Hello everyone,
Week 16! And still we persevere.
I confess that, while I'm never very good at TLQ prompts, I am now totally out. Out! So--how's this for a thematic tie-in--for this week, reflect on something from which you can excuse yourself. And I will excuse myself from thinking of a clever prompt for the TLQ check-in. Or have I just entered into some kind of liar's paradox situation? Hm.... In any case, it sounds like a number of us are at or approaching the ends of our ropes, so letting something just drop might be a good idea.
Last week's goals:
Daisy:
Do revisions on accepted paper
Finish data processing and make pretty figures for co-authored paper
New data processing
Do budget for summer work
Set exams
Dame Eleanor Hull:
- dead language group prep- finish prepping next grad lecture
- more work on expanding article
- review copy-edited Other Article
- assign points to a worksheet
- make carrot muffins
heu mihi:
1. Read over proofs of 7/10 essays
2. Article review
3. Draft short (15-minute?) talk for student event
4. Have fun on our trip
JaneB:
* do the everyday baseline chores when they need doing, not when I've run out of stuff (we keep trying)
* eat more mindfully
* do some D&D prep, play D&D (because it's fun)
* read another book, do a little crochet
* prepare for teaching next week, make progress on the commercial project, mark one more second year assignment and as many late projects as I can, don't obsess about the whole union thing/marking boycott until it happens.
Julie:
1. Finish marking the essays I didn't manage to mark before Easter - now quite urgent.
2. Mark undergraduate dissertations before marking boycott kicks in (if it does).
3. Read PhD student's chapter
4. Start reading PhD thesis I agreed to examine
5. Self-care: book dentist, doctor and hairdresser.
Susan: On the Camino!!
IIRC, this is the last week in which we set goals; next weekend is the end-of-session report. We'll have to think about dates for the next session, and who would like to host it.
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
- dead language group prep: YES
- finish prepping next grad lecture: MOSTLY
- more work on expanding article: SOME
- review copy-edited Other Article: NO
- assign points to a worksheet: YES
- make carrot muffins: YES
ALSO: went to talk about replacing garden plants with natives.
Hmm, one more week of TLQ session; two more weeks of teaching. I feel a little off-balance, particularly as our warm spring weather suddenly disappeared and it's been chilly and cloudy lately. I looked at my session goals, and I've done okay with all of them except the last, about unpacking/house stuff. So I guess I'm just keeping on with the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other session, and trying to clear the decks for the end-of-term grading.
New goals:
- dead language group prep
- finish prepping the last two grad lectures
- more work on expanding article
- review copy-edited Other Article
- do some gardening
Thanks for the administrative reminder! You're right that this is our last goal-setting week.
DeleteGiven you didn't have COVID on your list, one foot in front of the other is an excellent achievement in its own right!
DeleteHope the gardening gets some sunny weather to make it fun! The replacement of garden plants with native species sounds like an interesting talk, could be a very satisfying project.
DeleteThat's a lot done, including muffins! Baking is always a good use of time!
DeleteI feel a little guilty, as everyone else seems exhausted and I've had two weeks off and am now into a fairly easy term, since I have research leave again. So there aren't too many things to excuse myself from. I did have Covid this week, though no worse than mild cold symptoms and less energy than usual. But it did mean I could excuse myself from meetings and the football match on Wednesday. And I have excused myself from meeting with a student this coming week, since she wanted help with an essay for a different module, which I might previously have said yes to because like all of us, I've been socialised into saying yes too often. But mostly I'll take the prompt as a reminder to be grateful and relieved that I have some breathing space again. The feeling of lightness has underlined how tough the past two terms have been.
