used them for bird-watching in my Diploma of Sustainable Living assignments; I’m pretty sure he only used them at the races. The small cloisonné vase on the right belonged to his wife, my grandmother. (They didn’t have the most conventional marriage, so a little distance is appropriate). My Grandma passed when I was 13, but one of the things I loved most about visiting was that she always–or so it seemed–had home-grown roses in little vases on the mantelpiece. So year-round flowers have become my goal–and my planting choices are heavily influenced by the various floral obsessions of my four grandparents, all of whom were keen gardeners: dahlias, salvias, roses, lavender. It’s a way to feel close though they are all now long gone. I guess in a sense the practice of gardening is an attempt to maintain those links in a more conscious and active way.
The last time I posted, it was my “second” 21st birthday.
Nope, I’m not 42. I’m a good decade older than that. It’s 21 years since I was diagnosed with–and subsequently recovered from–cancer.
The Offspring never seemed too bothered by having two bald parents for a time
Having choriocarcinoma in my early 30s probably did change some of my paths in life, but marginally. It’s cancer of the placenta. The risk of it returning if you have no more placentas is nil. We did attempt, briefly, to expand our family further but those pregnancies didn’t take and the cost benefit analysis very quickly just didn’t stack up. The risk may have been worth it for more kids, but if we weren’t actually getting those, then it was time to focus on the two that we had, who actually turned out to be kind of wonderful.
Those kids walked beside me at multiple Relays for Life, joining with our community to raise awareness and funds that would mean fewer families would face what we did while they were still so very, very young (Child the Elder was in Kindy and Child the Younger in preschool when I was undergoing treatment). Ultimately, Child the Elder would serve on the organising committee with me.
Team members at our first Relay (2005)
Committee members at our last Relay (2023)
For his part, Child the Younger accidentally scored us a sponsor when I once materialised at his work on Relay day, frazzled, and asked was there any way they could blow up some purple and yellow balloons, stat, because our planned supplier had dropped the ball. While they were working on this, his boss asked whether there was a personal reason our family was so involved, and my boy matter-of-factly responded, “Oh yeah. Mum.” The balloons were donated that year, and for quite some years afterwards.
Child the Younger handling his Mum and Child the Elder being handled by our Josh.
Those “kids” are now grown and have been kicking some serious life goals lately.
In late June, Child the Elder and her Sweetie got engaged. Unlike me, she was the kind of child who dressed up as princesses, brides, and princess brides. As a teen, she created her first Pinterest wedding board.
I am happy to report that she must have got all of that out of her system, because she’s being very sensible now that wedding planning is an actual reality.
My main task is to grow the flowers for the bouquet and table arrangements. (No pressure!). Luckily, I have a Garden Design assessment coming up in my Diploma course, an enabling spouse, and a tradie on speed dial who’s used to my insane ideas and yet is still willing to assist when I inevitably bite off more than I can chew in the landscaping projects arena.
Just a couple of weeks later, Child the Younger graduated. As someone who was a long-term employee of his university, I have been to a great many graduation ceremonies, so I was surprised that I got a bit emotional at this one.
Beaming parents with the Graduate!
In between, I had a professional milestone of my own. Two, I guess. First, I went to my first academic conference since COVID.
Secondly and more importantly, while I was there, I was awarded a HERDSA Fellowhip. Basically this means that I put together a reflective portfolio of work focused on how and why I teach the way I do. Anonymous assessors judged it and came to the conclusion that I actually care about teaching quite a lot and do a pretty good job of it, which was very nice validation to receive.
The 2025 HERDSA Fellows
The conference and awards were in Perth, meaning I got to catch up with a couple of long time friends.
I took advantage of the only working 4 days a week thing to add in a quick trip to Rottnest Island. (Aside: Angel and Dick Strawbridge from Escape to the Chateau had the same idea. I nearly fell off my perch when I saw them). There, I made some new friends:
My first quokka!This sign doesn’t workPub quokka trying to stowawayMore pub quokka actionNew Zealand fur sealsOsprey nest
Seagull in flight
I loved everything about Rottnest Island–except the ferry ride over. The less said about that, the better.
