A week in my life... the #academicprecariat project

​Today I began vlogging my week, and I’ll be posting a new video every day chronicling my life as an un/under-employed academic. I’ve decided to do this for a few reasons, but primarily because it became obvious to me, in a few separate incidents on Twitter and in real life, that a lot of people don’t actually understand what a typical week looks like for an un/under-employed academic.

This post will serve as both a short introduction and some context to my situation – people who have read this blog, follow me on Twitter, or know me in real life may already know some or all of this context.

• My PhD, in Classics, was awarded in 2015 from King’s College London.
• During my PhD I had a child, she is now almost 5 and has just started school. I co-parent, which means most days of any given week I am the sole care-giver of my child (although obviously my partner helps out when he can), and when Kiddo is at her dad’s then I have no direct caring duties.
• In term one of this year I am teaching ten hours a week on three courses – one first year course which I am only taking the seminars, and one second and one third year course which I am convening.
• I have a chronic illness, for which I take medication twice a day. This is unrelated to the hospital visit you will see during the videos this week. The illness does not affect my ability to research or teach, and it has been under control for a long time. 

That’s pretty much the background. I will be posting the vlogs to my YouTube channel (youtube.com/EllieMackin) and on Twitter (@elliemackin) from this evening.
Feel free to leave questions or comments below, or on the videos. And, thanks for watching!