Happy new year (I think it’s still ok to say that the second week of January… right?)

After a two week full rest (i.e., no planning, being with family and friends and just overall relax mode), I slowly had to get into the daily routine of work. While I have not been in full beast mode yes, the week has been great:

A first timer: submitting an extended abstract ahead of time. I think these planning and time management tips from the effective management course I took last year have been paying off. I handed in an abstract for the PLATE conference which will be held later this year in September. In short it’s about a validation study that I am planning to do (i.e., validating an overview of circular design competencies which were collected from literature and a round of fieldwork). But to be honest… the real fun has yet to start as I’m planning to do 20 + interviews with designers from practice. Looking forward to engaging with practitioners again. But to be honest I am semi-excited about / semi-dreading the super load of messy data that I will have to go through.
My research proposal for a collaboration project on circular economy skills and knowledge was well received. This means more opportunities for data collection from high level companies.
The Bachelor Circular Product Design course will be starting soon. This year I’ll be involved in the full course from start to end. Fun fact 120 students signed up (while we expected maybe half), which means a huge load of individuals learning about circular economy and designing for it. However, it demands a lot of organization and of course…. grading. Yeah… grading will be fun (haha). I hope that my (little bit of) experience from grading in previous years might help this year. More importantly I am enthusiastic about gaining insights regarding how students learn about CE, what the obstacles are and get some first insights into circular economy competencies for design education.

All in all, it seems like I’m heading into a crazy busy, but probably similarly rewarding couple of months!

See you in two weeks.