Happy New Year, everyone and welcome to the first session of 2025! There won't be a theme as such, as I don't have the imagination and creative streak of other session hosts. Instead, I will make things up as I go along, with prompts vaguely inspired by particular dates, the seasons changing, and any other random ideas that come along.
For this first session, please feel free to introduce yourselves, especially anyone new (we would love new people to join), and post some goals for the session and for this first week back. Following the pattern of previous sessions, we'll run for 14 weeks, which takes us up to w/c 7th April. Hopefully that works for people. It fits very nicely with (school) term dates here.
If people would like a prompt for the session, today is the eve of Epiphany. In Spain, where half my family is from, Epiphany is the day for gifts, traditionally brought by the three Kings. The evening before, the kings process through the streets and kids go out to meet them. So let's think about gifts. In the absence of strange men bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh, we may have to be the givers as well as the receivers. What can you gift yourself this session? Doesn't have to be a pile of money, incense or soothing oils, though all of those sound nice, and doesn't have to be three things, but something that fits with being kind to yourself as we slog through winter.
My family is British (in the usual mongrel way) In my (British of many varieties) and we "do Christmas" a slightly old-fashioned way - advent wreath goes up the first of Advent, but most decorations go up Christmas Eve and come down on Twelfth Night. The nativity goes up Christmas Eve, the baby arrives in the crib overnight ready for Christmas morning, and the kings travel around the house every day, only arriving at the crib scene on Epiphany, just in time to be packed away with the rest of the decorations. When we were children they always brought a couple of small gifts to "sweeten the packing away of Christmas" - usually just something like some Christmas sweets for us to share, and a wintry wearable like a scarf or bobble hat or socks. spreading out the magic a little bit (especially exciting the years when we were already back at school by Epiphany to start the morning seeing a gift from the Kings to open after school).
ReplyDeleteWhat do I want? To have been able to retire, or at least go down to much less of a contract - but I've not been well over Christmas and the backlash from all the stresses of last term hit hard as soon as work ended (possibly "because" not "and"...) - so that gold would have been very welcome. In the absence of kings or magi or unexpected windfalls, I can give myself grace - to rest, to read mind candy, to stick to my hours of work, to be no more than "good enough" in order to still deliver enough work to be acceptable, to focus on kindness and welcome and belief in their potential towards my students rather than on having to be the best prepared, newest-content-bearing lecturer. To be what I can to friends and family but not indulge in guilt over what I can't really do without a lot of personal cost (travel, right now, between the hip/back pain and the fatigue and the overwhelm) even if I "ought" to visit people more often/at all. Also, warm apple juice with a little cinnamon and honey in the morning is legitimately part of a healthy breakfast this season, and hot chocolate has the nutrients from the milk so is not entirely unhealthy!
Hello, I'm JaneB, an academic at a UK Northern University which is in crisis like many places - I'm now on a 3.5 day contract, and we're starting the new trimester down 6 staff of around 16 in the main group of programmes I teach in so with some major and painful decisions to make and people to miss. After all of this, and given the health issues I'm still dealing with, I feel very much late career (long story short, I had a breakdown last academic year, was off for months, am fairly recently diagnosed as neurodivergent, and am deep in true burnout, physical, mental and spiritual. I'm doing better this year-hinge than I was the last, and that's a win!). I seem to have finally shed hope for some magical late-on recovery of my research mojo, and started to think in terms of wrapping up in 5-10 years, a plateau and off ramp model rather than one more rise. I guess that's realistic, but life might still surprise me! So the theme continues to be survival and being "good enough" at enough things to justify my pay, with the focus on refilling the reserves ready for more ambitious stuff in the summer if I'm up to it. So I'm not changing up my goals much and will continue to have a complicated list format to try & keep my head in order.
1) SELF-CARE (recovery and self-kindness)
* Maintaining good habits - something creative every week, D&D related time every week, reading regularly, intentional movement, something social with a non work person even if it's a typed conversation.
* Specific things - reading & journalling through the "self care for autistic adults" book I didn't do last session.
2) HOUSE-LIFE CARE
* Habits - 75% or more of the weekly minimal chores, 1 small additional environment thing a week
* Specific things - researching for the changes I want to make to my downstairs living spaces this summer, keeping up with garden trimming as and when spring comes along, creating some better financial habits
3) TEACHING AND ADMIN
Delete* successful teaching delivery (which has to happen, but it will take a good chunk of time each week so it's going in...)
* productive engagement with teaching redesign process (whilst pushing for my needs to be met e.g. being allowed to take time to think about decisions not make them on the fly, information in writing, etc.)