It’s been so long since I’ve added to this blog, that I wasn’t able to log-in for a hot minute there. Mind you, that has pretty much been the theme of the week!
In a major life update and against all odds given the current state of Higher Education, my half-year of substantive unemployment has come to a close. I have a half-year contract doing what I did before, at the same level, which feels nothing short of miraculous. It is a Catholic university, so perhaps that is appropriate.
If you’re playing along at home: yes, that does make four universities in under two years!
In the interim, I cobbled together what work I could, which I hasten to add was nothing like a living wage. I did manage to slog my way through to get my teaching number/s reactivated … but didn’t get any work. By the time I was offered something, this 6-month gig was on offer. Since March, I have also been doing some casual delivery of literacy programs and marking at another university. Both contract jobs are based in Sydney, but are very sensibly allowing me to work remotely where that is appropriate, which is the bulk of the time.
I did NAPLAN marking — which was a disaster, and I quit after a week of not getting within a bull’s roar of minimum wage on any given day because of their ineffectual systems and poor communication causing unnecessary delays. I did GAMSAT marking, which started around the same time and is, mercifully, professional, organised, and generates appropriate remuneration. I continued my Board work, and I extended my studies from an Undergrad Certificate, enrolling in the Diploma course.
I am now wondering how to juggle all of this along with a “real” job 4 days/week, but I guess I’ll figure it out, because I always do.
Higher Ed, however, is still a mess. Every day I hear of further job cuts at one institution or another. There is no respite in sight.
Yesterday, both universities were impacted by IT issues and I was struggling to log in to anything. The new place is like working in two half-universities. The team and discussions about work are fabulous and get me very excited about what we can achieve, but then whenever I try to find my way through any system (you know: email, pay, super, induction …), I wonder what in the 1978 is going on. They are evidently still recovering from a past cyber incident, but in my case, issues could also be because someone has not yet triggered my access. It is only Day 3. It would be reasonable to think that further clarity may yet arrive.
Research is going OK. One chapter is with editors, one is off to the publishers, and I was approached to submit a journal article for a special edition on Teen Wolf, which looks like it is going ahead.
OK, I guess I could watch it again …
Father in Law has had a long hospital stay this year, but is doing well now. One of his other kids is coming for a visit this weekend, which will be nice for him.
Spousal Unit has been doing casual teaching days, because he’s very bad at being retired.
Child the Elder has settled in to her new place and we spent some time with her on the weekend to distract her because the Son Out Law was working away.
I suppose Sydney has some charms …
Child the Younger has a one year teaching contract and has suddenly become too diligent to spend time with us!
Callieis now on anxiety medication, which has helped my anxiety because she has stopped peeing on everything that doesn’t move (and once, famously, on something that does: me. Lying in bed). Clover is my devoted shadow who tries to race past me and hop into bed with me each night. Unfortunately, her delighted purring if she succeeds is far too much for this insomniac to handle.
I also moved from full-time employment into … something else. Something TBD.
It was not my intention to “retire” at 52. To begin transition into retirement –ie move into part-time work– was the hope. The state of the higher education sector meant that that was not even a discussion. Just: thanks, you did a great job, we don’t know quite how we’re going to manage with this ever-shrinking team, but there’s No Money.
As someone who wears my leftie little heart on my sleeve, it is both profoundly ironic and profoundly disappointing that I managed to survive the Rudd era pulling of funds from universities to fund schools’ Gonski(-esque) reforms and a decade of political inertia interspersed with robust political uni-bashing and a global pandemic, only to fall as the hoped-for reforms were … well, talked about. And then somehow linked to a housing crisis (which, by the way, started during COVID when there were precisely zero incoming international students, and which ignores basic common sense–like, thinking for approximately 30 seconds about what proportion of the housing market is tied up by international students, and whether student housing typically looks anything like what Mum, Dad and a couple of kids are trying to lock down in the suburbs. But I digress).
