My name is Kate and…

[Kate Davis]

Who you are

I’m a 30 something workaholic who is trying hard to reform! I’m aunt to six year old twins. I have an unusual family, with my primary family unit comprised of my mum, my sister, the twins and I. They say it takes a village to raise a child. In our case, it takes three women to raise twins! I guess you could call me a co-parent. To the twins, I’m their Kate Kate, and they’ve only just realised that not everyone has a Kate Kate. I have the same parental responsibilities as any parent – school runs, school holiday juggling, homework hounding etc – but I have the extremely good fortune to have not one but TWO ‘wives’ to share the load 😉 We have struck a balance where I work a lot and my mum and my sister pick up the slack at home (read: I never do the washing or ironing!).

I have just submitted my PhD thesis so I’m hoping to be Dr Kate soon.

And I’m trying really hard to get back into doing the things I love now that the PhD monkey is off my back. I love to read, but haven’t read a novel in almost two years (I can’t quite believe that actually, but it’s true). I also love to sew and particularly love to make things for people. I love to build Lego with my nephew. I love crafting with my niece. I’m driven to be creative. I love to tinker with things. I love technology. I’m a media addict: I binge watch TV series; read heaps of blogs; use social media prolifically; and I can’t work without a good Spotify playlist in the background.

Where you’re up to in the course

I studied at QUT more than a decade ago and this is my sixth year teaching full time in the LIS program.

What kind of library or information organisation you see yourself working in when you graduate

I always swore I’d never step foot in a public library (I wanted to teach information literacy or work in an art gallery library) and guess where I ended up? (And loved it!)

What do you think your superpower is? What are you really good at?

Caring. I think I’m good at looking out for and after people. (I’m not so good at looking after myself!)

What would people who know you say your superpower is? Would it be something different than what you think your superpower is? Do you think it’s a superpower you actually possess?

I hear a lot of ‘I don’t know how you get everything done’ and ‘How are you still going?’, so I think maybe people think I’m like the Energiser bunny. Do I actually possess this superpower? Sort of. I am a bit of a crazy work machine. In reality though, I’m frantically paddling my legs below the water and just barely keeping the balls in the air above my head. And while I do juggle a lot, I think it’s really important to fess up to the fact I compromise a lot on the things that matter to me personally to be the Energiser bunny on the work front.

What would you like your superpower to be, if you could choose one?

Teleportation. I spend a lot of time commuting (I live on the Gold Coast) and a lot of money on petrol and parking. Sometimes, at the end of a day at work I’m so tired that I just stay longer because I don’t feel like driving, which is really silly because then I’m just even more tired when I actually get round to leaving.

Looking forward to working with you all this semester!

[Peldon P]

Hi Kate, you’re one very inspiring woman and yeah I too wonder where you get the energy from, you are everywhere and doing everything. When I first knew as our Coordinator I couldn’t even trust you, I thought you should have been older because younger in my opinion equates less experience. Anyways that all changed when I had the ‘Online info services’ unit with you. Not only you have in-depth knowledge about your subject, you also have sound knowledge about the emerging technologies. Since then I think I sort of hero-worship you because you are everything I wanted to be. It was also the reason why I took up this unit, I just wanted to be in your class, I didn’t care/it didn’t matter which unit. Having said that I am very excited about the prospect of blogging, I blog too, no particular area but I love blogging, although I took a couple of years break from it, I am hoping to learn blogging from you. Thank you for being a wonderful teacher.

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