RAE results are out!

D-Day came a day early.

The Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) - that paragon of flawed judgement, that epitome of legitimised bias, that nonpareil of measuring the unmensurable - has released local results to the university, and the university have released them to us.  We weren't expecting to hear until tomorrow morning so it came as an anxious surprise; a little like opening a birthday present from a 3-year-old that is as likely as not to contain a carefully-wrapped slug.

We're also under a press embargo until midnight, in case we feel like running off to our chums at the Guardian or, perchance, writing about it on a blog.

So, the big news is that my department didn't do so well.  Not the worst in the university, but certainly in the bottom cluster, depending on how you collapse a 4-point profile into a single value.  True, we only have the university ratings and hence can't be sure how our psychology department compares against others in the UK, but I'll be very surprised if we emerge in the upper echelons.  Probably mid-table, since doing poorly in a research-intensive university means doing quite well on a national scale.

But still.  The hammer is going to fall and I'm not sure I want to be standing there with upturned smile when it strikes.  RAE results determine the direct funding university departments receive from government pockets and bad results mean bad times ahead.

I'm building a list of psychology departments that I think have probably done better than we have (on a very unscientific basis of knowing some individuals and/or research programmes in said departments).  I'll see tomorrow how well my openly biased and underinformed judgement correlates with the nominally objective and complete assessment of the RAE.

Fairytale of No Work

Once upon a time, there was a young, female academic called Ella [not really, but we're all pseudonyms here].  After many years of study and working in different countries, she took up a job at Research University, in Big City, UK.

At first, the job was good.  The people were pleasant, the facilities more than adequate, and the teaching loads nicely balanced.  But all too soon, things started to change.  Because the university management had a new-found desire to top ratings in the National Student Survey, all the lecturers were told to spend more time building meaningful academic relationships with the undergraduates (but not, of course, to spend any less time on their research).

Now, Ella thought that getting to know the occasional student's name was a nice idea in principle, but she also thought that there weren't enough hours in the week to get to know the hundreds of students that passed through her department's doors every day.  So, Ella wasn't entirely surprised when she was informed that her teaching hours next academic year would be double the current level.

Ella was not happy about this.

Ella had left her last job partly because of the heavy teaching loads.

All together now, children:

Isn't is great that jobs.ac.uk is so easy to search?

To be intellectually promiscuous...

Why am I so bad at the "networking" part of the job?

Collaboration is a key part of being an academic, especially in the sciences, but it's not something I'm good at instigating.  Perhaps it's due to the fact that I no longer work in the same subfield as my PhD supervisor, or that I haven't worked as a minion in a research empire, or that I'm a not-so-latent control freak, but my collaborations tend to be few in number and intense in involvement.  By that, I mean that I collaborate with a small number of people that I know and get on with at a personal level and that I devote a lot of time and energy to that work.

Not for me the shameless stalking of big-name researchers in the hope of adding their name to a paper of mine with little effort on their part, nor the scattergun approach of tagging along on every related project in the hope I have a few lines of input at some stage, nor the gritted-teeth gladhanding of people I personally despise because it is useful to be associated with them.  It would undoubtedly benefit my career if I did one or all of these things, but the thought makes me wince like someone has placed a cold hand on the back of my neck.

What is this?  Fear of rejection?  Lingering sense of personal dignity?

Whatever it is, I can't force past it without feeling in need of a long shower.  Looks like I'll just have to get by with my current approach of being visible in my research community even if I'm not collaborating with everyone.

Visible is good, right?

Of ends, finishes and termini

December the first.  Huzzah!  Already the month is getting off to a pleasant start: I have some excellent applicants for a PhD position (and still more to sift through), my long-standing grief with a particular action editor may be coming to an end (if the politeness of his last email is anything to go by), and the effects keep rolling in more or less as expected (as long as I stay on the data fairies' good side, of course).

December is always an odd month for academic work.  Lectures finish up two or three weeks in, which leaves some time for winding things up before the obligatory xmas break.  The university shuts up shop for over a week, from before xmas eve until after new year's day (completely: bolts on doors, etc.).  Many people start to drift back to work a few days into January, but the place stays quiet until at least mid-month as people work from home, travel to interesting places, and do whatever they have the freedom to do before lectures recommence.

The net effect is that December is seen as a time of winding down.  The evenings close in and precious daylight begins to disappear ever earlier in the afternoon.  Mornings increasingly involve switching off the lights before leaving the house.  On good weather days, the sun is so low in the sky that long shadows lean across the street even at noon.  On bad weather days, the quality of the light is so grey and flat that everyone looks a little ill.  Sending cards and shopping for pressies - even for those of us with the religious convictions of a pastafarian -  becomes a welcome diversion even as it occupies mind-space previously reserved for experimental design and grant planning.

Everything is geared towards getting things finished in December.  The idea of starting a new project in December seems faintly ludicrous.

Perhaps this is the one time that academic time-keeping is in sync with the real world.  After all, everyone else thinks of December as the end of one year and January as the start of the next one (our little foible of describing September as "the start of the year" is best kept to ourselves).  There's something aesthetically pleasing in considering the death of a year as happening in the cold and dark of December.  And, perhaps, it's in the cold and dark that we most need the reinvigoration of a fresh year starting anew.