My first job was as a waitress in a little steakhouse in Blackheath when I had just turned 15. I’ve had some sort of job pretty much ever since. As of this minute, I have precisely nothing going on until a couple of marking gigs next March. And I don’t quite know what to do with that.
And so, we continue on with our manic little December. Last night, we celebrated my father-in-law’s 87th birthday (Dec 18), my 52nd birthday (Dec 20) and my daughter’s 26th birthday (Dec 21). I am usually vehemently, violently anti-combined celebrations of any flavour in December, but logistically, this was the only thing we could get to work.
Child the Younger, Son-Out-Law, Child the Elder, Father-in-Law, Spousal Unit, Self, Parental Units.
When the cake shop says they can only do a max of 35 characters …
And so I have a lot of thoughts but am a bit short on words and utterly devoid of answers to well-meaning and enthusiastic enquiries as to what is next. So, for now: Happy Holidays. And 2025, on balance, probably has to better than 2024, so cheers to that.
Well, we all survived the mid-October mess. Except the 19 year old cat. And I have zero interest in revisiting how that all played out. It was not a fun time.
Reunited.
With regard to the Father-in-Law, we had five hours of debate around consent and who could give it (he has two POAs –both in Queensland; one is MIA and the other was in communicado). One nurse helpfully explained to him that they were just trying to protect his best interests. I pointed out that it was in his best interest to have the festering tumour removed from his head. His surgeon agreed with me.
Luckily, the Nursing Unit Manager is someone I’ve known for years, who has a great deal of common sense and knows it would be out of character for me to be somehow trying to leverage personal gain from an octogenarian pensioner with cancer. He put the case to the Director of Medical Services, who also agreed that maybe removing the tumour was the better option than just letting him walk around with it or trying radiotherapy which would knock him around more (and presumably also require some form of consent!).
He’s healing well, and the skin graft has taken beautifully. He has his follow-up next week so we have digits crossed for clear margins.
Work continues to be difficult. I have been marking, on an impossibly tight deadline that kept becoming worse because of systems that didn’t work as promised, and students who were upset about things that had bugger all to do with me (like 73 being less than 75; or that I had marked the assignment that they uploaded, as opposed to the one that they meant to upload but didn’t).
It is equally excruciating to sit in meetings planning for next year, knowing I will not be part of it. I keep reminding myself not to offer opinions since I have no horse in the race.
Meanwhile, well-meaning people both internal and outside the sector offer platitudes: with your skills, you’ll get another job.
Facts not in evidence, Your Honour.
The Higher Education sector is in chaos. There are hiring freezes seemingly everywhere … which seems very mild, when you are securely in employment, but is quite scarily relevant, when you are actively seeking to be hired. Worse, some universities are shedding jobs–regional universities, in particular. 600+ at ANU, 200 at Canberra. Closer to home, more than 300 at UOW (where some former colleagues I rate highly, and indeed whole schools, have been told they’re on the hit list …. but they can still make an argument to be saved. Bring a support person).
From ABC news, via @DrDemography
I was asked if I was really trying to find a job.
I am not yet 52, and while I was hoping to transition to retirement in the not-too-distant future (my husband is already past retirement age, so we will need to have some adventures together before I hit one of the magical Super or pension ages!), I did not have complete unemployment in my early 50s on my life plan. So of course I am trying to find a job. I am, however, also a realist who is currently processing that I will more than likely never work again in the field of Higher Ed to which I have devoted myself for the past couple of decades.
Nor am I prepared to sell up and move to another city or state after we both worked so hard to set ourselves up for retirement here. Because, yes, we have thought this through; we continue to do so.
