Well I have been struggling lately with emotions and work/study! Just very mixed feelings on a lot of things I think.

We had orientation today which is always fun! As usual, we had a student panel of past students and not one, but two out of three cried! One had lost a family member right before starting their course and the other has a very long, complicted and tragic story too. When she said that the STEPS program had saved her, I knew she wasn’t exagerating and I before I knew it I was crying too. Luckily I was sitting in the rows, among the students, facing forwards so I doubt anyone but perhaps the panel members saw me. What we do as enabling educators is just SO important. I rarely grumble about my job, but if I ever do… welll I jolly shouldn’t. I love it.

At the moment I’m preparing for term and feeling a tiny bit stressed. That’s mostly because I’m doing a couple of new things this term. 1. Teaching Essay Writing for the first time. 2. Doing an embedded unit for the Academic Learning Center. And of course, on top of that I’ve done my ethics applicaiton for my PhD and will hopefully be doing a pilot test soon! Most likely I’ll have revisions to do on the ethics application first, we’ll see.

Anyway not too stressed, just having to plan each day and each week a little more carefully than usual. I might have to do some work into the evenings next week, see how I go. There’s a book chapter I need to review and some thematic analysis for another project. So that’s one side, busy busy as usual but it is countered by all the good stuff!

I get to meet a whole new group of students in essay writing! The book that was put together primarily by FedUni has come out… The article with Michelle from South Africa has also officially been accepted. Michelle has sent them an email once per month since November (we returned the revised version in October or November – can’t remember which). Well, we finally got a response and it seems they thought they had notified us in November!! These things happen I guess! Sigh. Anyway, that adds another publication to my 2023 list.

I say list because the two book chapters from the FedUni SJIDE group are now out, that’s 2 publications this year. I’ll no doubt miss the book launch but I’m super happy anyway! The book is here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-19-5008-7

So for those at home counting (like I am) that’s 2 publications so far and 3 in press which I can only assume will come out this year. There is three more on top of that submitted and one very close to submission. Not sure how many of those will make it into the 2023 publication list, could be a total of 8.

On that high note, so long!