Welcome to the Beyond Your Research Degree podcast from the University of Exeter Doctoral College! The podcast about non-academic careers and all the opportunities available to you... beyond your research degree!  In this episode Kelly Preece, Researcher Development Manager talks to Dr. James Alsop, who works as a secondary school English teacher.

Music from https://filmmusic.io ’Cheery Monday’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses

Podcast transcript

1 00:00:10,000 --> 00:00:23,000 Hello and welcome to Beyond Your Research Degree podcast by the University of Exeter, Doctoral College

2 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:29,000 Hello, it's Kelly Preece and welcome to the latest episode of Beyond Your Research Degree.

3 00:00:29,000 --> 00:00:37,000 In this episode, I'm talking to Dr James Alsop, a graduate of the University of Exeter who is now working as a secondary school teacher.

4 00:00:37,000 --> 00:00:48,000 Are you happy to introduce yourself, James. I'm James Allsopp. I graduated from Exeter in 2015 with my PhD in English.

5 00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:53,000 My thesis was all about the Living Dead in early modern drama.

6 00:00:53,000 --> 00:01:00,000 It was cunningly titled Playing Dead because it involves dead things in plays.

7 00:01:00,000 --> 00:01:05,000 I thought I was quite proud of that. I am. It was a four year process.

8 00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:16,000 It was a hard, hard, hard fought PhD. And at the end of it, I didn't really have any career trajectory.

9 00:01:16,000 --> 00:01:21,000 For various reasons I'll probably end up talking about in a minute or two.

10 00:01:21,000 --> 00:01:33,000 Fast forward, you know, five years or so. And I'm here in Exeter again after a short return home to Essex and I'm teaching.

11 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:39,000 So I'm teaching English at Torquay Girls Grammar School.

12 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:49,000 And yeah, I've been teaching now for seven years in total with a couple of mini breaks here and there as well.

13 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:58,000 Yeah, that's been my path. And hopefully I'll fill in the gap between how did I finish the PhD and how did I end up here.

14 00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:03,000 Yeah. So what? I think thinking about it kind of chronologically,

15 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:13,000 what was what was that like to be coming to the end of or getting to the end of the PhD and not knowing what the next step was?

16 00:02:13,000 --> 00:02:18,000 So first thing's first I think I made the whole thing sound a little bit easier than it was

17 00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:23,000 even though I did emphasise the chronic difficulty of the entire process.

18 00:02:23,000 --> 00:02:30,000 I don't if I mean if you're listening to this, I don't necessarily take my example as a model to follow.

19 00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:37,000 I had a extremely. I want to say strange, this strange feels like an understatement.

20 00:02:37,000 --> 00:02:45,000 I had a frankly bizarre ending to my PhD, so I did my first year of the doctorate

21 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:55,000 And I'm self-funded, by the way. I was very fortunate in that my grandfather was able to pay for my entirePhDprocess.

22 00:02:55,000 --> 00:03:00,000 He gave me his will before he passed away. He is still with us

23 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:05,000 He's got. That's lovely because he's got the kind of fruits of the labour.

24 00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:12,000 He wanted to say, you know, you'll end up with his money at some point, say I have it now and do something with it.

25 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:17,000 And it was strange because that was very cool having this amazing gift.

26 00:03:17,000 --> 00:03:21,000 But also there was a lot of emotional pressure there. You know, you've got this big pocket of money.

27 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:27,000 All of a sudden it's been spent on your education and you better do something with it.

28 00:03:27,000 --> 00:03:32,000 And even in those early days, it felt like the Holy Grail at the end of the PhD

29 00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:36,000 was always this academic career. You know, my role models were academics.

30 00:03:36,000 --> 00:03:41,000 My my my academic heroes were people that I looked up to for so long.

31 00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:44,000 And just imagine being in their position one day.

32 00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:51,000 Imagine being in that lecture theatre or imagine sharing these ideas and having these amazing conversations and writing books.

33 00:03:51,000 --> 00:03:58,000 And, you know, that was the aim that was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

34 00:03:58,000 --> 00:04:02,000 But I mean, as we all know, and I imagine anyone listening to this knows,

35 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:09,000 those pots of gold are far rarer than perhaps you imagine at the start of the journey.