I could, for example, go back to school teaching. All I have to do is find all my qualifications, get them certified, pay a fee I don’t owe but was arguing with NESA about plus a new one, and then wait to see if my qualifications are deemed ok. I may also have to prove I’m literate and numerate, I think. I will be considered a provisional graduate, meaning my thirty years of experience will not count, and I will be on a starting salary that is a fraction of what I am on now (although, admittedly much better than the $0 pa I am currently staring down). And if I don’t get enough days to produce enough evidence to jump through the required hoops within two years, my teaching number will be revoked again. (So don’t believe the stories of a “teacher shortage.” There’s a shortage of teachers in schools. There is, however, a surplus out here of teachers who are no longer employed in schools–for more than thirty years, half of all beginning teachers have left in the first five years!–doing Cost Benefit Analyses because the system is screaming at us that what we have to offer is not valued. Like, at all).
I probably will end up doing the necessary admin to get my number back, because as much as casual teaching remains, in my opinion, the worst bits of teaching, I’ve been assured that there might be some Inclusive Ed days, which would bring me more than just a paycheque. And for better or for worse, I am someone who has always needed more than just a paycheque.
And so it is that every Wednesday, we check the school education jobs email. Occasionally, up comes a shorter-term contract in a hard-to-staff school with sign-on bonuses, and potentially jobs for both of us. But when we start to work through the logistics, it just doesn’t seem feasible. What would we do with the house? The cats? The chooks? The Father-in-Law? (“Hard to staff” is code for miles and miles from our current home, lives, and responsibilities). Or does one of us stay here, and we lead a separated life (we tried that once before, and lasted five weeks, if memory serves). In that scenario, the sign-on bonus won’t touch the sides of what it costs to run two households, anyway.
The remainder of the local jobs on offer are things like waitressing and motel cleaning, which I’ve done before. I’m not sure how my now-much-older-body would hold up to doing them again. Nor is my Physio. This week, she asked me why my body is so tight. I told her I think my body has been flooded with cortisol since we came back from America … eighteen months ago. She told me she thought that was probably right.
Today’s flooding cause was, ironically enough, the fish tank.
Now, I love our fish tank. It’s purpose built into my grandparents’ former TV cabinet (the person who made it has since gone out of business. I checked). Today, I discovered that it’s been leaking long enough to damage both said cabinet, and the flooring underneath it.
I am devastated. I have temporarily moved the fish, and now I am trying to figure out how to isolate and fix a leaking fish tank. (I guess the leak is on the side with the water damage?). And when to find the time to do it. And what happens if I don’t quite do it right – having to move the fish a second time would not be great, for anyone. (I’ve listed the repair on AirTasker, but no bites just yet).
The idea was to preserve this, not destroy it.
And so it goes. If I can fix the tank myself, maybe that can become my new post-Higher Ed career.
28 years ago today, I went on a first date with a colleague. We went to a little restaurant on the corner of Sloane Street in Goulburn, whose name eludes me–Clancy’s, maybe?–and then to a movie. Only the movie we wanted to see wasn’t on, and neither of us thought Striptease was really first-date material, so we went to a video store (remember those?) and hired something, instead.
Not at all intimidating
We were supposed to be in Airlie Beach this week, celebrating our date-iversary. Instead, he is in hospital in Wollongong, and I am once again in Goulburn, travelling back from Victoria and trying to move with very fluid and enormously chaotic plans.
Yesterday was the first anniversary of my role at Charles Sturt. I have ten weeks left. The higher education sector is in utter chaos and so, come December, I won’t have a salary. The two universities for which I’ve worked have both declared a Hiring Freeze. Of course, the Spousal Unit’s contract ends on the same day as mine (also my birthday –yippee!). OK, then. We can deal with that. Somehow.
The Father-in-Law is a diabetic heart patient with a sarcoma on his face that he is having removed next week. He was scheduled to have it earlier, but came down with Covid. Noting the above comment that the Spousal Unit is unavailable, it will be up to me to get him to his surgery, and then bring him home and look after him for the first couple of days. I thought I was ready for this.
