A pebble skipper's tale

In the following pages I offer a post-hoc, reflective, quasi-chronological account of skipping pebbles on the academic pond. I start with my nascent skipping skills when I took my first academic post and my first decade at a teaching-focussed college (now a university). Here I explore my learning with others to skip a variety of pebbles, their subsequent trajectories, and reflect on the genesis of one particular pebble -my most successful skip yet. I next recount my evolving abilities for skipping teaching, research and service pebbles with colleagues, across what I have come to realise is a worldwide pond. Within this I offer first examples drawn from pebbles skipping at a research informed university where I was increasingly drawn into management. I then consider my refocussing on those pebbles that really matter to me whilst working at two research intensive (led) universities. Here I reveal how the energy from the pebbles (represented by ripples) appeared for a while to dissipate, causing me to question my skipping skills. I conclude with a postscript reframing my learning as a series of questions for other pebble skippers. These I derived from those aspects that continue to be important to my career path; one of embracing the variety of pebbles, doing what matters to me and crucially working with people.