I’ve been writing this blog for more than fourteen years now, incredible though that sounds, at least to me. I rarely look back at what has gone before and if I do, it’s mainly to check I’m not repeating myself. But, looking back recently I was struck by one post I wrote more than twelve years ago about the challenges of saying ‘no’. I can well recall the conversation with AN Other that prompted it. My own situation has changed a lot since then, having been a College Master for ten years and now formally retired. However, trying to make one’s mind up about what to do and what not to do is as much a challenge as ever. I recall one friend saying their choices were made on where their personal contribution could make most difference. The danger with that approach is that one can end up staying in a narrow area in which you are already an expert (although that wasn’t in fact true of him). In my wider work as in my research, I have always wanted to keep expanding my horizons.
Much of what I have done in my life has happened by accident rather than by conscious design. When I give talks about my career I try to stress that this is not always such a bad thing. Sometimes it kicks you out of a rut, sometimes it opens up new opportunities that you might not have actively sought out. In my research, I always tried to keep a ‘safe’ research strand going while I plunged into something new. This meant I had something to fall back on if the new departure failed to ignite for one reason or another. Sometimes I felt stretched beyond my comfort level and there is no doubt I started a number of lines that went nowhere. But, on the whole, I feel it was a good strategy.
So too with what might term extracurricular activities. I may be frequently described as a ‘champion for women’, but I had to start somewhere other than simply with a feeling of annoyance with the little things that were tossed negatively in my direction (many of which I’ve written about previously on this blog). This formal championing arose because I had been interacting with more senior women – notably Julia Higgins and Jocelyn Bell Burnell – about the disadvantages many female scientists operated under; I then found myself being nominated by them to take on chairing the Athena Forum (now I think no more, but it was about promoting women in science). And, in due course, Julia passed on to me an invitation to talk in Austria about the topic of women in science. I wrote about that meeting very early in the lifetime of this blog, and it was a fairly weird experience as I and other externals got caught up in their own internal Austrian issues, but it was also something of a baptism by fire to talk on a subject I had barely begun to master. However, necessity is the mother of invention and that first talk – and all the work I put into preparing it – stood me in good stead as my visibility in this space rose.
I say this as I try to get to grips with new issues in my retirement. The only way to get on top of a new topic is to put in the hours reading the literature, as any new PhD student will know. Often the challenge is where to begin, how to find out what is the ‘right’ reading given the volume of potentially informative material out there with a mere click of a mouse. How to get to the essence of a new problem when there are many voices, not all of which will be helpful or indeed trustworthy? Learning how to critique others’ writing is of course another skill the freshly minted researcher needs to master, but it is not easy from the get-go.
Again, as with trying to work out what tasks to take on, trying to work out whose writing or interviews to trust is something that can be facilitated by talking to others. They don’t need to be people who are in any way closely connected with you, but simply people who are willing to share wisdom and their own experience. In my current situation, they are likely to be the very same people who’ve roped me in to the matter in hand, but as a student they are likely to be your peers as much as your supervisor.
I always feel I ‘fell’ into policy when I was asked, to my surprise, to chair the Royal Society’s Education Committee, a role I took on in 2010. I had to do a crash course then, but it certainly stood me in good stead when I became Master of Churchill College, since I had learned a lot about school education (not something all professors are au fait with) during my 4 year stint as chair. The importance of a good education system for all ages and all abilities is something I continue to be both concerned and interested in. Hence my pleasure when appointed chair of the Department for Education’s Scientific Advisory Council recently, but also my involvement with other activities (such as chairing the Science Policy Educators’ Alliance, a grouping of relevant learned and professional bodies). In particular, and locally, I am currently exploring the situation regarding apprentices in the region in conjunction with key players in this space.
With the creation of Skills England, it has to be hoped that policy – and indeed funding – covering the whole gamut of education and post-16 skills training will become more coherent. As has frequently been pointed out by many another expert, this is not currently the case. A recent HEPI blog is a case in point. I won’t be writing specifically about the work of the DfE SAC, as that would not be appropriate, but other aspects of the important topic of skills may well find their way into future blogposts as I delve deeper. Who knows?