Then The Dreaded Admin started.
Yesterday was spent in four-way phone tag between me, the hospital, the GP and the nursing home where the Father-in-Law lives because apparently he needs a form filled out by the GP, and an ECG, before his surgery. Which is a week away. Eventually I managed to get someone at Aged Care to answer the phone and she asked who would be available to drive him to the appointment they would make on his behalf at an unspecified time.
“Well,” I began, “I’m currently in Victoria, and my husband’s in hospital in Wollongong, and all his other children are in Queensland …”
So after a few more phone calls, some googling, and some major rearrangements of plans, it was decided that I’d cut short my medically-advised mental health “circuit breaker” trip and start heading back today. The next admin issue was with my leave. Because Annual Leave had been reversed and some Personal Leave taken in its place, but neither was yet approved by my supervisor because she was–wait for it–on leave, the system said that I had taken double the amount of leave I had. And had maxed out the available leave, so I could not apply to reinstate Thursday and Friday as the Annual Leave that had previously been booked.*
And so, the plan became: stay in Goulburn, drive to Moss Vale in the morning, workfrom there (because I had no leave, according to the computer!) stay with mate Friday night, be home to relieve pet-sitters Saturday, as originally booked. Because you can’t change the dates on a house-sitting contract without a minimum of a week’s notice.
This morning, the texts from the house-sitter started. One cat, aged 19, appears to be injured and is walking funny. Should they take the cat to the vet?
Hard to say, given I couldn’t see her, and her arthritis shot is due Sunday. And so another game of admin tag; this time only three-way–between me, the house-sitter and the vet–although we rather comically managed to miss calls because one of us was calling the other one on at least two occasions.
OK, so now the plan is: she’s had a shot for pain relief. In the morning, I drive from Goulburn to Moss Vale bright and early. If she’s worse in the morning, I also drive down the mountain and take her to emergency vet appointment at 11.45am. Then I head back up to stay with S, and housesitters leave as booked, on Saturday. If she stays the same or improves, I can stay in Moss Vale as planned for the whole of Friday, but then the vet wants to see her Saturday.
And my brain is racing ahead as this is discussed, thinking: If I have to take the cat to the vet on Saturday, I can’t go and visit the Spousal Unit on Saturday, which means I’ll have to go on Sunday, which means I can’t get his Dad out for a visit on Sunday …
I think we’ve moved beyond Sandwich Generation, here, to Club Sandwich.
A colleague kindly asked me last week if I had support. I laughed.
Of my inner circle: one is in (yet another) hospital, having had a stroke in his mid-40s.
One just buried his father this week.
One has significant mental health issues in their own household.
This is not to say they are not still stepping up and checking in, because they absolutely are–I have stayed with one, and I’m about to stay with another–but obviously, under the circumstances, it is necessarily a somewhat reciprocal exercise which is more about checking in on each other.
Gen X, still raising ourselves after all these years. And it’s safe to say that we are all just bloody exhausted.
*in a small mercy, some of the leave requests have been actioned tonight. So I was able to book tomorrow off, and will not have to work out how to fit in 7.5 hours work around between 1 and 3.5 hours of driving plus vet visit time, in the middle of the day, plus any emotional and financial implications of vet visit time, tomorrow. We have to count the wins.
Yesterday, I spent more than two hours arguing with my printer before eventually calling the HP helpline. Like many IT helplines, they give instructions that are very clear to them, but perhaps not to a stressed-out layperson. You know, like: “Can you type in your Printer IP address?”
Me: I’m sure I can. If you give me a minute to figure out where on earth to find it.
The second time she gave this kind of “for the new people, it’s where it’s always been” instruction, I called her on it quite deliberately.
“I’m supposed to be doing my job.” I reminded her. “I don’t work with this stuff every day. You do, because it’s your job. You can’t expect me to be as familiar with it as you are.”
So after forty minutes of mefollowing her instructions so I could “fix” my own still-under-warranty printer-that-doesn’t-print, she thanked me because without me, they couldn’t do what they do.
