See also 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011.
That was a year, and this will be a dull meme [said that before! But for some reason I still find this sort of thing interesting...).1. What did you do in 2020 that you'd never done before? Nothing substantial - I had thought of something to write here but it's escaped my brain again! Oh, I know - I am part of a funded project from an international funding source (it's in pedagogy rather than my core research, but hey, FUNDING!!).
2. Did you keep your 2020 resolutions, and will you make more this year? I did set some goals in my paper journal, and I was aware of them all year, but I can't say I really followed them - too much of the time was spent in survival mode. I think I did OK around the pedagogical kindness goal, but need to put more into kindness to MYSELF, especially when it's a choice between the two - I can't pour from an empry jug... on which subject, this year's word of the year will be REPLENISH because boy oh boy is that needed.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Yup, my teaching partner for the first and second year skills modules. Lord have I missed her. And her replacement is nice but was appointed very late so that they started once teaching was underway, they've never used any of our systems, and they've basically done what I told them when I reminded them, focusing on their subject teaching. Which I do get, but it's put a huge extra "emotional labour and planning" type burden on me. Thank goodness we under-recruited this year so the cohort needing support is smaller... I'm still wrestling with Feelings around maternity leave - people who write papers and grants during it and boast about that on social media really annoy me (and their peers who have more difficult pregnancies/first years with babies I'm sure) - NOT my teaching partner, other people. Especially when they ALSO go on about how HARD their lives are and IMPACTED their careers are by being academic parents. I support proper parental leave but I wish people would take it as LEAVE or if they do do work stuff they did some of the stuff that helps out colleagues. I am probably just being a bitter childless person. Have been having a patch when being single and childless is not fun the last couple of weeks, this happens sometimes (& I'm sure the opposite happens to people with different life paths).
4. Did anyone close to you die? A former colleague. Close in the sense that they were part of the fabric of the building and the department, even in retirement, and that they occupied quite a lot of mental space when they were around (and I feel a bit... relieved? not quite sure what the name for the feeling is... that the era is ended).
5. What countries did you visit? None of them. Nor counties, other than the one I live in!
6. What would you like to have in 2022 that you lacked in 2021? The same as I wanted in 2021:
- A manageable workload
- less anxiety
- to visit people and places occasionally
- to WANT to visit people and places rather than wanting to just hide under the duvet as soon as the thousand team sessions or equivalent are done.
- A healthier body and a cleaner home...
But to add some more concretely achievable things:
- to have another D&D group in my life (possibly as a player not a DM)
- to be actively working on fiction writing and something crafty every month at least
- to visit at least one family member in person
7. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Survival at work is once again my biggest acheivement! And this year I picked up my journalling habit in the summer and kept it going since.
This year that included standing up for myself to resist teaching in person, and keeping the external markers of research ticking over - papers progressed, grants applied for - on top of just keeping things going in Community Project and in the classroom.
8. What was your biggest failure? Not doing NaNoWriMo - I just couldn't because of the whole replacement teaching person who can't replace the "not really workloaded" work which is just. so. large at the moment. Not looking after my body and my setting enough (and eating too much crap when I am angry and afraid and overworked, plus literally being afraid to move, stupid brain). Not really accepting and living as if my personal expectation, that the pandemic is going to be a 5-10 year haul since it wasn't sat on firmly in the first few months, was actually reasonable (if based on partial knowledge of old events... and cynicism...)
9. Did you suffer illness or injury? Well, on the plus side, no colds or Throats again. On the minus side, some pretty bad eczema at the start of the year which is mostly in check now, but which created some raw/ulcerated patches of leg which took months to heal over. And ongoing aches, pains and decline of fitness/increase of anxiety.
9. Did you suffer illness or injury? Well, on the plus side, no colds or Throats again. On the minus side, some pretty bad eczema at the start of the year which is mostly in check now, but which created some raw/ulcerated patches of leg which took months to heal over. And ongoing aches, pains and decline of fitness/increase of anxiety.
10. What was the best thing you bought? Hmmm. Notebooks, good quality pens and a giant tub of vit D/calcium/magnesium supplments? I can't think of anything exciting that I bought, but I do love my stationary.
11. Whose behavior merited celebration? my Head of Department, and everyone who actually sensibly followed public health recommendations and the precautionary principle.
12. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? The UK government who seem to be competing to find ways to be even worse than each other. Between Brexit, austerity and the whole pandemic/trying to privatise the health service/blaming health care worker, teachers and vulnerable people for things out of their control... also COP26. And conferences which rushed back to in person, not taking with them the many lessons around inclusion learnt. Some students, who seemed to feel their right to expose themselves to infection and actively ignore/act against direct requests to take simple precautions for the sake of others completely overrode the concerns of fellow students and academics, and aggressively denied the rights of anyone vulnerable, concerned or cautious. Especially when I was working seven days a week to the limits of my ability to work at all, at the cost of my hobbies and life, to try & help them out...
11. Whose behavior merited celebration? my Head of Department, and everyone who actually sensibly followed public health recommendations and the precautionary principle.
12. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? The UK government who seem to be competing to find ways to be even worse than each other. Between Brexit, austerity and the whole pandemic/trying to privatise the health service/blaming health care worker, teachers and vulnerable people for things out of their control... also COP26. And conferences which rushed back to in person, not taking with them the many lessons around inclusion learnt. Some students, who seemed to feel their right to expose themselves to infection and actively ignore/act against direct requests to take simple precautions for the sake of others completely overrode the concerns of fellow students and academics, and aggressively denied the rights of anyone vulnerable, concerned or cautious. Especially when I was working seven days a week to the limits of my ability to work at all, at the cost of my hobbies and life, to try & help them out...
As last year, my university's central Teaching Tsar, who considers it entirely appropriate to bring in new rules and new systems and to continue a major curriculum upheaval WHILST academic staff are learning all new software and new modes of teaching and rewriting the entirety of the CURRENT curriculum. Grrrrr. And my central admin who decided in July that the pandemic was effectively over, and only reintroduced things just before Christmas, and who continued to insist that staff could ask but not require students to take precautions (another university in the same county authorised staff to leave the room if they ever felt unsafe or students chose not to mask or leave...).
How DEPRESSING that for the THIRD year in a row, this answer only needed additions!
13. Where did most of your money go? bills and taxes, as ever
14. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
a) sadder, b) fatter, c) a few pounds closer to having the mortgage paid off, and saving a bit by doing less, but on balance worse off again due to below cost of living raises and self-funding work stuff
15. What do you wish you'd done more of? write, read, go to bed and get up on a schedule, move, assert myself
16. What do you wish you'd done less of? eat, scroll the twitter, be grey-fog-sad, shout at my computer... work!
17. Did you fall in love in 2021? well I do love some of my D&D creations... and Good Pens are worth the money!
18. What was the best new book you read? Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers.
How DEPRESSING that for the THIRD year in a row, this answer only needed additions!
13. Where did most of your money go? bills and taxes, as ever
14. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
a) sadder, b) fatter, c) a few pounds closer to having the mortgage paid off, and saving a bit by doing less, but on balance worse off again due to below cost of living raises and self-funding work stuff
15. What do you wish you'd done more of? write, read, go to bed and get up on a schedule, move, assert myself
16. What do you wish you'd done less of? eat, scroll the twitter, be grey-fog-sad, shout at my computer... work!
17. Did you fall in love in 2021? well I do love some of my D&D creations... and Good Pens are worth the money!
18. What was the best new book you read? Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers.
18a: podcast - Two Mr Ps in a Podcast - two primary school teachers from Manchester discuss life and share classroom stories from their own lives and submitted by readers - very funny and good company. (almost no new Infinite Monkey Cage episodes this year...)
19. What was your favorite film of the year? I watched the original Avengers movie a couple more times. It's just a well crafted, undemanding, enjoyable movie without much gore or sex and with a satisfying ending. And it has Science Bros, and some excellent one liners ("Dost Mother know thou wearest her drapes?")
20. What kept you sane? I'm not! Fluffball has been helpful...
21. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2021. Cats improve any online call, but poodles who walk along bookshelves behind their humans STEAL THE SHOW (not my poodle, but a very impressive pet none the less).
20. What kept you sane? I'm not! Fluffball has been helpful...
21. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2021. Cats improve any online call, but poodles who walk along bookshelves behind their humans STEAL THE SHOW (not my poodle, but a very impressive pet none the less).
And saying no is something you can get used to. Also saying no, offering what you will do instead, then SHUTTING UP is a good thing. Yes, I am now in my 6th decade and still learning REALLY SIMPLE STUFF.