Wow life has been a whirlwind since my last post! I’ll start with the little bits and pieces and go from there.

First there was the autoethnography peice that was accepted with minor revisions. Well they have been done and it has been resubmitted.

I have done some work on the ethics application for my PhD. Not a lot, but maybe a couple of hours. At least it’s a start.

I resubmitted my confirmation of candidature report. Neither of my supervisors read it from top to bottom in the last couple of weeks. I guess that was a little disapointing and worrisome but also a compliment because they obviously trust me to edit it well. I had to cut around 10% of the word limit out, so again, they obviously trust that I didn’t cut out anything important etc. Their attitude was a little blasé and I think that sort of stuck with me a bit.

Then there was the conferences! I travelled on my own for the first time ever which is slightly more complex as I am a type 1 diabetic with an insulin pump. But that part was pretty smooth. The first conference was the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) which went from a pre-conference day on Sunday to Thursday last week. One of the first things I learnt was that I was unsuccessful with the voting to get on the committee. But other than that the first day was excellent. I spend most of this conference with Amy C and Karen from FedUni. We have different interests and often attended different sessions but also met up for meals most days. Amy was in the hotel room right next to mine. We had some super good chats, about life, research, work, well about pretty much anything and everything.

Ondine didn’t arrive until the Tuesday and we were presenting Wednesday just after lunch. Fair to say I missed most of the sessions from Tuesday afternoon until then. We were not prepared. I had done everything I was asked to do. But I guess that was the issue… I sat back and waiting for Tim and Ondine to give me instructions for whatever was next. I mean, they are the first 2 authors so it made sense… but it also spoke a LOT about my confidence. I’m determined to be more on top of things next time. Anyway, we shared a couple of meals together as well. It was very excellent meeting them in person.

In the end our presentation was great. Tim mumbles a bit when he’s nervous but I think he spoke so that all could hear and understand him. Ondine speaks very smoothly and confidently and I did as well. We got lots of nods from the audience and about 5 questions. Natalie Downes was there too which was pretty nice! I reflected on it later and there was no cringe moments that I recalled, so WIN!

What else might one want to know about the conference? Uni SA was a wonderful location because it was close to shops and food and coffee and just lovely. All the technology worked perfectly and I would love to work there! The food was pretty good. It’s too hard to pick a favorite speaker, many were excellent. My accomodation was great until I had to move for the National Association of Enabling Educators, Australia (NAEEA) conference. The best contact I made was Amy Robinson who is the enabling program leader at The University of Adelaide. She is inspirational and bubbly and we are very like-minded (at least so far). I really enjoyed the Social Justice SIG meeting as well. Tim is stepping back a bit in 2023 so there could be some good opportunities there too.

Next year AARE is in Melbourne and I’m already hoping to go. I’ll work out what I can present on later! Now I might just leave it there and talk about the NAEEA conference in another post… I don’t want this one to be thesis length!