As you can see from the image, I finally had my graduation ceremony. It was a lovely day at Lancaster University, and I’m glad I took the time to celebrate properly. Now that the robe is packed away and the prosecco has run out, it feels like a good moment to take stock and focus on what’s next.
It was also a real pleasure to meet people from my cohort and others on the day, along with the tutors and academic team who supported me on my PhD journey. I didn’t realise that Lancaster’s Educational Research Department is the global leader. So I picked a good one!
I was able to purchase the hat I wore on the day, but I’m not sure the dog was best pleased with it.
Since then, the past few months have been a mix of finishing up long-running projects and stepping into new territory. I’ve been updating my portfolio with new pieces, partly because it was overdue, and partly because I was invited to give a talk on portfolios at the Digital Learning Institute’s bootcamp. It felt right to make it part of my own mid-year reflection process and a chance to take stock, tidy things up, and remember what I’ve actually done over the last couple of years.
I’ve also been doing more web development again for several personal projects, which I’m keeping quiet for now! It’s been really good to use those skills again. I don’t advertise myself as a web developer (the market’s pretty flooded in that area), but I genuinely enjoy it when a project comes up that lets me dig back into that side of things. I’ve built two new WordPress sites recently, as well as updating the eLearning Academy website.
The eLearning Academy website was something I originally created using a template, which I then edited and added to (because no one starts with a blank HTML page anymore). It was a very basic setup, which made it easy to manage, but also quite limiting. I could not easily add any fancy plugins or integrations.
After building several other pages in WordPress, I decided it was time to recreate the eLearning Academy site in WordPress too, although I didn’t start from scratch. I purchased a professional theme, and using that as a starting point, I have been able to recreate the original site almost exactly as it was. The new backend will make it easier to update, add functionality when needed, and generally make the site more sustainable over time.
This has lead me to question both this site and the eLearning Academy in general. I’ve been a bit torn about these blog posts lately. I enjoy sharing observations and reflections, but the business-minded part of me keeps wondering if I should be writing something more polished, more corporate. But the truth is, every time I try to steer it that way, it stops sounding like me. I wrote a blog post a while back about staying authentic, and I keep coming back to that. These posts aren’t part of the official eLearning Academy site, they’re more informal, a bit more me. And that feels right. I’m not aiming to become a big corporate entrepreneur. I just want to keep doing good projects for good clients, in a way that feels thoughtful and grounded.
So that’s what I’m focusing on for the next six months. I’ve got some new projects on the cards, some new clients, and plenty to keep me going until next year. There are also a couple of small personal projects ticking along in the background, but for now, I’m mostly just enjoying the work in front of me.
I’ll share more soon, but for now, that’s where things are.