This will be the third incarnation of the Academic Kindness Gift Circle - but given some of the issues I've had with past gift circles (time, resources, cost, and - most importantly - people not receiving gifts! This is a totally unacceptable situation - I run the Academic Kindness Gift Circle based on trust and kindness!

This time I've decided that the gift circle will be a postcard exchange. There will be an international pool - however, there is an option to tick if you cannot afford the cost of international postage, to ensure you are matched with someone in the same country (or as near as possible) as you.

Please feel free to post your postcards on Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #AKPE and #AcademicKindness

So, as always, the rules:

• The academic kindness postcard exchange is open to everyone who is involved, in any conceivable way, with academic work. This includes everyone from postgraduate students up, professional services staff, people who are independent academics, people who are alt-ac or ac-adjacent. If you don't know if you qualify assume that you do and sign up. We are open to everyone who wants to get a bit of academic kindness in their life!
• Sign up will be open from 18/06 to 18/07 (midnight BST).
• Allocations will be sent out on a rolling basis between 19/07 and 07/08. You will then have until the end of August to post your postcard. If you have not received your allocation by 08/08 please email me to check!
• Postcards can be interpreted as loosely as you like. They may be store bought, they may be handmade, they may be as simple or as elaborate as you like. Please write a personal message on your postcard - something motivational, or based around ideas of solidarity and kindness.

• If you sign up to participate you must send a postcard to your allocated person!

The 2018 #AcademicKindness project is going to kick off with a notebook exchange! I hope there will be 6 notebooks flying around the world! Here's what they're all about:

Each notebook will contain a title page with 'instructions for use'. The purpose of the books is to create tangible works of academic kindness that have travelled around the world. Only accept the book if you are willing to participate and pass the book on.

What you will need to do: write, draw, or otherwise decorate ONE page of the notebook (that is one side of a page, not an entire spread). You can do whatever you like on the page but it should include the following information:

• your name and your Twitter handle (can contain other social media information if you like)
• your discipline (as loosely defined as you like, if you are alt-ac or ac-adjacent you can include either your discipline of training or something that suits what you currently do, whichever you feel best)
• your location

Please do NOT include any affiliation information, or your position. This is a book of equals - student to professor, affiliated, unaffiliated, academic, academic adjacent, alt-ac.

Once you have finished your page (and, if necessary allowed adequate time for your page to dry before you close and pass on the book) please take a photograph of your page and post it to Twitter with the hashtag #AKnotebook followed by a space and the number of your book (this will be found somewhere on the cover or instruction page of the book). Tag the person you have given the book to (if they are on Twitter) and include the date you handed the book on and your location, including latitude and longitude coordinates for your city (you can get them at: whatsmygps.com).

I will make an online gallery of the pages and a map so everyone can see what's in the books and where they have been.

The project will, in the first instance, run though 2018. It might keep going past that - who knows!

If you happen to be the final page of a notebook: please get in touch with me so I can arrange for you to send the notebook back to me and we can organise for you to start a new one. Each subsequent notebook will be marked with a letter - notebook 1 will become 1a then 1b etc.

I am currently looking for volunteers to start notebooks around the world! I am hoping for someone in eastern Europe, Asia, Australia/NZ (filled), and South America (or the southern part of the USA). These will go with the book I will start in London, and a book already being planned in Canada. Please note that if you volunteer you will need to purchase a notebook with good quality paper pages (I suggest a dot ruled, hardback Leuchtturm1917) and set it up with the instructions (I will send you the text). Get in touch with me on Twitter or email if you're interested.

You can now sign-up on (public) Google sheets - or check the sheets if you're looking for someone to give the book to!
UK and Europe
Americas
Australasia and Africa

I originally wrote this post for jobs.ac.uk, but I decided it might be better here. I also am wary about posting another rejection-based blog post (anywhere!), but I think it's the right time for this one in particular. 

Rejection is built into the fabric of academia, but rarely does it hit so many early career academics at it does the day that Leverhulme ECF decisions come out. For a lot of reasons, I didn’t submit an application this year, but I remember the pain of last year’s rejection so vividly. ‘We’re sorry to tell you that your application was not successful. However, your proposal made it to the final shortlist, and this is clear evidence that the panel thinks your research project is very promising’. Egh. This was my second Leverhulme rejection, and add that to two British Academy postdoc rejections I felt like I knew the lay of the land. But that one hurt. A lot.

So, today feels like a day where a lot of people could use some encouragement. So here it is. My career story.

I graduated from my PhD in 2015.

For the 2015/16 academic year I applied for twelve jobs. I got one interview. I ended up doing hourly-paid teaching at my PhD institution. I ‘invented’ a non-stipendiary postdoctoral fellowship for myself at a research institute. I worked on my book (that’s another post for another day), and I worked on an article. I applied for and got Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.

