AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

This post probably won't make much sense to many of you but I'm going to try. 

Contrary to popular belief, universities are not there to teach students, but to research.  Most of the funding comes from research and every 6 years or so our research is assessed and money allocated accordingly.  So, the emphasis is on research and most of the pressure and stress we have is related to researc pressure and how to balance the teaching with the need to publish publish publish.  Really the phrase "publish or perish" is not a joke.  In the last 6 months or so I have been thinking of writing a book on a particular topic that I thought was fairly topical and quite interesting.  However, I was uncertain about writing it alone given just having finshed the book conversion for my thesis so I thought of an edited collection.  Because I'm inexperienced in such matters (how do you get people to write for you, for example?) I asked my former PhD supervisor to edit it with me: his name and experience would be invaluable for me and his name on the book and when asking people to write a piece for it would be great as well.  I told him I was willing to do the donkey work (chasing people, editing, dealing with publishers etc) and asked him to think about.  I had already spoken briefly to a couple of publishers and both thought it sounded interesting.  Anyway, he said he would think about it before Christmas and got back to me then today.  He said he would like to be involved as he thought it sounded interesting but was concerned about other work commitments.  He then went on to say that he had asked one of his PhD students (a friend of mine) to be involved and help me with the editing.  He said he should have asked me first (uh, yes) and apologised for not.  Now I know this girl, I've blogged briefly about it her: she's very good, probably a better academic than I ever will be, but she can make me feel so inferior: she got a job before finishing her PhD, she's on at least 5 grand more than me (in another university) and has already a number of publications.  I intended asking her to write a chapter for the collection, but I'm not sure I want her name on the cover.  It's even worse because I had never mentioned the possibility of a book to her, not out of malice but because it's barely a half baked idea.  Now my former supervisor has asked her and I'm not sure what to say.  I replied to my former supervisor and said that I was non committal about it and needed to think about it.  So I'm in a quandrary.  I don't want her taking control of it, but if she's an editor she has as much say as I do.  Even worse, she phoned me this morning to see how I was, but I was in a marking meeting and now she's emailed me.  I hadn't phoned her back this afternoon as I was busy but now I'm avoiding her as I don't know what to say.  I think I'm going to have to be honest and say I need to think about it as I hadn't even anticipated my supervisor saying yes. 

On top of all that, I have 160 exam questions to mark, a teaching course all next week, another module to mark the following week and two assignments of my own to write.  And people think I do nothing.

Grotty

Tomorrow is the last day of the antibiotics and I'm not sure they've worked entirely.  Over the weekend my glands were very swollen and sore as were my ears and that continued until yesterday.  My throat still feels sore when I swallow and my eyes are all gunky and I have this cough as well.  I haven't been into work since last Wednesday and today was the first time I've the left the house since then as well.  I haven't officially been off sick as I've been marking practice questions at home and responding to the online forum where the students can post questions.  I actually wish I had gone off sick officially because then I would have been able to ignore everything, but that would have left the module co-ordinator the only one moderating the forums and marking practice questions as the other lecturer on the course was on annual leave.  Instead I got myself worked up over a couple of students; one in particular was nagging to meet me and I ended up having to cancel on them twice.  They then bombarded me with questions which is fair enough, but these questions weren't problems with the material, instead they were simply asking "what is the answer".  I emailed back answers to 9 questions and stated that they should use the online forum instead.  I got an email back asking one last question.  I replied and then last night when I got another email asking more or less "what is this section all about", I flipped, cut and pasted the email to the forum, answered it there and emailed student and said it was answered on the forum, not to email me again as I would not be answering private emails as it was unfair on other students.  After that the module co-ordiantor contacted me to say the student had also hassled her about my topic and that student appears not to have done the reading.  The exam is tomorrow.  All was fine until this evening when I discovered more questions from student on discussion forum, which I had already answered by email to student!  I nearly burst into tears, which I know is partly to do with still not feeling great as well as not having taken my venlafaxine last night.  As it's slow release missing a dose is felt more or less immediately. 

So, I'm heading into work tomorrow to collect exams for marking.  I'm debating whether I wait until Thursday to phone the doc and say I'm still not feeling right or to do it tomorrow.  Guess I should finish the antibiotics and see how tomorrow goes first of all.  I'm also worried because work is already piling up: 2 assignments for the PG teaching course are due in mid Feb, next week is full with the teaching course classes, marking in the evenings and monitoring my other class forum for problems.  After next week's PG teaching course classes I'm going to have another 2 assignments for May.  And after all that teaching will start fairly soon and while mine is light this term, I'm terrified I'm going to mess it up. 

I'm ill

I'm not ill that often other than my usual problems, but this time it's the worst sore throat I have ever had.  I had made an appointment with the nurse to get my bloods checked for the methotrexate and I remembered that the booklet that tells me all about the methotrexate says that if you have a sore throat you are to contact your doctor immediately.  I told this to the nurse and she arranged for the doctor to see me: not my usual lovely GP but the on call one who was very nice as well.  Suffice to say that I now have penicillin and a mouthwash to gargle with instructions to rest and come back if it doesn't improve.  So I've taken my first dose and about to watch Doctors on BBC1 before retiring back to bed for a while.  I can do some work that needs doing from home: practice questions for the students that need marking and emailed back to them and also monitor the online discussion forum that we use.  I had to cancel a meeting with one student who apparently has lots of questions.  I'm a bit at a loss as to what these could be as the discussion forum has been used and all students have access to that.  Anyway, I told him to email them to me and I'd answer as many as I could by email and see him next Tuesday all being well. 

I can't believe it's 2010 already!  Within a couple of weeks work will start on the timetable for the next academic year, students will have finished exams and the second semester will have started.  I have to start thinking about an external examiner for the new module I want to introduce in September and I have no idea who to get.  It's really difficult to think of someone and to know someone when you are a complete novice in the field and only starting out on your career.  I'd like to ask my old supervisor but I'm not sure he would do it and I think there are a load of rules governing it.  Anyone I did my PhD with are also not experienced enough:(