As the end of term, and Christmas, draws closer there a lots of things which need to be done. For this reason I have been especially busy over the last few weeks but the weather this November has insured that I am indeed snowed under at the moment!

Firstly, the craziness of the weather. While Newcastle isn’t, by any stretch the Bahamas, when they said there’d be snow this week I didn’t think we’d get as much as we have done. Literally several inches of the stuff and not just in the sticks but in Gosforth and the city centre. Now I don’t mind the snow at all and it does make things seem properly Christmassy. I haven’t ventured outside today, but I think I shall have a walk in the snow tomorrow for sure.

As part of the getting into that Christmas mood, a visit to the Newcastle continental Christmas market was in order, particularly for some mulled wine! But in order to justify that I needed a good reason. That reason, this Friday, was that I have finished my teaching for the term now. I still have presentations and papers to mark, but the hard work of teaching, and me doing the talking most of the time, is now over. I have enjoyed teaching my seminars this year and I think the group as whole show some promise so I am optimistic that I shall have some good marks to award this year! This week I gave another lecture for the module and had that observed. I think it went well, but I’m sure I will get some useful and constructive feedback. If I’m not too bad on only my second attempt, then with more practice and experience, I should be a more than competent teacher!

The main monkey on my back is the chapter I’m in the process of (re)drafting. I’ve nearly got a complete version, but once I do that it won’t be finished because I need to go through it all and beef it up rather. I have done a fair bit today, but I’ll have to see how I get on tomorrow regarding what I can realistically achieve by Tuesday. But it’s great to have words on the board and to have a whole chapter pretty much ready.

I’m also looking forward to Thursday of next week. António Costa Pinto is coming to give a lecture on Portugal: from Empire to Europe. He is not only a scholar whom I cite in my work but I have met him and when I was at his Institute in Lisbon earlier in the year he pointed me in the right direction to send me on my way for my fieldwork. It will be nice to hear what he has to say, but more importantly to him again – he’s a lovely guy. Also on Thursday, me and my fellow PhD students in Politics have decided to have a bit of a coffee afternoon which will involve caffeine, cake, and moaning about how useless the undergrads are that we teach. That’s the recognised formula! But also we need to get some volunteers to take roles and responsibilities on, otherwise when me and the other 3rd years are gone, there won’t be a Politics postgraduate community to speak of and that would be a great shame.

I’m going up to Berwick next weekend with the girlfriend, which should be nice and from there we’re going to have a day trip to Edinburgh. So I’m looking forward to that, assuming, of course, that I get done all that I want to this week and that the snow doesn’t pile up any higher!

In a very busy month since my last post, I have technically become a lecturer!

But not in the sense of a permanent member of academic staff holding a lectureship, but I have given a guest lecture on Europeanisation to the second year undergrad module of EU Politics and Policy for which I am a seminar tutor again this year.

I have to say it went well enough. I mean, I would have been happy to get out alive, no fires or anything like that. But I think I did a decent job. And, while making a career out of it would be nice but given the state of university finances may be tricky, I know for a fact I shall definitely have another go at it in a couple of weeks when I lecture on EU security policy.

So it’s good to be a lecturer, but also good, after my time away on fieldwork, to get back into seminar teaching. It’s definitely a whole lot easier this year, as I don’t have to do the reading all over again! And having the confidence of having done it before definitely helps me this time. And I’m quite pleased with how the five weeks of seminars have gone so far. This week in particular, when we did a little European Council role play. Another two weeks of seminars and then group presentations to mark.

My standing up in front of crowds this past month has not been limited to undergraduate teaching either. I presented my fieldwork findings to our Politics Internal New Voices seminar series. That too went well and I got some useful feedback. I went with another PhD student doing some weird and wonderful research on a Japanese thinker so I really learnt something from his presentation before I stood up to give mine! I hope the audience learned something from mine! But I definitely got asked some challenging questions and got some great feedback – which is the main thing!

So with preparing for my presentation and teaching commitments, I have clearly been busy. But I did pop home at the end of October as it was my Dad’s birthday. That was a nice weekend, and even managed to get a few pints in at the final day of the Norwich beer festival!

But there is a little thing called a thesis which needs writing! Apparently they don’t write themselves!!! So I have also been busy redrafting the chapter I did over the summer and trying to organise my thesis outline as best I can. But I think it’s coming together. I have also blitzed the British Library and got hold of lots of books on inter-library loans not to mention chapters from library e-books printed off and making a few purchases from Amazon! Finding new material in the final year of your PhD isn’t nice, but hopefully I will now not be found lacking in my viva. But a couple of the books I bought were ones I wanted for keeps that I was fed up of having on loan from the library! The book shelf needs to be improved upon to get anywhere near the required standard for a proper academic!

The Christmas decorations are starting to go up in town and the spectacle of the Fenwick’s Christmas window has been revealed to the world. It’s not too bad this year, they went quite traditional with the nativity last year, so this year is more Santa’s workshop. It does look nice, although it’s not quite put me in the festive mood yet.

With all these things to keep me busy I’m sure it will be December before I know it, but hopefully I will find time for another blog update before then. If not apologies in advance, I really do have a good reason!