The Sunshine after the Rain

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Made some decent progress on the TMA tonight, with a lot of the pain I experienced in the first assignment helping to cement in the things I need to do (and get right) on this one.  Still almost a month to go, but - for the first time in this module - starting to feel as though that will be OK, that it is achievable in that timescale.

Had a positive buzz from last week out in the real world, updates as ever in Beyond the Basket.  I think that may have helped to fuel a decent study session today, so long may it continue!!

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The down and dirty

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The past few weeks and months have been dominated by one major thought... the job applications/regrading or whatever they want to call our recruitment campaign.  Not just for me but for a large percentage of my colleagues and fellow trainees too.

So (a couple of weeks ago now) we were faced with the next hurdle on the way to it all being 'real' - salary negotiations!  Eek!

Now I'm not going to go into details of the how much we all got, cos that's not for public consumption.  Suffice to say that a colleague was offered more than me and I negotiated to get the same figure, as did another colleague.

But the whole process feels just 'weird' - sordid somehow.  I know it shouldn't, it's normal practice in outside industry, but in a civil service setting then it feels wrong to be negotiating at all. (dyed in the wool civil servant here, it'll be 29 years this year!)

But I can't complain, as the resultant figure is close to the maximum payable for staf…
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Ch..ch..ch..changes!

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OK, well I got a bit behind in my posting again didn't I?  Last one was in July!!

So many things happening again.  So... let's start where we left off then.

When last I blogged, I was in the middle of negotiations for salary, and I was left as the sole developer in charge of my project.

Well, the negotiations concluded, and salary finally started to be paid at the end of August...and by Christmas they might have got round to paying the correct amount...grr.  (Maybe a big growl for another ranty post..)

I've also started working a 4-day week, as my new wages are making it worthwhile to do so.  Not sure how well that's currently sitting with my body, though.  But I'll get there, hopefully before they sort out all the salary workings...

I've also now got 'people' to work with, and have had a couple of new projects come my way.  More about such stuff in the next couple of posts though, otherwise this one will be ridiculously long.

Going to try and get back …
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Where do we go from here?

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Wow - it's been a LONG time between posts this time round!!

(and I will admit even a long time getting round to posting this and not sitting in a half-completed draft state!!)

I have to admit, I'd kind of lost my way a bit with the will to blog even over on the Beyond the Basket page -  I changed teams at work and with that came a massive slump in confidence.

I doubted how to continue now that I didn't have an 'OU journey' to blog about.




And at the time I felt like there were only so many ways I could keep saying 'this job is a roller-coaster of emotions'.  I've learned loads when I look back on it all, most of it unrelated to the project I'm working on, which is a new place to be.

But lately I feel a need to blog a little bit about the rollercoaster itself, it lends itself to my initial reasons for starting the blog in the first place - to share the ups and downs of the journey. 

And while this journey is now outside of the OU 'basket', I&#…
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