DM to Lola: Oooohhhh you are so gorgeous, you’re irresistible…
Lola to DM: Daddy, Daddy, I Love you and I can’t wait to slurp all over you.
Obviously they are both completely irresistible to me!

I’m sorry about my PaD. I’m drowning in work. I have spent the whole of the last week entering data into a spreadsheet, analysing it and writing up my first report from it. After a week, I reckon I’m about 20% of the way through the job. This is the first part of my dissertation that’s part of my teacher training programme. To be honest, I could have done without this in every sense of the word. I am so utterly turned off by academic research and I was deeply depressed when I realised they had changed the teacher training programme to include a dissertation research project this year and that I would have to participate in one in order to qualify.

You see, I don’t want to be a researcher, academic, educational or other. I thought I’d left research behind me long ago. What’s worse is that in those days at least the research was made up of “sensible” stuff. Now I find myself jumping through hoops of fire to analyse data and I get incensed when I hear other graduates (NOT UoP graduates I have to say) declaring loudly and in public that their own dissertations were completely fabricated. I can’t tell you how depressing that is when I spent such a long time last year crawling around on the moor for my first one and now am spending weeks on end typing numbers into a spreadsheet and doing calculations on them.

I just want to get a certificate that enables me to apply for teaching jobs. The only element of this course that I am remotely interested in is the art and science of teaching and how application of these elements can help me to become a teacher.

Unfortunately the powers that be have decided that the course should be a masters level course and therefore the “academic” element is critical to success. Although strangely they don’t even tell you how critical – the course handbook doesn’t give any indication of whether it’s possible to qualify if you don’t do well in the academic bits. You don’t even get told explicitly how much each academic bit is “worth” of the whole of the academic bit.

So, I’ve spent a good chunk of my Christmas holiday working on a research project that is going to get me some way towards my teaching certificate but I have no idea how far or why. I know that I have weeks and potentially months more work to do to make this project sing and yet I also have a full-time “job” doing the training.

Whine whine whine – sorry.

Who is irresistible? Not me - I'm a drudge.