36 00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:21,000 And being self-funded I had to pay my own way through that first year of the PhD in terms of living expenses and things like that.

37 00:04:21,000 --> 00:04:28,000 So what I found was I had three Part-Time Jobs on the go one time.

38 00:04:28,000 --> 00:04:35,000 And of course people think of the PhD. As, you know, you're a student, you're learning, you're in education still.

39 00:04:35,000 --> 00:04:40,000 But as anyone that started the process knows, the PhD is a full time job.

40 00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:44,000 Yeah. You know, it's it's an all consuming beasy

41 00:04:44,000 --> 00:04:51,000 So I was spending my evenings and nights working on this doctorate and my days I was spending so much time,

42 00:04:51,000 --> 00:04:55,000 you know, furthering between, gosh, what did I do? I was a barman. That was cool.

43 00:04:55,000 --> 00:04:59,000 I love being a barman. I was a barista in a coffee bar.

44 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:08,000 Wow. I worked in what was Coffee Express and I think has now turned into I know there's a salon there at the bottom of Devonshire house.

45 00:05:08,000 --> 00:05:15,000 It used to be a coffee bar.  I was there in the early morning to do breakfasts for students.

46 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:20,000 I was a cleaner as well at the Exeter Corn Exchange.

47 00:05:20,000 --> 00:05:25,000 I still get a cold shudder whenever I go out there.

48 00:05:25,000 --> 00:05:30,000 And that's not because it was a bad job or because I saw it as unworthy of me.

49 00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:39,000 It's because it was ungodly early hours. I was up at half past three in the morning to get there for a half past four shift.

50 00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:44,000 And I'm not I'm not gonna tell you this because, you know, woe is me or anything like that.

51 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:49,000 I just want to make it clear, you know, that that first year was intense. I had this huge emotional pressure,

52 00:05:49,000 --> 00:06:01,000 but also this workload that meant I was spending so much time earning money to live in Exeter that I wasn't actually doing much studying in Exeter.

53 00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:06,000 I rarely saw my supervisor. And that wasn't because they weren't available.

54 00:06:06,000 --> 00:06:10,000 It was just because I wasn't. Yeah.

55 00:06:10,000 --> 00:06:17,000 So that was a lot. I moved home in the second year of the degree, which was a godsend.

56 00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:23,000 You know, I was lucky enough to be able to move home and live with my parents while I carried on with this PhD

57 00:06:23,000 --> 00:06:29,000 And finally, I had time to research. Finally, I had time to start writing.

58 00:06:29,000 --> 00:06:34,000 Of course, what that means is now in the back of my mind, I've got this ticking clock.

59 00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:43,000 You're in your second year. The third year is approaching and that first year didn't contain much productivity, did it, in any real sense?

60 00:06:43,000 --> 00:06:48,000 I also needed money. You know, I couldn't live off my parents.

61 00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:53,000 So I had to get a job. I ended up working in a pancake restaurant.

62 00:06:53,000 --> 00:06:57,000 Both things. Oh I know, which is great.

63 00:06:57,000 --> 00:07:07,000 You know, I make a mean pancake and a mean omlette to this day, you know, there are skills that I carry with me for the rest of my life.

64 00:07:07,000 --> 00:07:12,000 But, you know, it was a again, it was it was a tough process balancing this.

65 00:07:12,000 --> 00:07:17,000 I lived in Essex, which isn't a million miles away from the British Library, which was grand.

66 00:07:17,000 --> 00:07:21,000 So I'm finally starting to find some balance there.

67 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:28,000 And then the third year of my PhD started and I realised that actually I didn't know what was at the end.

68 00:07:28,000 --> 00:07:33,000 Now, thing is, I because of all the other stuff that in.

69 00:07:33,000 --> 00:07:41,000 Not so much my time. I hadn't got anything published. I've been to one single conference.

70 00:07:41,000 --> 00:07:46,000 I hadn't helped to put together any conference panels myself.

