Agnes Bosanquet

Associate Professor

Director, Learning and Teaching Staff Development at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Advice overload: Pandemic diaries

The internet is full of advice—maintaining physical and mental health; homeschooling; reading, watching, listening lists; connecting while social distancing; creating timetables for family routines; making your own hand sanitiser; and participating in housebound activities such as decluttering, learning a musical instrument/chess/a language; baking; and crafting.

Goals for today: Pandemic diaries

These quotidian goals are also a way to challenge myself to listen to others and to read from different perspectives, and offer a chance to reflect on our complicated and delicate lives and world.

I may have committed career suicide multiple times, but I am an optimist at heart

By my colleague’s measure, I may have committed career suicide multiple times. Right now, at this moment in time, I feel both confident and challenged by my career for a number of reasons

I completed my PhD very slowly – it was the effort of a tortoise

I completed my PhD very slowly. Here is the short version of a long story. My PhD was poorly planned. I didn’t have a well-defined topic. I worked four days a week in an area unrelated to my PhD.