* stay in my lane! (especially with the further reduction in hours and the big research project having finally started).
* support senior grad student - submission is early March - and external Research Master's student - submission is mid March - plus other students, but these two are the priority until late March.
4) RESEARCH
i) measurable progress on at least two papers - two, because this session is almost 100% teaching weeks for me (there is the inter-semester marking week, and the week when the second years are on their overseas trips, but those are realistically going to also be structured by teaching-related needs.
ii) find out my commitments in the small cog in a big project situation and meet them as I can around my own capacity - I'm feeling really ANNOYED about this project right now because the leader of the work package I am a cog within (a long term colleague whose career is soaring, and who has always been a pain in the backside when they are stressed) is being really parochial (suppose our work package is food in Britain between 500-1500AD, and they've focused most of their career on meat and fish consumption in England 793-1066AD, so they are now insisting that we should focus all the new data collection on meat and fish in England and Wales 800-1100, as the "best and most relevant examples" whilst for me to achieve the actual promised outputs for later workpackages it seems really obvious we need to also look at some data from Scotland, and to find a way to at least have "windows" of data collection throughout the whole 1000 years and on at least some other foodstuffs like a plant-based element like bread or fruit or something essential like salt or fats or ale, or luxurious like spices or spirits, even if that is just building a database from published work by others for case study areas or topics, or at least we should take some time to discuss all of that!). PLUS their partner has been appointed to be the researcher (the colleague recused themselves from the selection process once their partner had applied, but this information makes me VERY suspicious about their insistence on the large number of "essential criteria" they put in the role description which included some very niche requirements. And they manage the work package so even if their partner has a different nominal line manager... well, it might be good for the overall, I guess, as they will be in frequent communication (and partner is very good at doing what partner says in research, they've done it a lot as a trailing spouse in their career already). But it feels shit for ME, as I'm already at a different uni a long way from the "main activity hub". I just have to accept I'm going to once again be entirely dependent on Colleague for information and they will likely not treat me like a true research partner, more like an unreliable post-doc (I'm feeling wary about this a) because of how they've behaved in many small ways over the last few years and b) because they told me directly about two months ago that I am unreliable given my recent health issues so I just can't be responsible for anything (even though the task in the discussion was entirely realistic and within my capacity)).
Oops, rant!
GOALS FOR THE WEEK:
Delete1) SELF-CARE (recovery and self-kindness)
* habits: something creative, D&D, read a novel plus three chapters of crusades book, intentional movement 15 minutes x 3 days, a social thing (a long thank you/catching up letter to an old friend)
* Specific things - make a PLAN for reading the autistic self-care book
2) HOUSE-LIFE CARE
* 75% or more of the weekly minimal chores, tidy up the upstairs landing
3) TEACHING AND ADMIN
* marking - first year report (all), start second year essay
* go through coming semester and make teaching preparation plan
* stay in my lane!
* read some papers and a chapter for senior grad student if possible (may not complete because...)
* read a whole thesis and write a report for an external examination of a PhD (due later this week)
4) RESEARCH
* go through all my emails and make a plan!
I imagine there's relief and sadness and a lot of complicated stuff going on w/r/t thinking about ramping down rather than up. Definitely a time to be kind to yourself!
DeleteI love how you always put creative and self-care items on your lists--it's so easy to forget about those. I hope that you can make lots of time for these in the coming term!
DeleteEchoing Dame Eleanor. I think it takes a lot of courage to recognise what is and isn't realistic and to let go of things. Whatever decisions you end up making, try to give yourself credit for bravery.
DeleteFor anyone new, I'm Julie, a mid-career historian at a different university in the north of England, one that is not facing the same cuts as JaneB's institution yet, but where the pressures are still great. I've been widowed for nearly four years now and have a 16 year-old daughter and soon to be 14 year-old son.
ReplyDeleteI am going to gift myself three things, because why not. First is going to be sleep: getting to bed earlier. Second is going to be permission to be indulgent: not necessarily big things, but small treats, like buying and using a fancy candle, taking time for a proper facial cleanse at the end of the day etc. Third is going to be research/writing time each week, even if just for an hour.
Session goals:
1. Research (TLQ)
i) Write article for end of January deadline.
ii) Write longer version of grant application for 1st March deadline.
iii) Spend remaining small grant money.
iv) Figure out some research for after 1st March.
2. Teaching
i) Marking: finish current batch, do next batch mid-February.
ii) Keep teaching prep as minimal as possible.
iii) PhD students: R has submitted, so just viva guidance; I is writing up, needs carrot; M has extended yet again, needs big stick.