71 00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:55,000 I hadn't contributed any reviews to any publications. And when you're studying English, when English is your field, you know,

72 00:07:55,000 --> 00:08:02,000 the publication is it's a daunting process because there's so much amazing stuff out there.

73 00:08:02,000 --> 00:08:10,000 But it's also very solitary process. This was in the days before academic Twitter, I think, took off.

74 00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:17,000 And I found that the whole thing intensely lonely. It was very hard to make any any headway there.

75 00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:22,000 I didn't even know what an academic conference was until the end of my second year.

76 00:08:22,000 --> 00:08:26,000 You know, I it feels so strange to say now.

77 00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:33,000 So I found myself in this strange place at the start of my third year where I didn't know what was actually going to happen at the end of it.

78 00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:48,000 I had a very supportive supervisor who saw me through that, third year by, you know, scrutinising everything I sent her, no matter how terrible it was.

79 00:08:48,000 --> 00:08:54,000 You know, come the end of that third year, I found, you know, I.

80 00:08:54,000 --> 00:09:02,000 I didn't know what was actually going to happen once I completed this enormous essay in my mind.

81 00:09:02,000 --> 00:09:10,000 I wasn't preparing for a career anymore. I was just surviving I needed to go into a fourth year to complete this PhD.

82 00:09:10,000 --> 00:09:19,000 So that that's when things started to turn around for me, out of necessity, I needed to look for jobs.

83 00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:23,000 So I thought academia is not going to happen for me.

84 00:09:23,000 --> 00:09:29,000 You know, with my lack of publication history, with my lack of any contacts, there's no way I'm getting a university job.

85 00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:34,000 I don't even know how to apply. And I didn't know it at the time.

86 00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:40,000 I'm saying this because I think the context is important. I felt as hopeless as hopeless could get.

87 00:09:40,000 --> 00:09:47,000 And looking back, actually, this period of time was perhaps the best thing that happened to me.

88 00:09:47,000 --> 00:09:53,000 It was perhaps the most productive, personally and professionally of my career.

89 00:09:53,000 --> 00:10:00,000 You know, that necessity creates opportunity. I think if you look for it, you find it.

90 00:10:00,000 --> 00:10:05,000 And I decided it's, you know, I need a job, I need money.

91 00:10:05,000 --> 00:10:09,000 And to move out of my parents. I went into teaching.

92 00:10:09,000 --> 00:10:15,000 It wasn't as easy as I thought to begin with because you need to do teacher training.

93 00:10:15,000 --> 00:10:19,000 And the teacher training programmes on offer, you know, vary between universities.

94 00:10:19,000 --> 00:10:23,000 There are different schemes you can go on. I needed money now.

95 00:10:23,000 --> 00:10:27,000 I didn't want any more student debt, really, or I want to minimise that as much as I could.

96 00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:33,000 So I went on something called a SCITT school centred initial teacher training.

97 00:10:33,000 --> 00:10:37,000 I went back to my old secondary school and I started doing training there.

98 00:10:37,000 --> 00:10:44,000 It was so weird. I was on the other side of the staff room door all of a sudden.

99 00:10:44,000 --> 00:10:51,000 And I'm doing this PhD on the one hand, again, in the evenings during my days, I'm training as a teacher.

100 00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:58,000 I'm going on teaching courses. I'm learning how to engage with kids harder than I thought.

101 00:10:58,000 --> 00:11:04,000 Oh, man. And let me make this clear. Subject knowledge does not a good teacher make.

102 00:11:04,000 --> 00:11:08,000 I mean, I can't emphasise that strongly enough. I thought.

103 00:11:08,000 --> 00:11:13,000 Yeah, this will be a cinch. I'm just talking to kids. I'm just talking about English.

104 00:11:13,000 --> 00:11:19,000 I can do English. Oh, I could not teach.

105 00:11:19,000 --> 00:11:27,000 My training was important. At the same time as I am completing a PhD, doing teacher training,

106 00:11:27,000 --> 00:11:35,000 I am also in the process of moving house because I'm also in the process of getting married.

107 00:11:35,000 --> 00:11:40,000 So again, when I say that my experience isn't necessarily one you can generalise,

108 00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:46,000 I feel that that's a fair thing to say because I would not recommend doing two of those things at the same time,

109 00:11:46,000 --> 00:11:58,000 let alone all four of them needs must. And I did what I could and every decision I made at the time I made because I felt it needed to happen.

