Last week was odd. I had basically thought I could do practical things far faster than I could in reality. So when Monday dawned I realised that I had a full morning of activity to get through and nothing was written on a major piece of work for my thesis. So at that stage booked the Tuesday off as holiday.
The piece of work got done by the Tuesday evening and was sent off to the proof readers. I then spent Friday working at home and going through the proof read pieces. It worked ok I think. It is one of the few pieces I know that will not be in any form in my thesis. Basically because I had to outline the argument in my thesis given the work I had already done. I will be interested to see if this counts as an argument rather than a series of ideas strung together.
Wednesday and Thursday were quiet in work. I was half expecting students to be back, or there to be a lot of conferences. Nothing in fact happened. I managed to deal with most of the queries that had arrived by email while I was off and I think dealt with one major one and started processing another. I found myself passing on what I would consider pretty basic stuff to an expert user. I wonder how he missed learning about those things. Some I think is that my brain just always worked that way and no I don’t trust myself to hand code things when a machine can do it for me.
Friday was actually fairly good but the effect of the unwinding of having submitted such a big piece was for me to throw a migraine. or I think I did, I was not fully functional on the Saturday although I was not curled up in bed. I also managed to spend a couple of hours in a book shop without finding much I wanted to buy. I somehow managed to take all my medication in the morning, which was not too bright a thing to do as some of it I am supposed to take before bed.There were plenty of books there so it was not lack of choice.
I went to bed early on Saturday and thought I had got over the mess only for a migraine to strike full blast Monday morning. However that does seem to have finally cleared whatever was causing it in my system and the rest of the week has been far better paced.
Tuesday I went down for a supervision to Birmingham, things worked smoothly until it was time to see my supervisor. Then there was some negotiation going on in Department and they wanted him down immediately for twenty minutes. These things happen about every nine months or so however it cut short the meeting by about twenty minutes which is better than some of these situations have been. However the supervisor thought what I wrote had the embryos of an actual thesis. Also checking for something else I came across the following quote “Culture - not vision or strategy - is the most powerful factor in any organisation”. This is from the book Cracking your Church’s Culture Code by Samuel Chand. It is American and it does presume culture is something the boss determines which does not fit with my understanding at all. However I suspect it would do no harm for a church secretary or minister to read it. For instance he points out that turf issues aren’t really about the tasks people fight over but that they are about personal pride and perceived powers.
Wednesday I had a long meeting on Wednesday morning and actually spent most of the afternoon going through the accumulated emails. The difference being from last week is that I was actually feeling as if I was getting on top of it. I also emailed the person in work in charge of running courses possible dates I could teach on. I am beginning to realise that at least as far as research training she is not a proactive about setting up courses. I am going to have to think about how I tackle this but it explains a lot. I can tackle this, this time, last time I was simply too depressed to do so, so courses did not happen.
Thursday another normal day in work. Saw a PhD student who is working on attitude to nature reserves in I suspect Malaysia. She always brings me treats, often milk chocolate that I give away or fruit. This time she brought home made sweets. It is so long since I have experienced my automatic gag in response to texture I was beginning to think that with cutting out milk it had got rid of it as I have eaten things where I would have expected the gag to play. However these although they look milk free hit it exactly.
Friday had a bit of a frustrating morning, a person with whom I have a long history of cooperation has a student doing a PhD. Now this should not be a problem but the student is falling into that grey category between where people make the grade and people don’t. The problem does not seem to be understanding or comprehension. If PhD were gained by written papers we expect she would pass but it isn’t and she seems to lack the spark that takes people beyond the taught course level. In the evening I went to have a meal with James and Jean Dickson. It was an enjoyable evening. The main course was ham with Inverness Sauce which was sharp and fruity jelly so worked well with ham.
Saturday was better this week. I went into town, I decided on a whim to buy myself a couple of extra thermal baselayers from Blacks as the Peter Storm ones they sell are so comfy. I managed to pick up one large and one extra small. The one thing I am not is extra small (although I quite probably would get away with medium. So there was a second visit down town to sort that. I also picked up my prescription from Boots. I had the review with the pharmacist and as it was a locum covering Saturday I had to explain that the fact it said my GP had not reviewed my prescription was due to my GP not ticking the box not due to the lack of review as there had been a major reduction in September in what I was prescribed. Stuart came around in the evening and he needs to do a tour for his NVQ and he can’t do a schedule one so would I mind coming up and he would show me around. I said yes but not until the week after this, but also suggested that he widened it to other people at church, not everybody but a small group.
Today I went to Herringthorpe and they had a church meeting. They seem to be slowly getting their head around the issues to do with finance and as a result there was more light in this church meeting. What I suspect they are really struggling with is not finance at all but the fact that the methods that kept a congregation of less than one hundred don’t work very well for congregations that are larger. For instance they need to be deliberate about things rather than leaving them to the natural flow of friendship. People will not know who every one is within a couple of months of joining the church. So how do people find who to talk to. For instance today Vicki (spelling is correct) was asking for people to help with next Sunday’s Homeless Cafe, but if I was new I would not know who Vicki was .
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