Monthly Archives: September 2013

Five good things about starting a new academic job

I’ve been in my new job at Brighton for nearly three weeks now. I thought I would write a few thoughts about the positives about starting a new job. It has been over ten years since I was the ‘new guy’, and so far I’m enjoying it immensely.

Five good things about starting a new job:

  1. I’ve let go: I find it easy to start getting involved in things, but difficult to stop doing them. After ten years in the job I was the ‘go to guy’ for lots of different things. I had accumulated a lot of roles and responsibilities I did not want to give up. Some of these roles and responsibilities were probably not that important, or they are less important than they were. Someone else has to do the stuff which is really important now. The rest of it doesn’t need doing.
  2. I’m ignorant and naïve: Usually this is a bad thing but for a newcomer it’s a (sort of)  strength. If I don’t understand how something works I can ask without sounding clueless. If there is an elephant in the room I can brazenly draw attention to it (if I want to).
  3. I can be known for something else: Past achievements can be an albatross. After a long time in a job, people can appreciate talents, skills and achievements you wish to move on from. You can become known and appreciated for the wrong reasons.
  4. I’m meeting new people and having new experiences: I was always meeting new people in my previous job, but it has been particularly nice meeting new people in my new job. Brighton has a very different subject mix to Southampton, so I’m meeting people who teach and research different subjects like sport, hospitality, fashion design and Youthwork.
  5. I’m really doing new things. I’m teaching on the Postgraduate Certificate course, working with students on the Peer Assisted Study Sessions (PASS) scheme, working on Brighton’s professional recognition scheme. All this is related to my previous role, but new enough to be exciting, challenging and daunting.
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Final Début Volume under my editorship.

The last volume of Début: the undergraduate journal of languages, linguistics and area studies I will edit is going online in the next week or so.  I thought I'd share a bit of my editorial.

Editorial: All change at Début

John Canning

Final-year projects and dissertations (FYPD) undertaken by students at the end of their Bachelor degree courses are a topic of current interest in many countries. It is timely to reassert the importance of FYPD and to rethink their role in the curriculum as the context of higher education changes. (Healy et al 2013).

Every year thousands of undergraduates undertake a final year project, an independent study or some other form of original research. Most of this research is never seen by anyone outside the student's own department. I don't know if a copy of my own undergraduate dissertation still exists somewhere in depths of Aberystwyth University. I think I had my own copy, if it survives it is probably in my parents' attic. As far as I know it was not read by anyone other than those who marked it. I can't recall receiving any feedback on it, except the mark which was printed alongside the results of my other modules.

I don't regard the non-publication of my own undergraduate work as a great loss to the world. In contrast I regard setting up Début : the undergraduate journal of languages, linguistics and area studies which enables others to publish their undergraduate work as one of my major achievements. Undergraduate (and recently graduated) authors have received feedback on their work from academics outside their own institutions. They have revised their work and made great work even better.

This is my final edition as Debut Editor. I would like to thank all the authors, reviewers, colleagues at LLAS in Southampton, and colleagues all over the world who have urged their students to submit their work to Début : the undergraduate journal of languages, linguistics and area studies 4 (2013)

Without all these people Début would not be possible.

From September 2013 Billy Clark, Senior Lecturer in English Language at Middlesex University will be taking over as editor.

I look forward to seeing Début  prosper under Billy's leadership and wish him all the best.

Reference

Healey M., L.Lannin, A, Stibbe and J. Derounian (2013) Developing and enhancing undergraduate final year projects and dissertations. York: Higher Education Academy. Available from: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/projects/detail/ntfs/ntfsproject_Gloucestershire10

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