Having just had to
move The Pequod blog away from FTP and across to Blogspot, now seems a good time to reflect upon my blogging more generally. As is clear from my postings, the word that most aptly describes this activity is: erratic. After Christmas, I managed a few posts every week, some even on sequential days. Inspired by reading snatches of
Antonia Fraser's memoirs of Harold Pinter, and
Alan Bennett's London Review of Books diary, I thought it would be great if I could keep track of my reading and cultural encounters by keeping a daily record. Hence began my series of posts headed "
Daily Diary."
Well, it worked for a while, but the "Daily" element quickly became a misnomer. Weekly, monthly, and non-existent have become increasingly applicable epithets to that section. The trouble is - as ever - my workload.
Whilst
doing my PhD, I was generously funded by the
AHRC, to the tune of £12 000 a year tax free. Earning anything like the equivalent as a post-doc has been challenging, and time-consuming.
Luckily, last Summer, I got a
part-time job with the Open University. I also had quite an amount of teaching allocated to me at my old university. I already had a job working three afternoons and evenings a week in a university library. I did a bit of web work for my old department. Since Christmas, I also took on a second OU tutor group, and a four-month project to write an annual report for a research institute. Overall, then, I am earning about as much post-tax as I was as a PhD student, and although my income will probably go down next year, as I lose some of my teaching, for this year at least I am going to be able to pay the rent.
The trouble is, with five different jobs, I work more than the equivalent of full time. On a typical week during term, I expect to work from 8.00 to 8.00 on weekdays, and then generally pick up some more work over the weekend, including the afternoon I spend working in my library job. I work, then, for around 50-60 hours a week, although my sheer workload is tempered by the fact that I can often work from home, so mix up household chores with my main jobs.
After days or weeks like this, the last thing I want to do is to continue to sit in front of a computer, and blog. I am, to put it bluntly, knackered. Luckily, the long academic vacations come along to revive me somewhat, during which I drop my library job and also some of my teaching load. Over Easter, for the first time since the summer break, I was able actually to do some research (something I hope to blog about soon), although unfortunately my partner broke her leg early in the holidays, meaning I've taken on a caring responsibility to eat up any spare time I might have had, hence leaving me unable to blog over the last few weeks also.
I met a student late last term, who is always invariably enthused with his course, and the chance to read freely, a chance this student (unlike many others) takes full advantage of. I joked that I was envious. Not untruly, I said that the only times of day I get to read are over my breakfast, and in a half hour in bed at night before I fall asleep. For someone whose profession is supposedly literary criticism, I get barely any time to do any of the two key activities that should be both pleasurable, and productive: reading literature, and writing about it.
The sad thing is, until I can move into a full-time teaching
and research post, I can't see anyway out of this milieu. I need to work in all my jobs, so that together with my partner we earn enough to keep my house, drive a car, and have a few niceties like meals out and weekends away. But in that position, tied to the necessity of paid teaching, I have little time to do unpaid research, read, blog, or generally keep up my core skills that should have peaked with my PhD. I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I need to keep my portfolio of jobs, in order to keep myself in the manner to which I am accustomed, but this means it will be a struggle to find the time to boost my research output, including looking for a publisher for my PhD, which I will need in order to get a full-time research and teaching post.
Still, I should not moan too much. I am still employed, independent, not forced to rely on my parents, and I do have a little loose change in my pocket, which makes me feel smug when I spend my own earnings. I'm off to Amazon, to buy some books...to stand on my shelves, unopened, until I can buy some time.
Labels: Daily Diary, University Life
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