I pointed out that if the printer did what it was supposed to do and actually printed, they wouldn’t need me and that would probably be a better outcome, as far as I was concerned.
The multi-stage instructions were of course complex and recursive and dictated by the sequence and colour of the in-house disco being performed by my printer, so of course when the same (or another, who knows?) issue occurred today, I have been unable to replicate them.
I do keep getting the most delightful message from HP when I try to log in so I can get out of their extortionate monthly ink subscription. This is not great value for money, since the printer only prints alignment pages. Incessantly.
24 hours’ worth of aligned pages. Is the printer now aligned and printing? Of course not. but they’ve made sure I used some ink!
When the message below came up yesterday, I told the “helper,” “hey- that could be HP’s motto!”
She didn’t understand.
She also told me they’d be monitoring my printer for a few days, which is creepy as, and also patently untrue because I’ve been trying to use it since about 11am, to no avail. I have also tried to get in touch with them, but Nope.
Today, all I can get is the above message. Help, notsomuch. A chatbot keeps asking me which cartridge error I have. None. Mate it doesn’t use English, it uses flashing lights. Which have now given me quite the headache, just quietly.
So … no idea where the receipt from 11 months ago is. (I fear it might have been sent to an email account I can no longer access). I may be able to find it in my tax documents?
I guess all that’s left to do is I lodge as many complaints as I can think of, and chuck the rubbish in the bin.
In the meantime, any recommendations for a printer that does its expected task, as is required under Australian consumer law? A different brand, obviously. You know, one that works.
My battle with the computer system that judges my research continues.
I now have 20 research points, because apparently name-dropping Oxford and Harvard works. Yippee! I only need another 183 to be allowed to supervise HDR students!
My 2023 publication with a “Quality” publisher, however, does not count. Apparently, “[s]imply being published does not constitute a research output.” (I mean, it does in the first system from which this draws, which has “Research Output” in its title … but, silly, silly me).
The other reasons for rejection were that it is a textbook (which it isn’t) and “draws on no additional information for a comparative methodology,” which might be because it’s not a comparative study. Perhaps I should I have written about Twilight as well, to make it “more serious”?
“Not research”
In other news, I decided to start some study as part of my plan for a transition to retirement. And wow, has it been a disorganised mess. First, we did NO assessment until Week 9, and then they took 3 weeks to mark our submissions–by which stage, assignment 2 was due, with Assignment 3 one week later.
The second one took 3.5 weeks to come back, and then it came with a grade but no mark. Well, some people got marks. And we got a message saying we had marks. But some of us, me included, don’t have marks.
I asked the subject coordinator could I please know my actual mark, and was told that it was there, and the problem is obviously on my end so I should try clearing my cache. I dutifully did that, then showed her a screenshot of my student view. She insisted that I was still wrong (because she can see the mark in instructor view), and I should contact IT. IT took about ten minutes to let me know that the marks were hidden in the student view. But, the lovely person from IT said, she couldn’t release the mark to me unless she knew that the subject coordinator was happy for me to have it. I pointed out that I have two emails wherein the subject coordinator insists that I can already see the marks, which suggests she thinks I am allowed to know what it is. I was asked to provide evidence of the emails. I gave it. I was told thanks, but I still need to hear it from the subject coordinator. Who’s on holidays.
Honestly, why ask for the evidence, then?
So the session ended a month ago and I still only know 30% of my mark. Official results are released on July 10, with the census date for the next subject being July 12. I now start juggling two subjects which run over two slightly different sessions. So next week will be Week 1 of my teaching at my Uni, Week 2 of one study session, and Week -1 of another study session. I can’t wait to try to keep track of those assessment and marking cycles, all while keeping a weather eye on where we are up to in terms of school terms!
The feedback, when I finally got it, also appeared to have dropped in from another planet. Like, this remark on Assignment 3, for example:
The feedback
Look at that pesky invisible caption!
