As part of the “being a research student” thing, I attended a workshop at Birmingham University aimed at part-timers.

Since the workshop was specifically aimed at part-timers I’d hoped it would prove helpful in a way that the Open Uni Research Induction perhaps hadn’t been. I’m not sure it managed to add much to my skills toolset or enabled a better understanding of research issues.

To be honest at the moment I’m surrounded by people who tell me things I already know, which doesn’t mean I actually have brilliant time-management skills or whatever. Perhaps the value of being told such stuff is to encourage you to keep improving!

The workshop didn’t feel as if it particularly tackled issues concerning part-timers. I think one of the factors is such workshops are (can only?) be organised and run by full-time academics. It’s true many of the issues facing part-time students are much the same as those studying full-time, but it’s not just a case of the issues being diluted or increased by 50%. There are some that are really characteristic to part-time such as isolation and getting feedback and ad-hoc discussion. It would have been helpful to examine some of those more specific issues.

There were some plus points. It’s always very interesting to meet other students and hear their research and it was good to do a quick audit of the writing I’ve already done and to realise it’s more than I thought and already about a half of my Masters. But overall I’d have liked less identifying issues and more solutions.