So it’s not quite Friday, but I think it’s time to post the last FluffyFriday of 2016 anyway!
2016 was a big year for me, professionally speaking.
First and foremost, 2016 was the year I wrote my book: Animal Personalities. It’s not 100% finished yet, but the first draft was completely laid out by the end of November. I now have five months with which to edit that into some semblance of sense, but I’ve definitely been enjoying getting my evenings back this December.
Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I jumped disciplines when I became a Veterinary Education Researcher. As intimidating as this might have been, the last six months have been amazing fun and very fulfilling. The challenges of education research are gripping and I have been loving the opportunity to dig into concepts and methodologies that are new to me in a way that I just didn’t have the time to do when I was splitting my time between MSc coordinating and research.
And most recently, although I’m no longer spending the majority of my time teaching I was encouraged by Edinburgh to apply for my Higher Education Award fellowship. I’ve surprised myself at just how proud I am of this achievement. It’s lovely being able to point to something that says your teaching is recognised, especially given how important its become to me. I also found the process incredibly rewarding, and fully intend to blog a little bit about it in the coming months (if the book doesn’t get in the way).
With all these little things bubbling away in the background it’s not surprising that this poor little blog has been somewhat neglected. 2016 was our poorest performing year with ‘only’ 1600 odd visitors in comparison to 2015’s 2000 visitors and 2014’s nearly 3000 visitors. People stumble onto the blog searching for ‘BCG Scar’ (you folks are looking for Badger Fortnight) and ‘danger of using punishment’ (you folks are looking for the discussion on Positive Punishment). One person also found us searching for ‘general science, dumb.com’. I hope you found what you were looking for, my friend. The most popular post this year was 2013’s Christmas post ‘Why Do We Care About Animal Welfare?’ with ‘I’m a Tetrachromat‘ coming in second. The most popular blog post from this year was ‘Purity, Application and Function: The Real Problem In Science‘ which I’m still quite proud of.
Finally – many people seem to be checking the Book Page for updates this year. I hope that by this time next year there’ll be something there for you to explore.
Have a lovely festive break if you’re having one, and FluffySciences wishes you all the best in 2017.