110 00:11:58,000 --> 00:12:06,000 I wasn't willing. And perhaps it was a foolish thing in hindsight, I don't know, I wasn't willing to compromise on any one area of my life.

111 00:12:06,000 --> 00:12:13,000 I wasn't willing to compromise on my relationship or my PhD or my teacher training.

112 00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:27,000 I wanted to start living. I couldn't afford mentally or financially to carry on in this strange, nebulous stopgap zone.

113 00:12:27,000 --> 00:12:34,000 I wanted to start being the person I could be. Outside of the PhD

114 00:12:34,000 --> 00:12:41,000 And I think that's important. You know, when you're studying for the PhD actually, again, it's a long, long process,

115 00:12:41,000 --> 00:12:46,000 regardless of your subject, regardless if you're working by yourself or part of a team.

116 00:12:46,000 --> 00:12:53,000 It's a lot. And you. By the end of it, we'll have a good idea of where you stand academically.

117 00:12:53,000 --> 00:13:01,000 But professionally is still finding your feet professionally. There's a world out there that you haven't had the chance to explore just yet.

118 00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:06,000 I. Fast forward to the end of my teacher training.

119 00:13:06,000 --> 00:13:15,000 It was very, very difficult. It was a hard, hard process. I experienced a lot of good, though, you know.

120 00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:20,000 There's nothing more therapeutic, I think, than working with young people.

121 00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:23,000 I think every teacher I've ever spoken to will say the same thing.

122 00:13:23,000 --> 00:13:32,000 The very best part of teaching is working in that classroom with those kids, regardless of whether they're in secondary to sixth form here.

123 00:13:32,000 --> 00:13:40,000 So whether you're dealing with an 11 year old who's writing a comic strip about Romeo and Juliet or whether

124 00:13:40,000 --> 00:13:50,000 you're dealing with a sixth former who's writing a huge assess coursework essay on comparative feminist literature,

125 00:13:50,000 --> 00:13:53,000 you know, whichever age group you're dealing with.

126 00:13:53,000 --> 00:14:00,000 Just being able to sit down with kids and talk through their ideas and help them see the best parts of themselves.

127 00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:07,000 That's what teaching is all about. There's loads of negativity. There's loads of financial pressure.

128 00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:13,000 I mean, you don't get paid much. Government are constantly moving goalposts.

129 00:14:13,000 --> 00:14:19,000 The things that you need to teach often feel slightly counterintuitive, you know.

130 00:14:19,000 --> 00:14:26,000 But the marking. Oh, over marking.

131 00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:33,000 But all of that is made worthwhile by being able to work with young people.

132 00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:38,000 That was a lifeline for me. And it's a lifeline during difficult circumstances.

133 00:14:38,000 --> 00:14:47,000 Like I said, it was strange working with other adults again after after a long period of being by myself.

134 00:14:47,000 --> 00:14:51,000 It was strange working with with other, you know, young professionals.

135 00:14:51,000 --> 00:14:56,000 And I got a little bit of blowback. You know, I would tell people, hey, this is my story.

136 00:14:56,000 --> 00:15:01,000 I've got a PhD after I'm doing my PhD and I'm doing this as well.

137 00:15:01,000 --> 00:15:05,000 And there was a lot of I don't know how else to describe it.

138 00:15:05,000 --> 00:15:08,000 But reverse snobbery, you know.

139 00:15:08,000 --> 00:15:14,000 Oh, so you've spent this long at university. You haven't lived.

140 00:15:14,000 --> 00:15:21,000 You've come into teaching. What do you think? It was the easy option. And I'm like, well, I did think.

141 00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:28,000 And now I know it's not you know, you by doing it, actually, you're working on developing a huge,

142 00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:33,000 huge set of skills that will be useful to you in any form of employment.

143 00:15:33,000 --> 00:15:35,000 I know that's the sort of thing I tell you when you start your PhD

144 00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:41,000 It's the sort of thing that you hear whenever you go to any kind of, you know, training session on.

