July seems rather a long time ago but the discussion is still with me from Michael Atkinson’ s journal club where he presented Berg, P & Seeber, BK (2013) The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy. Transformative Dialogues: Teaching & Learning Journal, 6 (3) April 2013. This paper rang true with many of us including phrases such as “feeling guilty… and then we deny being overwhelmed even to ourselves”, “[we are] too busy to slow down” and “academic work by its very nature is never done”. Can we really go into this academic year, protect our time outside of work, and make room for our scholarship time? We spoke about a few strategies to be more productive such as leaving the email until later in the morning and then turning it off completely once we walk out of the door. Applying the ‘Is it urgent AND important?’ rule and knowing when enough is enough on developing a project/teaching were also mentioned. Overall, we need to do a bit more of looking after ourselves, as also discussed in the paper, our wellbeing “is inextricably linked with students’ learning”.

So I hope these digests have inspired you to come along to our club this new academic year and take the time out (with a spot of lunch) to discuss education with like-minded teachers from across the faculty. The programme of presenters is almost full and I only have two slots left so please do get in touch if you would like to present!

Looking forward to it!

Luisa Wakeling, School of Dental Sciences