I can’t deny it, things are getting exciting! I leave in 8 days to fly to Adelaide for not one, but TWO conferences!

First is the AARE – Australian Association for Research in Education – https://www.aare.edu.au/events/2022-conference/

I have one presenatation in the program which is associated with the team including Tim Fish, Ondine Bradbury and Rickard O’Donovan. It’s not always the most productive team but it’s one of the most fun. Good people make all the difference. I’m not feeling entirely prepared for this presentation… yet and I think this is the one where we are also going to publish a conference paper through AARE. The paper hasn’t been written yet but I could be mistaken – perhaps the plan is to publish elsewhere. Anyway, this will be my first ever conference presentation, my first ever face-to-face conference and I am rather excited.

After AARE finishes on Friday I will have the weekend to hang out in Adelaide and then NAEEA on Monday!

Second conference is NAEEA – National Association for Enabling Educators, Australia – https://naeeaconference.com.au/

I am part of two presentations in this conference. The first is the team from the Mental health and Wellbeing Special Interest Group (from NAEEA). We are also working on a submission for a special issue of the Student Success journal which is due on the 30th. Another great team! I’m one of the last authors on the paper we are presenting on, just so happened that I got funding to go to the conference. There’s 2 out of 8 (Juliette and I) of us that are actually attending and therefore presenting. This one we ARE quite prepared for. Juliette and I have met together a few times already and the slides are basically done.

The second presentation in with the Social Innovation group here at CQU, led by Trixie. I’m certain it will come together but it’s not quite ready yet. We’ve just worked out the main points we will cover and planned an activity in the presentation too (always risky!). I created some slides but didn’t add any real content yet, so I guess we’ll see how that comes together in the next few days. I will remind Trixie and Anne (who I am presenting with) that I wont be here in the days leading up to NAEEA because I’ll be at AARE!

Now, back to my PhD, well my confirmation report. I want to, well need to, hand it in before I head off to these conferences, so that gives me about a week. BUT, I had a meeting with my supervisors yesterday and they are pretty happy with where it is at. “It reads well” I think was the compliment I managed to pry out of them. I have a to-do list which fits on an A5 page (see picture below)…. they ONLY thing NOT on that list is that I will then have to cut it down under the word limit. At the moment it is about 760 words over. But sadly there are no decent sized sections I can cut out, so it is sentence by sentence editing.

I didn’t actually count that list before… but just realised it’s 10 things! 10 minor things and cutting around 800 words, then I’m done with confirmation! My supervisors seem to be happy that I will pass it. I mean officially it has already been confirmed, pending minor edits, so it would be difficult to not pass confirmation at this point. I’m just really happy to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Sadly, it’s not that exciting because the moment, and I do mean the very moment, confirmation is done I need to start on the ethics application. And FedUni does not have the amazing, easy to work with ethics team that we have here at CQU. I am not looking forward to it. Even just the fact that they have 1 large Word document/template for ethics instead of an online form that can be done (and saved) in sections. Their whole system is clunky in comparison. Sigh.

And Stuart (associated supervisor) is worried that I’ll then need another month to get ethics approval from CQU. I informed him that last time I got CQU ethics after I already had FedUni ethics, it took 2 days. From the moment I hit that “submit” button on the online form, to the moment I had email confirmation I could go ahead with the project… 2 days! I love it when things are smooth. So I expect that will be the case again regarding CQU ethics… it’s just the FedUni side that will be nightmarish.

Not much other news to report. I’ve done chunks of literature reivews for various projects, worked on Confirmation, Powerpoint slides, the survey for the Preparedness project and editing of the social innovation paper. I need to get back to the covid article, UNESCO coding and probably 100 other things. But I’m too busy feeling excited about confirmation and conferences at the moment! 🙂