145 00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:47,000 ok  what do I do once it's done? They'll say that. But I speak from experience.

146 00:15:47,000 --> 00:15:52,000 This is true. You don't know how good you are.

147 00:15:52,000 --> 00:16:00,000 If you're listening to this and you're doing your PhD and it feels like you're struggling and scratching and clawing your way through it,

148 00:16:00,000 --> 00:16:06,000 you've got so much to offer the world. You just don't realise it yet.

149 00:16:06,000 --> 00:16:10,000 And you will. Your time will come as mine did.

150 00:16:10,000 --> 00:16:19,000 You know, I finished this teacher training. I moved to a grammar school in Chelmsford, in Essex.

151 00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:27,000 And I had the best three years, I think, of my life there.

152 00:16:27,000 --> 00:16:33,000 The reason for that was simple. I found something that works for me.

153 00:16:33,000 --> 00:16:39,000 I found a job that let me be me. And it scratched that academic itch

154 00:16:39,000 --> 00:16:45,000 It helps me, you know, I think it helped me grow in any number of ways, teaching.

155 00:16:45,000 --> 00:16:54,000 But, you know, first and foremost, it allowed me to be academic in a sense, without having all the university pressure on me anymore.

156 00:16:54,000 --> 00:16:59,000 But also, it gave me something I didn't even realise I was looking for. You know, remember, I was a teacher.

157 00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:05,000 That sounds cheesy. I don't care. You know, I say at times, you know,

158 00:17:05,000 --> 00:17:13,000 I entered because I needed the job and I thought it would fit and I didn't realise quite how well I would fit into it.

159 00:17:13,000 --> 00:17:25,000 Oh, that rhymes see, teaching is fund. I think it be useful to talk about what the what aspects of your PhD you feel that you use.

160 00:17:25,000 --> 00:17:30,000 In your job. Apart from that kind of academic knowledge and like you say, scratching that kind of academic itch.

161 00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:41,000 What I discovered was that the PhD had actually given me all these transferable skills and I was in a job where they had the time to shine, I think.

162 00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:46,000 So first of all, even though if you're doing the PhD, you become pretty good at time management pretty quickly,

163 00:17:46,000 --> 00:17:51,000 if you don't, you you very quickly learn why time management is useful.

164 00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:58,000 And you get a diary and you invest in ways to try to learn very quickly how to become good at time management.

165 00:17:58,000 --> 00:18:04,000 It's I mean, it goes without saying a school is run on a clock. You know, you've got every hour of the day.

166 00:18:04,000 --> 00:18:10,000 It's designated to a certain period, a certain subject, a certain class. You've got to be in a certain place at a certain time.

167 00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:17,000 Well, all of that came second nature. You know, for a lot of people that have been throughuniversity and going straight into teaching,

168 00:18:17,000 --> 00:18:23,000 they haven't had a rigid timetable for a couple of years, particularly in the humanities.

169 00:18:23,000 --> 00:18:25,000 You know, actually, you know,

170 00:18:25,000 --> 00:18:33,000 waking up early and getting to the place on time and then having every hour of my day organised was I mean, it was amazing.

171 00:18:33,000 --> 00:18:40,000 I knew exactly where I'd be at any given point of the day. And I found it really easy to sort of immerse myself in that world.

172 00:18:40,000 --> 00:18:46,000 And the interpersonal skills that a PhD teaches you as well.

173 00:18:46,000 --> 00:18:55,000 And by that, I mean the importance of asking questions. I think I said, you know, while I was researching, I was very lonely.

174 00:18:55,000 --> 00:18:57,000 I was very isolated. But even so,

175 00:18:57,000 --> 00:19:07,000 you're engaging with the text that you study and you learn very quickly the importance of asking the right question to find the answer you need.

176 00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:13,000 Well, in a school, what you're doing as a teacher is asking questions constantly.

177 00:19:13,000 --> 00:19:17,000 Kids don't learn because you throw information into their heads.

178 00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:24,000 Kids don't learn because you stand there with a syringe and inject the information through their eyeballs.

179 00:19:24,000 --> 00:19:27,000 I mean, the day would be a lot shorter if that was true.

