Canberra is a city that seems to arouse strong emotions in people. Whilst a small proportion of the population may simply think it's 'okay' or 'nice', the vast majority appear to either love it or hate it. I certainly know plenty of people in both camps!

Me? I am firmly in the 'love it' category!

I lived in Canberra from 1999 to 2002. I moved there from Melbourne to take up a position with a large government department as part of their graduate program. I stayed for four years, working in a va...
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A few weeks ago, a dear former supervisor of mine passed away. He was a good man, and I very much enjoyed working with him and learning from him in my previous career in the public service. He was someone who I considered to be a valuable mentor to me, although not in any formal sense.

My reflections on this sad event, combined with a discussion on Twitter at the time about mentoring arrangements, had me thinking about the mentors - in my case they were usually also supervisors - who have enco...
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Ahem ... it's been a little while between blog posts, hasn't it? I can't believe it's October already! The time has been flying, but what have I been up to?

Well, at the end of July I went straight from work into full-time study. Surprise, surprise (not) I struggled to get back into the swing of it. Full-time distance study requires motivation and discipline, and I was lacking both.

One of the big differences between this time studying (to complete the Masters) and the last time (for the Grad D...
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