{"id":243,"date":"2011-10-04T23:40:32","date_gmt":"2011-10-04T22:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/?p=243"},"modified":"2011-10-04T23:40:32","modified_gmt":"2011-10-04T22:40:32","slug":"yet-another-oh-look-the-start-of-term-blog-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/?p=243","title":{"rendered":"Yet another &#8216;oh look, the start of term&#8217; blog post&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Apologies for the lack of posts recently.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve been off on leave for a couple of weeks, but although this blog is written in my own time and in a personal capacity, I <del>decided to<\/del> ended up taking a complete break from all things research funding related.\u00a0 And yes, I did have a nice break, thanks for asking&#8230;. part &#8216;stay-cation&#8217; and part &#8216;prepare for house move that won&#8217;t now take place this leave year after all&#8217;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rAF4Uhiprbo?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"425\" height=\"349\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n&#8220;Hello! Hello! It&#8217;s good to be back!&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I managed to miss the first week of term, although the return of the students is fairly hard to miss in university cities like Nottingham.\u00a0 Suddenly there are young people everywhere, and about a third of them look lost.\u00a0 I played my part in supporting the student induction experience by giving directions to an undergraduate who had lost herself between two of the University of Nottingham campuses (campi?).\u00a0 Easily done.\u00a0 This is usually been the limit of my interaction with undergraduates, other than telling them that, no, I don\u2019t know the code to the computer room, and that they should ask at reception.<\/p>\n<p>Universities are strange, almost depressing, places outside term time.\u00a0 A little bit like I\u2019d imagine the whole world would be after a \u2018rapture\u2019 of the kind that some odd kinds of Christians are expecting.\u00a0 Sure, it\u2019s nice for a day or so to have the place to ourselves, but when the students go, so does the infrastructure.\u00a0 Limited choice of sandwiches at lunchtime, a reduced bus service, and of course, the staff slope off as well.\u00a0 Academics for a combination of annual leave and research time (except this year, of course.\u00a0 Thanks, ESRC, for those September deadlines.\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you so much), and the rest of us will also look to take the bulk of our leave then too.\u00a0 On one level, you&#8217;d think it would a good time to get things done, but on the other, the people you need to get on board to get any of them done tend not to be around.\u00a0 And as we&#8217;ve seen, <a title=\"University Life: Why now is the wrong time of the academic year to get anything done\u2026.\" href=\"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/?p=194\" target=\"_blank\">no time of the year is really any good<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Does anyone else play the \u2018out of office\u2019 lottery?\u00a0 Trying to predict how many out of office emails you\u2019ll get in a day, or in response to any one particular email.\u00a0 (On the subject of which, wouldn\u2019t it be handy to have an \u2018oh, never mind, enjoy yourself\u2019 option to respond to o-o-o emails with, so that you could delete your original email so they\u2019d have one less to deal with when they return.\u00a0 I\u2019d also quite like an \u201cI\u2019ve told you once already\u201d o-o-o-email which subtly escalates in annoyance if more emails are received from the same person).<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s remarkable how soon the spring in the step fades, even on a warm October morning.\u00a0 The campus is bustling with activity, when academic and non-academic colleagues are around (if busy) and the corridors are full of students\u2019 chatter.\u00a0 Office doors everywhere are left just a little bit ajar, colleagues are catching up on their summer <del>holidays<\/del> research, buses are more frequent (if a little less reliable), optimism and excitement are in the air.and the university feels, well, like a university again.<\/p>\n<p>But then I\u2019m asked for the code to the computer room <em>before I even get as far as unlocking my office door<\/em>, I have to queue for ten minutes for a sandwich at lunchtime, I can\u2019t get on to the hopper bus after a meeting and have to walk back to base, and corridors are blocked with lost or dawdling students, or just \u2018hanging out\u2019.\u00a0 Though I suspect no-one says \u2018hangs out\u2019 any more.\u00a0 And then I start to yearn for the peace and quiet of the summer.\u00a0 Almost.<\/p>\n<p>Not really&#8230;. Hello, Nottingham University Business School.\u00a0 Hello, term time.\u00a0 It&#8217;s good to be back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apologies for the lack of posts recently.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve been off on leave for a couple of weeks, but although this blog is written in my own time and in a personal capacity, I decided to ended up taking a complete break from all things research funding related.\u00a0 And yes, I did have a nice break, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/?p=243\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Yet another &#8216;oh look, the start of term&#8217; blog post&#8230;.&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oasis","category-university-culture"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1OLY1-3V","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259,"href":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions\/259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialscienceresearchfunding.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}