180 00:19:27,000 --> 00:19:35,000 They learn because you're asking them the right questions and you're getting them to find answers to those questions themselves.

181 00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:39,000 Give them the tools. Give them the scaffolding they need. But, you know,

182 00:19:39,000 --> 00:19:49,000 I didn't realise quite how naturally it came to bounce questions from one person to another to encourage students to ask each other questions.

183 00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:56,000 I mean, that kind of thing became second nature very quickly. But it's a skill that it takes a lot of new teachers a long time to pick up.

184 00:19:56,000 --> 00:20:04,000 It feels quite. It feels quite logical to go into teaching and give information.

185 00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:13,000 It feels less intuitive to provide the means to find the information and then assess whether or not that information was being found.

186 00:20:13,000 --> 00:20:20,000 But as a PhD researcher, graduate student postdoc, wherever you are, that's the skill that you find comes very,

187 00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:25,000 very naturally because you've been practising it for longer than you realise.

188 00:20:25,000 --> 00:20:35,000 What else did I come across? Well, my goodness. I find in schools students need help with things that I see, again,

189 00:20:35,000 --> 00:20:42,000 as a actually student had been doing for some time, writing letters of application.

190 00:20:42,000 --> 00:20:52,000 So if a student is applying for, you know, a part time job or if a student more permanently is applying for a university.

191 00:20:52,000 --> 00:21:03,000 If a student wants to apply for a university that has entrance exams, I'm thinking to in particular, you can probably think of where they are.

192 00:21:03,000 --> 00:21:13,000 That's a lot of pressure on these kids to do enormous research, enormous work on an application that may or may not even be successful.

193 00:21:13,000 --> 00:21:18,000 And if you're sitting there as a PhD student thinking, yep, I've done a few of those.

194 00:21:18,000 --> 00:21:20,000 Welcome to the world of UCAS.

195 00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:28,000 Again, you thought you were long past it, but if you go back to teaching, you'll be working with sixth form kids who need help applying to university.

196 00:21:28,000 --> 00:21:37,000 It's more competitive now than ever. And the application process is so, so difficult in so many ways.

197 00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:43,000 When's the last time you wrote a personal statement? Also, I'll ask these kids and they won't know what a personal statement is.

198 00:21:43,000 --> 00:21:47,000 When's the last time you wrote an essay about how good you are?

199 00:21:47,000 --> 00:21:55,000 I'll ask my students and they'll say, well, never. As a researcher, you're constantly doing that kind of thing.

200 00:21:55,000 --> 00:22:06,000 You're writing emails, asking for information, your writing applications for funding, your writing applications for conferences, things like that.

201 00:22:06,000 --> 00:22:13,000 You are constantly trying to justify, you know, why you deserve a shot or something.

202 00:22:13,000 --> 00:22:23,000 And for these kids, that experience became valuable. I found in everything I've been to four schools now as a teacher and every school I've gone.

203 00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:31,000 So I've become. The go to guy for my sixth formers, if they want an application read or if they want a personal statement,

204 00:22:31,000 --> 00:22:36,000 make it stronger or if they want to know how to sell themselves.

205 00:22:36,000 --> 00:22:42,000 It's strange in an era of social media where everyone talks about themselves constantly.

206 00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:51,000 I still think being able to talk positively about one's self is a skill a lot of young people struggle to develop.

207 00:22:51,000 --> 00:22:57,000 And, you know, if you can just teach them to think more of themselves and put that into paper.

208 00:22:57,000 --> 00:23:03,000 Well, that's progress. And, yeah, that that's I think that's the biggest thing I got from the  PhD

209 00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:08,000 And you'll notice I haven't mentioned anything academic, really. You know, the subject knowledge.

210 00:23:08,000 --> 00:23:12,000 You know, if you've done it, if you want to be actually you've got some subject knowledge.

211 00:23:12,000 --> 00:23:17,000 Right, about that. It kind of goes without saying.

212 00:23:17,000 --> 00:23:24,000 But what perhaps you don't realise you've got is the ability to make connections between different subjects, areas in teaching.

