Dear blog,

Even though it’s August, I’ve still been really busy. It’s funny because there are still people out there who think that we get three months holiday over the summer. Actually I get 25 days plus the university closure days and bank holidays and they seem to go pretty fast.

I’ve shortlisted for the Davy Letters MHRA research associate now: it was tough. There were lots of applicants many of whom were really very good. One easy way to get rid of a few applicants was to only interview people who had their PhDs since there were so many of them. We also looked at the historical period covered by PhDs in an attempt to get someone who knew as much as possible about Davy’s period. In the end we shortlisted four people and the interviews are next Friday.

I’m reading an MRes for Edge Hill University and the viva is next week. My last student at Salford, Jess Roberts, got her PhD nearly two weeks ago — that was absolutely brilliant. Mainly my time has been taken up with writing the Case for Support for the AHRC Leadership Fellow scheme. It’s incredibly time consuming and I feel quite despondent about my chances of success but nonetheless you have to put everything into it to have any chance at all. Add to all of this the usual admin related to being Research Director in the department. I took five days leave to see friends in the French Alps last week (only three were working days) but I had to spend a full day responding to emails on my return. It’s August! This is madness.

Enough moaning already. I need to get back to work…

Sharon