09 January 2021

Back to work

On January 4, it finally happened! I properly went back to work. My phased return started after the training ended, put the training only ended half a day before the Christmas holiday. So I think a bit of rounding off is in order here! And of course I had been doing some work, mainly in order to get good at using Dragon, but that felt different. Even though I marked an entire assignment, I was mainly doing it in order to be so proficient with the voice recognition software that I could hit the ground running when the new term would really start.

So how did it go? It immediately felt normal again. I expect that was bound to happen! And I indeed hit the ground running. I negotiated all the software by voice. And it wasn't without its challenges; I think I crashed Excel at least six times the first day alone, as it doesn't seem to like being operated by voice, but I think I now know what to avoid. And these first days of the year tend to be low in scheduled activities, so the difference between my holiday marking and the real deal was small.

I did reluctantly go back to my normal runs, which are not too long so as to not take too much time out of the working day.

I now have a bucket load of lectures to prepare, virtual field trips to sort, practicals to take online, marking to do, and projects to propose. And soon the student enquiries will come in! It will be full on. But what else is new! As long as I can do it all by voice I am sure I will get out of this term a lot better then I did with the previous one…


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