---
layout: post
status: publish
published: true
title: My day as a Higher Ed researcher

wordpress_id: 2003
wordpress_url: https://www.martineve.com/?p=2003
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categories:
- Academia
tags:
- dayofhighered
comments:
- id: 6669
  author: David Hull
  author_email: davhull@gmail.com
  author_url: http://fffish.wordpress.org
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  content: ! "Martin, this post only confirms what I've long suspected: that you are
    in fact a research cyborg sent from the future to put other PhD students to shame!
    This would also explain how you were able to finish Fearless Speech seven minutes
    before starting it! :P\r\n\r\nJokes aside, thanks for this post, and your previous
    one. They really are quite helpful in assessing one's work patterns. I particularly
    appreciated your advice about 'functional' reading. I suddenly realised how precious
    I get about everything I read. Time to be a bit more ruthless!"
- id: 6671
  author: Martin Paul Eve
  author_email: martin@martineve.com
  author_url: ''
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  content: ! 'Ha,


    David: you are a cheeky so-and-so! That said, thanks for pointing out the typo;
    John Connor is safe this time, now I''ve fixed the typo! I''ll also point out
    that Fearless Speech is a tiny book (pocket-sized) with big type!


    M'
---
<p>A growing criticism mounted by students/parents of students is the trite argument that there are too few contact hours. Anybody who works as a researcher/lecturer/tutor can demolish this argument in two seconds flat, but the problem now seems to be extending to HR managers, who apparently think that their staff only work about 1/2 the year (ie. when students are around). Let me point something out. One of the reasons that people teach in HE is because <i>they know stuff</i>. They know <i>a lot</i> of stuff. It may surprise you to know, though, that they weren't born knowing stuff; they had to invest quite a significant amount of time learning, as the Twitter hashtag that people are using today "#dayofhighered" shows. Today was one of my research days. Here's what I did. I'm also going to include Sunday (I worked Saturday too) as it was spillover from Monday's work:</p>
<p>Sunday:</p>
<table style="width:100%">
<tr>
<th>Time</th>
<th>Activity</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>9.00</td>
<td>Began typesetting articles for new scholarly journal</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>13.00</td>
<td>Break for lunch</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>14.00</td>
<td>Continue typesetting</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16.00</td>
<td>Finish typesetting</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Monday:</p>
<table style="width:100%">
<tr>
<th>Time</th>
<th>Activity</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>06.30</td>
<td>Get up</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>08.45</td>
<td>Leave for British Library. En route, read and annotate 15 pages of primary material for current research topic</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>09.30</td>
<td>Write preface for launch issue of new scholarly journal with which I am involved</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>10.09</td>
<td>Email preface to co-editors for comment</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>10.11</td>
<td>Begin reading, annotating and integrating Mattessich, Stefan. Lines of Flight: Discursive Time and Countercultural Desire in the Work of Thomas Pynchon. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002 into thesis and monograph work</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11.57</td>
<td>Receive email of transcript from presentation and request to convert to article for journal publication by 1st of May. Respond to email accepting with an additional query</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>10.58</td>
<td>Resume reading</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>12.38</td>
<td>Break for lunch</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>13.03</td>
<td>Resume reading</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>14.26</td>
<td>Finish reading book #1 (290 pages)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>14.27</td>
<td>Email colleague regarding joint proposal for conference paper on an in-progress Digital Humanities project</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>14.35</td>
<td>Begin reading, annotating and integrating Foucault, Michel. Fearless Speech. Ed. Joseph Pearson. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001 into thesis and monograph work</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>15.28</td>
<td>Finish reading book #2 (183 pages). Break for tea</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>15.50</td>
<td>Begin (re-)reading, annotating and integrating chapter 1 of Hite, Molly. Ideas of Order in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1983 into thesis and monograph work</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16.03</td>
<td>Finish reading book chapter (30 pages)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16.04</td>
<td>Begin reading Elliott, Jane, and Derek Attridge. “Theory’s Nine Lives.” In Theory After “Theory,” edited by Jane Elliott and Derek Attridge, 1–15. New York: Routledge, 2011</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16.20</td>
<td>Finish previous reading. Begin Osborne, Peter. “Philosophy After Theory: Transdisciplinarity and the New.” In Theory After “Theory,” edited by Jane Elliott and Derek Attridge, 19–34. New York: Routledge, 2011</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16.53</td>
<td>Finish reading</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16.54</td>
<td>Re-write paragraph of thesis/monograph on history of Theory/theory/philosophy as terms with detailed political histories</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16.57</td>
<td>Respond to communication regarding archival procedures/digital preservation for Open Access journals</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>17.05</td>
<td>Begin re-writing transcription as journal article</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>18.05</td>
<td>Leave British Library and read a further 20 pages of primary material on train home</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>18.56</td>
<td>Arrive home, respond to further emails and admin</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>19.30</td>
<td>Write this post</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>19.39</td>
<td>Dinner at last (well, can start cooking it)</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>That's what a day looks like as a researcher. I like what I do and feel privileged to do it, but it's long hours and is paid on an AHRC grant of £12,000 per year, so please don't say that we don't work hard.</p>
<p><i>Featured image by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellf/">Ellen Forsyth</a> under a CC-BY-NC-SA license.</i></p>