[-empyre-] Practice in Research defenders

[Keith Armstrong]

white-anted maybe the lot of us :)

On that note of the dead wood we hear so much about  (and remebreing that maybe just 1% of a tree is actually alive and composed of "living" cells) -  I have to say that this is something Ive heard time and time and time again in various institutional conversations - that 'such and such' has a research load of 'so much' but does 'absolutely' nothing. 

Without speaking about laziness, I dont think we should undestimate the workloads of our collegues, especially those in full time roles  - especially those teaching a lot and maybe coordinating - and also lets remember how hard it is to 'get started' again when your energy has been sapped by a whole day on the computer dealing with various crises .. not a creative boost in any sense..   

.. Its actually acutely hard  to keep up an active research practice over the decades regardless    -  to be continually successful there are huge implications on time you can allocate to other critical areas of your life .. often those researchers we prize as the 1% (live) wood are undeniably risking health, family and more to keep up their frankly unfathomable pace. 

So - what was that work life balance resolution we made just a few weeks back ?

Thanks for a great discussion one and all.

keith






On 25/01/2013, at 12:29 AM, Simon Biggs <simon at littlepig.org.uk> wrote:

> Hi Keith
> 
> By dead wood I didn't mean younger or emerging researchers, for whom allowance is made in the UK system as early career researchers, but the older branches, like myself.
> 
> best
> 
> Simon
>