This is my 100th post. And I have, again, changed the title of this blog - it has gone from Leicester Adventures to Committing Criminology to now, Committing Criminology & Loving Language because I am, indeed, loving Language but still committing Criminology every so often.
The tag line has changed too, and is now "A Criminologist doing an English Language PhD in Leeds" - which is basically what I'm doing, of course.
And I feel so lucky. How did I end up doing this? I can't wrap my head around it. I doubt it's a manifestation of the dreaded 'Impostor Syndrome' - because I don't feel like I'm not up to the job - but it's a good question nonetheless.
Yesterday, I attended a series of presentations the School of English uses to determine who should get a job with them/us (I feel uncomfortable still saying "us" at this point). This was fascinating - being able to see what everyone has done that qualifies them to get invited for such an interview. In the first place, one needs a good number of good publications. This makes sense, because a good researcher does, naturally, good research. Skills are essential too. But the main qualification that I felt was most important was coming across as a friendly person, capable of explaining stuff to others. And they were all really good at that. One of the presenters had a massive CV, with a brilliant and straightforward educational background and lots and lots of languages. Another had an intense list of publications and did a brilliant presentation too. Yet another had a fabulous list of industry-related jobs and qualifications. A fourth had precisely that pedagogical philosophy that I have come to appreciate as a student. The panel must've had a tough time deciding to whom to give the job.
Oh, and they were all women, which pleased me too. I'm not sure if this was reverse gender discrimination - if they had been all men, I do think I would have felt that way - but given their incredible qualifications, I do very well believe that gender had little to do with it.
We all had a Uni-provided lunch in the Douglas Jefferson room (which is gorgeous with dark wood panelling) and I had some chats with some of them - a chat about MOOCs, which was entirely enlightening and made me realise that I should look into some of them, and that MOOCs are far from the end of academia but instead enhance the experience. Distance Learning didn't kill the Universities, so why should MOOCs? I also had a chat with the author of a book I read, and it turns out she's a lovely person in real life - they were all lovely people, really - and I suddenly felt better about having made that slip when telling a prison guard at HMP Grendon that I'd found my visit brilliant, because her research is also related to human suffering and she used the word 'fun' to describe the process.
But it is fun. Human suffering is evil and wrong and everything, but the research process is so much fun. I can't believe I get to do it.
Everything's going so well, I feel like I'm waiting for something to go massively wrong because somehow I do believe there's only a finite amount of luck a person can have in a given time and surely I've used all of mine up by now?
I just keep on reading, and I love doing it. I've got a job test lined up with the City Council. And - as I keep on bragging about - I get to go to the Doctor Who thing in three weeks, and they published the Saturday guest list yesterday and IT. IS. AMAZING.
Seriously, things had better start going wrong or I'm going to start feeling paranoid.
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