Our Communications Officer, Livia Harriman, manages departmental websites, social media accounts, newsletters and events
5:40 am: My four-year-old son wakes me up. It’s time for breakfast. I let my dog Pads out into the garden. Then I make coffee.
6:00 am: I check the four Twitter accounts that I manage for work. Read the news and my emails. I schedule the morning’s tweets and emails. I use a tool to help me manage and schedule my posts and emails. I do this until my 18-month-old son wakes up.
8:15 am: My son is collected by an assistant for his special preschool. He has Autism Spectrum Disorder and has just started at a new school. Then I take my little one to nursery.
9:15 am: On Wednesdays, I have therapy with Kate on zoom. We finish our session with a calm safe place exercise which takes about ten minutes and helps me manage my anxieties. This is my calm space:
10 am: I have three meetings, two scheduled and one last minute.
These are with the Office of External Affairs (OEAC) who I work closely with to coordinate content and posts. They update the university’s web and social media and work with the press.
The next meeting is with UIS about technical issues that need to be addressed. Some old Java script has been causing me some problems with images on the department’s website.
The last is checking in with a student to help her promote a new podcast her class have just launched. Engaging students remotely has been a big theme of my work for the last six months.
Lunchtime: I walk my dog. Getting outside and connecting with nature makes me feel much more awake and focused. Here is where I walk my dog in Grantchester.
Here is my dog snoozing while I work.
1- 4 pm: This is my favourite part of my day – where I can do the more creative parts of my job. Writing copy, sourcing images and videos for the website, Twitter and Instagram. There can be a lot of ideas and news stories all at once so I work with Trello to help me project manage. You can use it for so many different important things like keeping track of the best pizza in NYC.
4 pm: My little ones get home so we make dinner, play in the garden, have baths, watch CBBies Hey Duggee and read books.
7 pm: When all is calm again I log on and look at the day’s google analytics. See how posts have performed, what’s done well and what hasn’t. I then try to share this with the relevant researchers and staff.
9 pm: I drink as much water as I can (I forget to do this throughout the day) read a couple of chapters from the book I am reading ( The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett) and then fall asleep.
