Today seems to be such a mixed day! Trixie James and I received notification that our article has been published which was fantastic. It is those “winning” moments that keep me going. I have emailed the pdf to as many people as I could think of… and received some wonderfully encouraging replies too. Plus there was no less than 3 shameless self-citations in the article. Unfortunately, 2 of them were “in press” and in one case the name of the edited book has changed! Not sure if it’s worth sending something to the journal to see if they can update that! Still I figure if someone does a search, 5 years from now, hopefully they will search for the title of the chapter and find it. Speaking of shameless self-promotion:

Larsen, A., & James, T. (2022). A sense of belonging in Australian higher education: the significance of self-efficacy and the student-educator relationship. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 19(4). https://ro.uow.edu.au/jutlp/vol19/iss4/05

The TAFE project has had ethics approved as well. It only took them a couple of days which was amazing! Having said that, ethics had already been granted by Federation University so they just had to give the all clear for us to recruit participants through this university. So now I have to work out how to get my hands on the list of students/email addresses that I need. We also need to set up meetings again because I can no longer see them in my calendar… lots to do on the TAFE project indeed! I think I will wait until after my confirmation report has been submitted on Wednesday.

My principle supervisor has not replied to my emails or done any reviews of my writing for over a week now. That has caused me a bit of stress, maybe a lot of stress. I feel stressed but my body hasn’t shown too many signs yet. Usually I get pimples, muscle aches or SOMETHING when I’m really stressed. Still I imagine she has a reasonable amount of confidence in me so that is a compliment. Plus she’s probably got bigger fish to fry!

My report is currently only 250 words over the limit, feeling very positive about that aspect. I’m still not sure my method section is clear enough or includes everything that it should. I think I am spending too much time trying to justify my choices of method rather than just saying “this is what I am doing”. When it all comes down to it I’m just worried because I have only got 2 days to go and I have a LOT of work commitments in that time as well.

So, I’ve got to stop outpouring and begin working!