For the 2016/17 academic year I applied for fifteen jobs, and I had three interviews (for four jobs). I didn’t get any of them. I made the final shortlist for the Leverhulme ECFs. I kept my non-stipendiary position at the research institute. I continued working on my book. I had my first article published in a major journal. I did a term of hourly-paid teaching at my PhD institution. I gave up. I didn’t want to do this anymore. I love teaching, and I absolutely love my research. Being an academic is part of the fabric of my being. But I realised that it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how much I wanted it.

A teaching fellowship was advertised in the ‘off season’ to start in January of the 2016/17 academic year, that was for 12 months. Meaning, I would be tossed back out onto the job market in the off-season again. I applied. I got an interview. I went, I was 100% myself, with no feeling of intense desperation. I didn’t feel like I had to make it. I got the job.

I signed a book contract but not for my PhD book. I hope that will come in the next month or two (I’ve done the required revisions to the proposal and sent it back recently).

I have applied for three jobs so far since getting my job – two permanent jobs, one two-year research fellowship. I got an interview for the first permanent job, but I didn’t get it. I think my presentation went well, but my interview was awful – I think because by that stage I was pretty sure that I wasn’t the candidate they wanted, and that got to my head. I was long-listed for the second permanent job, and am waiting to hear further details about the interview. I’m still waiting to hear about the research fellowship. This second - the one I've been long-listed for, at least - is the one I want to get, and I'm trying not to get too weird and over excited about it.

I’m still in a precarious position, but much less than in the 18 months since submitting my PhD. I have been privileged enough to be able to play the waiting game. But this isn’t that article. This isn’t the ‘just wait it out and you’ll succeed’ article because frankly, that’s terrible advice.

I also don’t want to advise you to ‘just be yourself’, because that’s terrible advice too. The times I have tried hardest to BE MYSELF are the times I have come across as the most desperate and over-enthusiastic.

I don’t know what my advice. I suppose I don’t have any. There are people who have applied for more or fewer jobs than I have, who have been luckier or unluckier, who have had an easier time of publishing their PhD book, and who have had a harder time.

Right now, I’m trying to find a permanent job. I’m going through the round-about again. When (if) I get there, I will go through it again with grants, and books, and articles, and it just doesn’t stop. I’m okay with that. I think you have to be okay with that.

But this story isn’t about me. It’s about the fact that every person who has a story of the academy has a different story. Maybe you weren’t meant to get the Leverhulme. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t. I adore my department now. I’ve been interviewed for a permanent job in what would have been the first year of my Leverhulme. We’re all different.

​And, we all experience rejection. That’s what binds us together as academics (whether we have institutional positions or not!). We need to be there for each other in those times. Because we all know rejection is the worst part of this game.

​The Academic Kindness gift circle was set up to spread some kindness and joy among academics.

The gift circle has now closed for sign up, and those who have registered will be receiving the details of their giftee in the post shortly.

Just a reminder:

• Gifts are to be no more than £15- (excluding postage) and may be bought or made.
• Please do not send food items unless you know the dietary requirements of your giftee.
• It is up to you whether you would like to disclose yourself to your giftee or not. Please do not disclose until the gift has been received (or include it with the gift itself).

If you'd like to share pictures of your gift and anything else please feel free to tweet them at me, or with the #AcademicKindness hashtag, or by email. I'll collate all the pictures and anything else I get so we can have a gallery of Academic Joy.

Finally, thank you. The response to this was overwhelming, and so many more people signed up than I had anticipated. This is a wonderful thing!

​The other day I tweeted a random thought, as it came to me (as I do more often than I would care to admit...)

​The tweet got a small amount of attention, and enough - I think - to warrant actually setting a gift circle up. A traditional gift circle is based on people's needs, but I want this to be based on the need for solidarity and smiles - that's something we all need as early (or not!) career academics who are perhaps struggling with all kinds of extra pressures. Therefore, gifts should have the sole intention of making your giftee smile, feel happy, contented, more hopeful, and/or less alone in the academic wilderness.

How this particular gift circle will work is a bit like a Kris Kringle. For now it will be a one-off, perhaps with repeats every 6 months or so depending how we go. As I'm aware that many people won't be in a position to be sending off gifts willy nilly.

So - if you would like to be part of this one-off academic kindness gift circle, please fill out the form below. I will recruit my partner to randomly assign gifters to giftees, and then I will send out the details of who you will be sending a gift to.

The spend limit will be £15- (excluding postage), but please do not feel as though you must spend this much. I am aware that even £15- can be a lot of money for someone. Gifts should be sent within one month of receiving your giftee. Gifts can be bought or made, and you can choose whether or not to reveal yourself to your giftee.

Please do not send food unless you know your giftee's dietary requirements