The Higher Education Megathread

Who are you publishing with? It'll be fine! They wouldn't want it if they thought it was bananas.

Interview is beginning of March. It's over Zoom with the two Newcastle Uni supervisors, the HES supervisor, and the director of the funding body (Northern Bridge Consortium). It's apparently likely to be 20 minutes. 20 MINUTES?! I've never had an interview that short. What can you even say?

Red wrote:Who are you publishing with? It'll be fine! They wouldn't want it if they thought it was bananas.

Interview is beginning of March. It's over Zoom with the two Newcastle Uni supervisors, the HES supervisor, and the director of the funding body (Northern Bridge Consortium). It's apparently likely to be 20 minutes. 20 MINUTES?! I've never had an interview that short. What can you even say?

Palgrave Macmillan/Springer are publishing. I feel a little better about it today, just need to sort a bit of the indexing out and then hand it off to some people to proofread it one last time before I send it, but I don't think I'll ever feel like there's enough content, or it's well enough written, etc. Was a gibbering wreck yesterday though, really shitty and mopey with just about everyone I spoke to and there's no excuse for that. Need to get some perspective.

RE: the interview. This sounds like it's a more "getting to know you" session than a proper, formal interview with loads of questions and stuff. The supervisors will all know pretty quickly into the chat if they think you're a fit for the role and then you can progress further with the application. Best of luck with it - you seem like you know your stuff and are enthusiastic about the subject(and area!) so I am sure you'll be absolutely fine.

Mafro wrote:Got a conditional for year three of software development at Napier as long as I get a B in my graded unit. [...] Got an offer for web design and development too.

This is brilliant news mate. You leaning more towards software or web dev at the moment?

Corazon de Leon wrote:Palgrave Macmillan/Springer are publishing. I feel a little better about it today, just need to sort a bit of the indexing out and then hand it off to some people to proofread it one last time before I send it, but I don't think I'll ever feel like there's enough content, or it's well enough written, etc. Was a gibbering wreck yesterday though, really shitty and mopey with just about everyone I spoke to and there's no excuse for that. Need to get some perspective.

For what it's worth, I know how stressful academia is and I think it's totally understandable to have emotional / mental off-days. I think there's a balance, you have to do your best to not let it get to you, but also be kind to yourself and accept that there are going to be moments where you do feel the pressure. (Just reading the word "thesis" still genuinely makes me cringe a bit, a year after the viva. )

Karl_ wrote:

Mafro wrote:Got a conditional for year three of software development at Napier as long as I get a B in my graded unit. [...] Got an offer for web design and development too.

This is brilliant news mate. You leaning more towards software or web dev at the moment?

It'll almost certainly be web dev at this point since 60-70% of this software dev course has been boring as strawberry float.

Submitted the book manuscript late last night, so we'll see how the process goes from here.

Nice, well done on getting it in!

I'm sure it's great, when you're in the heat of scrambling to pull something together it's incredibly easy to start thinking "oh my word this is awful!", I can't imagine even seasoned, successful authors ever really lose that feeling completely!