ReplyDeleteLast week
1. Finish marking the essays I didn't manage to mark before Easter - now quite urgent. - DONE
2. Mark undergraduate dissertations before marking boycott kicks in (if it does). - DONE (there were only 3)
3. Read PhD student's chapter - DONE (and it was a good read, so a nice bit of work for a change)
4. Start reading PhD thesis I agreed to examine - DONE, as in started. It's very long!
5. Self-care: book dentist, doctor and hairdresser. - Only doctor.
This week:
1. Finish reading thesis and write report.
2. Two final exam preparation sessions for the modules I taught last term.
3. Meetings with 2 PhD students.
4. Plan this term's research, chase one archivist about visiting in May.
5. Do some minor house jobs.
6. Book dentist and hairdresser.
Don't feel guilty! I'm at the tail end of a full year's sabbatical, so I can't say that I'm burnt out or exhausted in the least. And I'm a little alarmed at the thought of going back in the fall....
DeleteHearing from people who DO get research leaves and breaks reminds me how much my job (and myself) expects of me and how little it gives back - sometimes there's a lot of reward, but especially over the last three years, there's a lot of give and minimal give back, and I need to remember that it's is OK and normal to expect to have space to recover - to not feel guilty for not working to exhaustion/brain-overflow every week.
DeleteNO guilt! Things come and go and some years are lighter and make up a bit for the insane ones.
DeleteYay for getting so much reading and marking done! Those are nice things to check off because they stay done...
Last week (this was a bit of a cheat, since I set these goals on Saturday, having completed nearly all of them):
ReplyDelete1. Read over proofs of 7/10 essays - Yes
2. Article review - Yes
3. Draft short (15-minute?) talk for student event - Yes
4. Have fun on our trip - Yes
This week--must get back into chapter 2, which is a bit of a hairy mess and nearly entirely unwritten:
1. Draft G section of ch. 2--this includes a quick lit review and rereading the primary text, so this is my Major Goal
2. Read over any of the remaining 3 essays' proofs that come in (proofs are due 5/1)
3. Go to TWO MEETINGS, one of which is actually a 2.5-hour session of interviews for a new Town Clerk
4. Revise short, low-pressure talk
5. Resume normal routines
Also, as DEH said, we need to discuss the next session--dates and who will host. Please post any ideas in the comments!
NEARLY entirely unwritten suggests it has been started! Look on the bright side!
DeleteHappy to host or co-host the next session, and this is the part of the year when the NorthernUni academic year is WAY out of step with North America (teaching ends next week but between multiple assessment weeks, marking weeks and a very slow mark approval process plus lots of paperwork, we won't be DONE done until mid-June - our semesters are not self-contained like most North American ones...).
Good luck with Hairy Chapter 2! Agree with JaneB, nearly unwritten is definitely a big step up from "haven't opened the files yet" so definitely a bright side!
DeleteGood luck with Chapter 2! I could host, though not sure I have many ideas for prompts. But it could be fun thinking of them. How does it work? Do I need to set up something up in order to be able to post? And if I co-host, do we do alternate weeks, or just whoever is motivated to get in first?
DeleteHi Julie, hosts get added to the blogger site as an editor/author, so you can then create posts (it's a very easy system). And for the prompts & timing we've kind of improvised for the last couple of sessions, but if we're co-hosting we can have a quick g-mail chat to agree the details of which weeks work for who (and perhaps a theme for summer prompts - once there's a prompt theme, I find they're quite easy to come up with). I'm at mollimog at gmail
DeleteHi. It's been a loooong session and what can we drop sounds like a self-kindness prompt to me! That said, I feel I've already dropped far too many things! But I will share a piece of advice I heard recently: "everyone drops things sometimes. The trick is to know which of the things you are juggling is made of rubber and can be dropped without harm, and which are made of glass" (or, I guess, whether you're dropping them onto a soft mattress or a tiled floor!). I do rather feel I've run out of rubber things to drop!
ReplyDeleteLAST WEEK went by quickly. And yes, the Marking and Assessment Boycott has started. So I did Very Little all weekend (some reading...) and I feel like I slowed down enough to realise how much I want to stop for a while, if that makes sense...
* do the everyday baseline chores when they need doing, not when I've run out of stuff (we keep trying) ish. I'm up to date on laundry but there are several bin bags waiting to go to the actual main bins and I'm out of plates and small bowls. And did I fix that this weekend? I did not. My brain didn't want to.