And this one. Looks like the only “wonky” thing here is the marker’s inability to read Word’s automatically generated blue typeface.
All of which makes me despair for the state of Higher Education, and want to speed up the transition to retirement.
For a while now, I’ve been feeling as though I have more capacity to serve my local regional community. I’m still working for a regional university–albeit with one that doesn’t have a local presence–and I’m still on the Board of Interchange Shoalhaven. But I’m no longer advocating for local students in my day job, and the Nowra Relay for Life has folded, which represented almost two decades of volunteering in the end.
So I applied to join the Board of Regional Development Australia-Illawarra and Shoalhaven. I was pretty delighted to go to the first meeting a fortnight ago and be reunited with three former colleagues from different phases of my educational career, as well as some familiar faces from spba. I’m looking forward to seeing where we can go and how we can advocate, as a team, for our member communities.
On the work front, I’ve been doing battle with a non-sentient tool that has become the embodiment of “Computer Says No” and which makes me fear for humanity. Our uni launched a tool that draws information from an internal repository of research and then sifts through it to spit out a metric that determines whether or not you are research active, which has implications for research supervision and things like promotion. By its calculations, I’ve been a full-time employee on a typical research load for the past five years (I haven’t) and have published no research (!). I have not one research point to my name in this whiz-bag new system. Now, other people are finding this hilarious, but as the person who opened a snapshot that has a bold typeface “No” in answer to the question “Performance Expectation Met”–notsomuch.
So I’ve had to register complaints/appeals/please explains line-by-line on this new tool, which thus far have included:
I’ve only been here nine months, why do I have to meet a standard that’s based on five years of employment?
I’m not in a typical research/teaching role (that said, if someone would like to allocate me the 30% research load you’re using in your calculations, I’ll happily take it!)
Why has my 2024 publication been included but not generated any points?
Where are my other 2024 publications?
Why have you agreed to count this publication but then not allocated any actual points?
Why did you decide that this chapter, which began life in Oxford, was peer-reviewed, has a full reference list, is published by an academic publisher and is held in libraries around the world, including Harvard, “does not meet research requirements”?
.. and so it goes on.
In addition, I have to make the case for the “standard” of the publishers and journals because apparently the system only picks up publishers indexed in Web of Science and Scopus. Which humanities publications most typically aren’t. Which only adds to the frustratingly large body of observations over my two decades in academia that most systems are still overwhelmingly biased towards the sciences.
So, stay tuned for updates on my “points” over time. Thankfully, Google Scholar’s version of my h-index (which draws from more than just WoS ie) continues to rise and I keep my ORCID profile up-to-date, so it’s only a problem while, I’m ya know–employed here.
Or until the tool sorts out its teething problems. Which will hopefully come much, much sooner!
Back to happier news, and in anticipation of soon being able to secure our backyard once again coupled with my own significant impatience, I have four new companions. Joining retiree Zoe (who’d wandered out of this picture) and Perri the Isa Brown & Sally Sparrow the Wyandotte (aka the refugee from three doors up – both on the left of the photo here) are Barbara the Copper Marans, River the Araucana, Susan the Sussex, and Rogue the Olive Egger.
Yep. It’s very nerdy. I don’t care.
Our little rainbow alliance here is designed so that we will be able to easily tell the girls apart, but also as a means of producing a vibrant array of eggs. So far, Barbara has been a bit of a disappointment, since she is producing ordinary off-white eggs, rather than the lovely chocolate brown ones for which Marans are known. That said, I also got Susan at the same time–we try not to introduce solo birds; the pecking order can get nasty–and expected boring white eggs from her, but her first one appeared earlier this week and is slightly pink! River is an Araucana (like Zoe), so we are getting pale blue eggs from her, and Rogue will hopefully produce some green ones soon. It is still early days and still Winter, so perhaps colour will develop as production ramps up.
So that’s approximately where we are up to, EOFY 2023.
Regional Adventures 