The last two weeks have been great.

I took at trip to Greece for a friends’ wedding and managed to catch up with family and friends. The weather, food, beer and festivities were all fantastic.

The weekend just passed was a trip to Oxford for the alumni weekend and the first event of my soon to be merged college. It was great to see some old faces — and all of them looking healthy and happy. One of the nicest parts of this was meeting some new people (postgrads and fellows at Green) and also being remembered at my own college when I rolled up. Its really rather easy to forget how touching such things are until they happen.

Its now the beginning and term and things have got very, very busy.

Trundling on the same as last year would be the easy option, but when has that ever been an option for me?

New things on the horizon this year include:

• My first attempt at using podcasts as part of teaching. I think I have the technology largely sorted, but this will probably turn out to be the easy part. I have also put a lot of careful thought into how this might work. In particular, I want the podcasts to augment rather than replace existing methods of communicating with students. This of course breaks with tradition, so there are embedded practice issues (for students) that I have to nudge. I’ll report on this as I see how it works (or not).
• Getting back into the swing of research. There has been something of a hiatus for me in terms of traditional academic research. I have now submitted two workshop papers and am about to submit a conference paper to get back into the swing of things. My hope is to consolidate and use as a catalyst all of the exciting things I’ve done over the last couple of years (particularly involving China).
• I have plans to extend and vary again the Overseas Project trip and introduce some new types of assessment. Nothing major, but probably much more work for me than the students. The same issues emerge here as with the podcasting: how to engage with new media, technology and practices without diminishing the best of traditional education.
• Reengaging with some hobbies — all work and no play is not healthy, so I want to spend less time in front of the computer and more time out and about working on my photography — and if the timing is suitable take a documentary making course.

This all seems like a rather heady agenda. However, as much as being mid-career and almost middle aged seems an almost certain recipe for having the ambition kicked out of one, ‘they,’ whoever they are, haven’t got to me yet.