213 00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:30,000 That's really important. You know, you can be teaching two different modules to the same class at the same time.

214 00:23:30,000 --> 00:23:34,000 And if you can show them why it's important we do this where the areas connect.

215 00:23:34,000 --> 00:23:43,000 If you can do creative writing, your writing to persuade, writing to convince in one module as part of the English language component,

216 00:23:43,000 --> 00:23:47,000 then you can link that to perhaps, you know, your literature studies.

217 00:23:47,000 --> 00:23:50,000 You can talk about Pride and Prejudice and say, well, okay.

218 00:23:50,000 --> 00:23:55,000 So when this letter is written to this character, what persuasive techniques are you detecting here?

219 00:23:55,000 --> 00:24:04,000 So you're combining the creative with the analytical in ways that you know again well, you will find regardless of your specialism.

220 00:24:04,000 --> 00:24:13,000 I know I'm using English examples, but regardless of your specialism, you'll find it so much easier to make Connections that engage the students.

221 00:24:13,000 --> 00:24:22,000 One of the big questions every teacher fears is, is the loud kid at the back of the class saying, yeah, but why is this important?

222 00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:31,000 Do we really need to learn this? And my friend, if you're listening to this, you will have an answer ready, because that's what you do.

223 00:24:31,000 --> 00:24:35,000 You give answers to that kind of question without thinking about it.

224 00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:43,000 That's what you've been doing all the time you've been researching. You know what else I found, though, that I wasn't expecting?

225 00:24:43,000 --> 00:24:49,000 Here;s the really cool thing, I think about going into teaching.

226 00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:55,000 It made me a better academic. I can't emphasise that enough.

227 00:24:55,000 --> 00:25:01,000 I told you at the end of the PhD, I had zero publications. I'd been to one conference.

228 00:25:01,000 --> 00:25:08,000 I didn't even know conferences were available to people like me. I thought it was just professors that went to them.

229 00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:15,000 They were daunting, scary things. And I hadn't written anything anybody care to read as a teacher.

230 00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:23,000 The first thing you learn, I think day one is clarity of expression is everything.

231 00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:27,000 If you don't express yourself clearly to class.

232 00:25:27,000 --> 00:25:32,000 They won't know what they're doing. And then you've wasted an hour of their time on yours.

233 00:25:32,000 --> 00:25:36,000 If you don't explain something clearly to them, they'll go into an exam with the wrong answer.

234 00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:47,000 I learnt quickly that being concise and clear were two of the most valuable skills anyone could ever develop, regardless of your job.

235 00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:55,000 But in teaching, they shine. And that's not something I had ever considered really as a the actually researcher.

236 00:25:55,000 --> 00:26:02,000 I've been teaching now for seven years and I've published two essays.

237 00:26:02,000 --> 00:26:07,000 I've published one review. I've been to eight different conferences.

238 00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:11,000 I've done two podcasts on academic matters.

239 00:26:11,000 --> 00:26:19,000 I've started an academic blog. I've done all of these things while being a full time teacher.

240 00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:24,000 Thank you very much, James, for taking the time to talk to me.

241 00:26:24,000 --> 00:26:30,000 I felt that this was a really important conversation in terms of thinking about careers beyond a research degree,

242 00:26:30,000 --> 00:26:35,000 because it's a classic case of what's called planned happenstance.

243 00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:42,000 So where you make decisions based on a number of different contextual factors that lead you into your career path.

244 00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:48,000 It's not a clear plan to become a teacher. And James's case, but he's ended up in the.

245 00:26:48,000 --> 00:26:58,000 Exactly the right career and the right environment for him. And I felt his passion for teaching was so palpable and evident in the conversation.

246 00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:04,000 And I really valued the way that he articulated the different ways in which his skills

247 00:27:04,000 --> 00:27:10,000 and experiences of doing the research degree are part of his job as a teacher.

248 00:27:10,000 --> 00:27:16,000 And also the ways in which teaching in a second school environment helps him to quote him.

249 00:27:16,000 --> 00:27:23,000 James himself, scratch that academic itch. And that's it for this episode.

250 00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:37,716 Join us next time when we'll be talking to another researcher about that career beyond their research degree.