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:( 

Festive greetings

Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy new year to all.

Twice in one day: things are bad

The reviews have really knocked my confidence.  We have to monitor a discussion forum on the topics we lecture on and my topic now has a question that I have to answer.  I'm terrified of putting fingers to keypad for fear of getting it all wrong.  But I have to answer it, so it could be a long night on Google and with the textbooks trying to work out answers.  The module convenor has helped out but I don't want to annoy her any more. 
I also have coursework to mark for Thursday morning, so I'll be getting on with that once I finish this post. 

I'm pathetic.

Bad reviews

At the end of every module we have to hand out module review form and tutor evaluation forms.  I'm just back from my last revision lecture in one module (not a module that I research in, but I get on very well with the prof in charge of it and enjoy teaching it).  I had to hand out the module evaluation forms in it and collect them in at the end.  I wasn't mentioned much in them, some people said I was excellent, some said they loved my topic and my handouts were good, but it's the bad ones that stick with you.  One said to get rid of me because I was a crap lecturer and I gave the impression I didn't want to be there, another said I just read out my notes and another said my hand outs were difficult to follow. 

Am I a crap lecturer?  I don't know, I'm not the best, but I'm not the worst: I'm too self conscious to really throw myself into them and be all flamboyant, besides, it's not really me to do that.  My other module reviews were fine, but I was the only one teaching them and there were only 11 students, so it was a different atmosphere. 

Do I just read out my notes?  Possibly: I do write them out in full so as not to forget anything, and I do consider it more important to get all the information across to the students than ad lib and forget most of it.  It's a skill you pick up as you get more experience. 

Were my notes difficult to follow?  I didn't think so: I included all the relevant cases and statutes, quotations from the cases and important points I wanted to emphasise.  The problem is we spend so much time satisfying the students that they always want more.  There are complaints when there is no handout and complaints when there is one that's too long.  What's the happy medium? 

I have to hand these module evaluations to the convenor of it now: I've removed the really nasty ones and, in the interests of fairness, I've removed one that was nasty about her: it was totally uncalled for. 

When you're feeling a bit low, those comments just send you plummeting. When you're questioning your career, those comments just make you question all the more. When you're thinking stuff you don't want to think, those comments just make you think you should do the thoughts.

A possible mistake

I was out for dinner tonight with some old mates from university and at it I told them I had a private blog.  They couldn't ulnderstand why I would have a blog and have strangers read it and not have friends read it.  How can I explain it to them?  I told them that I wrote things on it that wouldn't tell my friends.  Someone asked did people reply to posts and I explained that they did, but I didn't have as many readers as some blogs. One guy (a psychiatrist) said that it was like therapy then.  I explained that yes it was as blogs tended to attract people with similar problems or similar interests, especially at the start.  I'm just hoping that no one finds my blog now.  I don't think I'm identifiable but who knows. 

The meal was nice and it was good seeing everyone.  I'm never sure how things like that will go: the group of friends go out every week and I don't.  I also can't drink really any more (I'm considering the amount of alcohol I've drunk in the last week and a half to be the "very occasional glass of wine" for the next year).  I came home at 8 with a couple who were heading onto a concert.  Still, all in all I'm glad I made the effort and dragged myself out of this chair and went.  It is all about making an effort and distracting yourself from the rather horrible thoughts you can have.

error

I was reading over my last post and realised that I had said that I finished with CBT.  A huge mistake.  The idea of CBT is to change the way you think, so if you have a negative thought you challenge it and try to think through it rationally.  Obviously in that case you never finish with CBT: it's meant to be a skill you learn for life. 

The thing is, and I've said this to my GP, I can identify the bad thought and think up ways of challenging it, but I don't believe the challenges.  If I think I'm not good enough for this job and I rationalise it and say that I am, I was interviewed and successful, I think of that as a fluke, or being good at interviews and not as proof that I'm good enough for the job.  I also found when I was attending a therapist that I was being asked to challenge thoughts that were actually factual.  For example, it's difficult to discuss my research with anyone in my law school as I'm the only one in that particular area.  I was asked how I would challenge that and when I said I couldn't because it was a true fact she wanted to know how she could check it was true!  Luckily I was able to say there was a list of all the interests of people in the law school on the internet and it could be verified there. 

So, I can see the point of CBT to an extent, sometimes we do need to be taught how to "look on the bright side" as I coined it.  But it's not a panacea to end all ills and yet it seems to be virtually the main and only form of therapy that's available.