For some months now, I could see from my diary that July 2011 was going to be a very hectic month – it turned out to be more hectic than I could have imagined! For two weeks of the month I was largely occupied teaching and supporting students through doctoral summer schools, one in Ireland, the other at the Lincoln campus. These were both busy, but very enjoyable and interesting weeks. In Ireland the study school was opened by the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, it was an honour to meet him – in his opening speech, Enda Kenny stated that it was a ’unique and special week in education in Mayo and nationally’ and that the study school was ‘creative and innovative’ – you can see the Lincoln teaching team with the Prime Minister in this photo -
As well as the study schools, I also presented, with colleagues at two conferences this month. The first was the Higher Education Academy’s national conference in Nottingham where we presented on an innovative project to develop and implement our own Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Learning in Higher Educaiton at the University of Lincoln. The second was the Joint Social Work Education Conference held in Manchester, where we presented on a SWAP (social work and policy subject centre) funded research project to explore students’ experiences of mentoring children and young people looked after by the Local Authority. These are just some of the areas of work that made July such a busy month – all in all, I felt as though I was hardly at home all month! So, I am looking forward to a chance to catch up and have some annual leave in August! 
I have vague recollections of a song that was sung when I was at school all about the month of May, I can hum the tune (badly I suspect), but can’t remember many of the words, except it included a line about being the month of ‘rejoicing’. This May has been a good month for me, so perhaps the tune is appropriate. Busy as ever, though, with various research projects being particularly active, including the ‘Connected Communities’ work, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. I also became involved in a small local research project to evaluate an initiative providing hot meals in schools for older people, as part of the Excellent Ageing project in Lincolnshire.
On a different note, with a team of colleagues I started on the Global Corporate Challenge on 19th May. This is a pedometer based walking challenge where we are engaged in a virtual team walk around the world for 16 weeks; wearing a pedometer each day and entering our own daily step count on-line each day. It is fascinating how wearing a pedometer makes me not only realise how sedentry my job can be, but also gives me the motivation to take the stairs rather than the lift and to get out jogging and walking more than I had been. It’ll be interesting to watch progress over the coming weeks.
Then at the end of the month, I had a short family break away in West Wales, whilst the weather was somewhat unpredictable, it was great to spend time with my family, just enjoying each other’s company and time together.
March is one of my favourite months of the year, for lots of reasons, mainly though because it really seems to hail the start of spring and all that comes with it. Workwise, though, it has been as busy a month as ever. I have been heavily involved in a major revalidation project within the School that I work, this has been challenging, exciting and rewarding, but mostly, time-consuming! I was also involved in work to develop and implement the University’s first ‘Festival of Learning’ at the end of the month, this being linked to our ‘Student as Producer’ initiative. At home I enjoyed a lovely ‘Mother’s Day’ weekend when my daughter and I had a ‘girlie’ weekend away doing a whole range of ‘girlie’ things; we had great fun!
