May 2023 round-up

May was busy. There were several big things happening at the same time, and I constantly felt being pulled between different demands on my time and attention. As much as possible, I tried focusing only on the task at hand, rather than let myself feel overwhelmed about everything that had to be done. This is something I learned from sports’ psychology and, in particular, Angela Pohl’s fantastic Instagram posts about running: There is no point berating yourself about the previous ones because you can’t change them; or worry about the miles ahead of you because you are not there, yet. The key, she says, is focusing on managing the pace and the breathing for the mile that you are running, at any moment.

The main achievement this month, research-wise, was submitting the application for a small research grant. I am very, very, very, very grateful to Ainurul Rosli, who agreed to review it at very short notice and despite being a super busy person. Very grateful.

The other big research “thing” this month was the InterAct sandpit. It was tiring but great. And best of all, we were invited to submit a grant application, which I am now furiously working on. Conversely, I made no progress on the AI application, which is really, really bad of me.

I also developed the interview guides for the misinformation project, which I will need to submit for ethical approval, next month; delivered a seminar for the University of Birmingham; and had a meeting regarding the attitudes to learning project.

The main writing-related achievement this month was the submission of the second edition of the Research Methods book. We have now been looking at covers, asking people for blurbs, etc… 

The chatbots and the ChatGPT papers have stalled. I had a couple of meetings about the gender and money paper… and did not even get started on the apps paper which I really, really, really needed to have made some serious progress on.

On the teaching front, I reviewed various dissertation drafts; set up the marking rubrics for two modules; and did the marking for one of them. I accepted a PhD candidate and attended the presentations of students currently enrolled on our programme.

This month I also caught up with my former colleague Chris Ferreira, when she did a presentation at Sussex about her very interesting work on isolation among early career academics. But… I forgot to take a photo. Other than that, there was the coronation. I enjoyed the nice weather, and supported child 2 through GCSE exams’ season.

May came and went. I dropped a couple of balls but, overall, I managed to do all the things that I had to do, plus most of those that I wanted to. How was your May?