* eat more mindfully ish! I think mindfully CHOOSING to buy and eat ice cream bars counts...
* do some D&D prep, play D&D (because it's fun) no - everyone is busy studying this weekend & I didn't get to prep
* read another book, do a little crochet yes even if it was a novella, yes (I went to a seminar online and deliberately chose to crochet rather than fret about all the OTHER work I needed to do)
* prepare for teaching next week, make progress on the commercial project, mark one more second year assignment and as many late projects as I can, don't obsess about the whole union thing/marking boycott until it happens. yes (gah, much fussing needed about issues which should not be mine), yes, yes (three of the late projects done, all the ones where I am first marker), no. Of COURSE I obsessed about it. That's what I DO.
NEXT WEEK:
* do the everyday baseline chores when they need doing, not when I've run out of stuff (we keep trying)
* eat more mindfully
* do paperwork for intake to try out ADHD medication (I am so scared about this - but in the usual "meds are best" way, I have to try meds in order to keep my referral for assessment for psychosocial coaching...)
* do some D&D prep, play D&D (because it's fun)
* read another book, do a little crochet
* prepare for staff-student committee, prepare for last week of teaching next week, complete report on commercial project, peer review an article for a journal, don't obsess about the whole union thing/marking boycott.
I hope this doesn't sound obnoxious, but as someone who is currently struggling with obsessive thoughts about something, it is a comfort to know someone else also gets wound up in rumination. May we both soon be able to move on!
DeleteYay for the crochet during seminar and reading! I have found that I absolutely have to do something with my hands during online seminars when I really care about the topic because if I don't I just fall into reading or scrolling or doing things rather than listening...
DeleteBouncy rubber balls are definitely the preferred ones to drop. I spent today clearing out a whole bunch of those that have been rolling around on my mental floors and getting stuck under furniture... Clearing that out felt good, and reduced the chances of falling over one of my own dropped balls...
Good luck on medication paperwork, it is definitely a scary thing to do but hopefully the potential upsides help with that! You are doing something very challenging!
My daughter has asked for crochet stuff for her birthday as she wants to learn. I used to do cross-stitch and should try it again. I had a colleague who always knitted or crocheted in meetings and seminars, in person and online, and it made me envious, as she would always end meetings having done something productive. I agree that it is easier to focus online if you can do something else. I sometimes turn camera off and tidy the room, or prep dinner. But we're now more or less back to in person for most things, so multi-tasking isn't an option any more.
DeleteI completely get why you're obsessing about the boycott, as so much is up in the air at the moment. Sympathy. I like the rubber balls analogy and Daisy's variant of getting them out from under the furniture. My problem is the balls I don't even realise I've dropped.
I love Daisy's extension of the analogy - rubber balls under the furniture and underfoot (and bits of glass that need clearing up) definitely go together - and stray balls are tripping hazards!
DeleteExcellent suggestion for excusing ourselves from one thing this week! I’m taking this permission to excuse myself from organizing and cleaning up my teaching lab samples this week and leave them for my undergraduate assistant when they start their summer job with me in a few weeks. I will use this time to work on student thesis chapters, which will free up some time at night to do other things, and sleep more!
ReplyDeleteLast week’s goals
Do revisions on accepted paper ALMOST DONE
Finish data processing and make pretty figures for co-authored paper DONE
New data processing NOPE
Do budget for summer work DONE
Set exams DONE
Things that also got done:
Marking and final grades VERY CLOSE TO DONE
Short field trip with students, hoping for sunshine, not looking good… DONE, GLORIOUS WEATHER!
This week’s goals
FINISH revisions on accepted paper
Confirm summer field accommodations and timing (so much work in one sentence!)
Work on two conference talks
Use conference talks to outline paper
Read and edit many student thesis chapters
Finish all marking and grade submissions
That sounds like an excellent plan - and a very satisfying task for the undergrad too!
Delete