Durham staff survey
I filled in the Durham University staff survey yesterday, which got me once again rather miffed about the way that postdoctoral positions work within this university, but also more generally. A good number of the questions were of the "can you do your work within normal working hours?", "do you have enough resources to do your job?", "do you feel stressed by work?" and so on. Answers: no, no, and yes. But while this "dialogue" is all very well in principle, there's nothing that can actually be done about these things: research positions are funded to do research in a particular area and if that's a lot of work for one person, tough. And if you don't manage to do it, also tough: no permanent position for you, matey. So hurrah for the new touchy-feely Durham University, but if they stump up University funds for the needed extra manpower to make my post a full success, I'll eat a hat of anyone's choosing.