Looking back on 2025

The years 2024 and 2023 were years of working too hard, and dating and running. That's how I summarised it in my previous year overviews. I don't think it's too much of a spoiler alert to say that you could characterise 2025 like that as well. 2025 didn't have anything spectacular like Athena Swan applications or promotion applications, so this year was clearly less bad than 2024, but there still was a lot of work. It started badly: a student appealed against a whole array of grades. It was quite some work to respond to every accusation they made. In the end none of their appeals were upheld. That seems a lot of work for nothing. And we could just go back to marking, and preparing for the new term. That pretty much went without incident. The only unusual thing was that I got nominated for a highly unexpected teaching award; needless to say, I did not win. 

Work did get stressful for reasons other than workload again; there was another Business Case for Change (a nice term for making budget cuts). This time, our School was doing so well we were not threatened with forced redundancies. We were all eligible for voluntary redundancy though; for me that worked out well, as my nemesis, who had taken me off the Thursdaynighters email list after I had spoken out against misogyny, took the bait and left. It is a pity for the School as it doesn't have a photographer anymore now, but for me it is good. 

Another thing that happened this year was the further rise of AI. In my function of academic integrity officer, I now deal a lot less with students who just copy and paste text from their sources, and a lot more with students who let AI do too much of their work. Next year will be another very interesting year in which we will continue to have to adapt to this! 

In summer, I was very briefly appointed to deal with student extension requests, but before I had properly started, this task was transferred to administrative staff. I dodged a bullet there!

Then the summer, which is always too short, was over and we started teaching again, kicking off as usual with the fieldtrip. I hadn't made much progress with my application for senior fellowship of the HEA! That will have to wait until next summer. 

Term started perfectly doable; my plan for not letting the students creating their own dissertation topics get out of hand this year had worked. And the new way of doing the allocation also helped. But then the marking hit again. And that was basically quite hectic until my birthday. And then there was still quite a lot to do until the Christmas holiday. But at least this year, I could travel to the Netherlands without having to stress too much about the marking that would be waiting for me when I would get back. And just before the University closed, we were told who would be our next head of School, when our current one would retire in late January. In the New Year will find out how he does...

So that was work! What about the dating? Well! It is safe to say the 2025 was a rather spectacular year. I actually started it in a relationship, but we were only five days into the year when that came to an end, through a text message. I was not impressed. I got back on the dating scene, And quite soon found a man who turned out to have made a profile especially to woo me. He had wanted to do that before, but Nick had got in the way. But Nick was gone now! And we had a series of rather enjoyable dates, but he decided in the end that we weren't compatible after all. Back to square one. I was getting disheartened. I suppose I had some dating site burnout. Until when in summer, I suddenly had an urge to have another look. And came across the profile of a certain Neil. He looked like my kind of guy! So I sent him a message. And soon we went on dates. We really clicked and made it official in September. No signs of getting tired of each other yet!

What about running? It was an intensive year! And very enjoyable. Although it started with an impediment: I had some ankle issues at the start of the year. I had seen the physio late 2024, and I was doing my exercises. By February I was back on the hills, and in early February I had my first race. That was Sbrint 'Stiniog; a lovely low-key local race! A good start. And I had also got myself a new toy: a Garmin, without which I rarely leave the house by now. 

In spring, When my Tuesday night Welsh class ended, I started running on the track, and I have become a rather regular participant. I enjoy it! It's good training, and it is quite social as you run with other people, and most of the drills involve breaks, during which you can socialise. It is also logistically easy as the athletics track is quite close to my office. And it turned me into a numerically interested runner. I never paid attention to my pace! I just ran almost everything on feeling. I sometimes kept an eye on my pace, but then I did that the old-fashioned way: just look at my watch and at the kilometre markers (or mile markers) and do some arithmetic in my head. Just looking at your watch and it just telling you what pace you are doing is a lot easier. And sometimes it saves me from starting a race too quickly.

Through my membership of the Eryri Harriers I became aware of the club road championships, and I started registering for all the races that came up in that context. That boosted my race participation. I also added the Borders League. I'm hooked now! In the end, I ran 26 races in 2025, compared to 13 in 2024. I already thought that was much! But 26 is a lot of fun to be had. And was a good year? Well! That depends a bit on how you look at it. I didn't win many medals. I only had two bronze medals in the whole year: at the Pentir Fun Run and the Breakwater 5 mile. The previous year was a lot more prolific: in 13 races, I won 1 gold medal, 2 silver medals and 1 bronze medal. And then I had 7 category wins, when this year I had 11 in twice as many races. In that sense it looks like I am losing my mojo. But it doesn't quite feel that way. One thing was that I ran PBs in 4 out of the 5 distances I compete in. But you could argue that that is just a result of running more races. I didn't break my PB in the 10k; my most frequently run distance. Several of the other distances I just rarely run, like 5k, 5m, and 10m. I suppose the only thing that showed off my increased training was my performance on the half marathon. I ran three of them; all of them I had done before, and I improved my time on every single one. Two of them by 6 minutes. And I wasn't even chasing PBs. I will do that in the new year! And I have faith in my quest for breaking them all in the new year or beyond. 

One of my last races of the year

On other running notes: I spent an evening with a running coach in order to see if he could give me advice that would lead to me getting fewer injuries. I think it worked! Unfortunately, it did not stop me from spraining my knee during a fell race. But I recovered. And I got me better running bras. Far from trivial!

What else happened this year? Well! I became a stem cell donor. And I needed an emergency repair on my roof. Henco and Maaike visited, and we went camping on Anglesey. I also camped with Kate and Bryn. And the biggest camping adventure was our annual Swamphike. We went back to the Peak District.

Daft Swamphike pic

 

It was not the best year for hanging out with Martin, Susan and Dean. They all moved house; Martin first, and the others later. So now my social circle is a lot more spread out! And moving house takes a lot of time, especially if you move to a very big place, so they were all quite busy. 

In summer I left the cave rescue team. And immediately afterwards, I joined an actual caving club, so I could go underground with their female only group. I did several trips with them this year, including a whole weekend; that was fab! I hope to do more with them in the New Year. And with me not having to spend time on NWCRO any more, I joined the committee of the Eryri Harriers. 

I also tried to use this year to get my entire house fitted out with infrared panels. That didn't really work out! When the year ended, I was still awaiting compatible thermostats for several of them. And I had a hole in my wall. This really should be sorted out in the New Year. At least a problem with my solar panel inverter was solved in between the other work.

In the last few weeks of the year I turned 50. I didn't celebrated big; my birth is always in the busiest part of the academic year. But I think that, except for Kate being ill, it was as good a celebration as that time of the year allows. And I'm enjoying being 50 so far! And I hope to have more fun with it when the racing season starts again.

I suppose the last thing that happened this year that will reverberate in the new year was that a new Head of School was appointed.

So altogether, I think it was a good year! Work was not too bad, running was fab, all was well with the cat, and I found Neil. That's good enough to make it a good year. And what about 2026? I hope that it will be similar. I suppose some things that I know will be different are that I will now be doing secretarial work for the running club rather than for the cave rescue team, and at work I will have a new and completely different line manager. We'll see how that all pans out! For now I am optimistic. Anything I should aspire to? I have already revealed my running ambitions. I will try to be a good committee member for the running club. I will do strength training as I am too old for only running. And I really should send in that application for senior fellowship of the HEA this summer. All of that while still having lots of adventures with Neil!