3. Admin
i) Usual round of moderating other colleagues' marking, being a good citizen etc while also saying no as much as possible.
4. Kids
i) Meet with teachers, advise on subject choices, try not to lean too heavily on them.
ii) Usual ongoing work of parenting - try to do this with minimal shouting/resentment.
iii) Encourage family time: films, reading together, make travel plans.
5. House
i) Essential financial stuff
ii) Small jobs, but no impossible goals.
6. Fun stuff/self-care
i) Sleep!
ii) Exercise
iii) Healthy eating.
iv) Read.
v) Creative stuff
vi) Make travel plans for Easter and summer.
Those sound like good gifts! I hope they serve you well.
DeleteAgreed--your gifts sound perfect!
DeleteExcellent gifts!
DeleteThis week's goals:
ReplyDelete1. Research - at least 2 days on article.
2. Draft exam questions by Wednesday.
3. Carry on marking.
4. Christmas decorations away, tidy up house, do one financial thing, book opticians' appointments for kids.
5. Catch up on a TV series with kids.
Aaah the "carry on marking" goal... always makes me wonder whether there is a university-set carry on film, which is my brain squirrels trying to find a reason to NOT carry on marking!!
DeleteHello!
ReplyDeleteI am a mid-career professor in a physical science field, at my somewhat under-staffed dream university in a lovely place. I do lots of advising and admin for my department, good investment but time-consuming. I have an extremely busy teenager at home, two slightly nutty cats, and a partner who works partially at home and partially a couple of provinces over.
Love the idea of gifts for the session! For the “practical but nice” category I am giving myself a big tin of my favourite expensive hand cream (already ordered) and permission to get take-out on crazy weeks. For my future self I’m making a project/sample archive and database that will grow with my research program. For the “creativity and fun” category I’m giving myself permission to play in one musical pit band (huge production, very fun!), one chamber music concert with fellow faculty members, and two orchestra concerts with my kid.
Session goals
Exercise regularly
Finish one new paper, one old one (feels like there should be a borrowed one and a blue one too…)
Shepherd department through hiring process for critical position (more than one if we get lucky)
Get my lab and sample archive organized
Teach well and refresh key lectures
Support grad students to finish projects
This week’s goals
Exercise 4 times
Start sample archive project
Sample processing
First week’s lectures and labs
Meet grad students and make term plans
Great gifts! Good luck with all the things!
DeleteIt's great that you make time for playing music with other people! Such fun.
DeleteLove your gifts!
DeleteGifts: I like Julie's idea of three gifts, so the ones I will give myself are 1. more reading for pleasure 2. regular activities that are not "useful", whether a nice walk, a visit to a museum, or dinner with friends. 3. Being intentional about adequate rest
ReplyDeleteI'm Susan, a senior historian at a newish university on the west coast of the US (but I study British history, so...) I'm a widow (for 15 years, so I'm used to it); until 18 months ago I was the local person for my elderly mother, so I'm still adjusting to not having to worry about her. My two cats both died last year, so I am no longer a childless cat lady. (Because of various upcoming life transition, I'll be waiting on getting a new cat.) I'm currently on sabbatical at My Favorite Library, and I will return for one more year of teaching before I retire. I have a brother who lives near my sabbatical place, so I get to see him, and my twin nibblings, who turn 11 tomorrow, a lot more often.
Session Goals:
1. Polish and give big public lecture on January 15
2. Submit almost final text of Famous Author to press on Feb 1, and do whatever further edits are needed after my editor and reviewers read it.
3. Get maps done for Famous Author
4. Get image permissions for Famous Author
5. Take care of whatever I need to do on Big Collaboration (we're waiting on a few more contributors to cut their essays to the required length, and then it's in production, so it will be dealing with the copyedited ms.
6. Pick up work on the Rest of My Life project when i recover from January.
7. Keep up with exercise, do more walking
8. Read for pleasure
9. Do fun things
Goals for this week:
1. Revise lecture, make sure slides are right, practice it
2. Start next round of edits to Famous Author, especially since I figured out how to do references. (It's being published as a trade book, and accessibility is key.)
3. Recover from my time at big discipline conference in the city of my birth...
4. Get going on exercise goals
5. Do something fun on the weekend, don't just panic.
It should be obvious, but January is going to be stressful, so it's really hard to think beyond that!
It's amazing how busy and stressful a sabbatical can be! Sending good vibes (a little in advance, but they need to cross the country) for next week!
DeletePanic should have no place in a sabbatical, and yet.... You're busy! Enjoy the good stuff!
DeleteWow, that's a lot. But sounds like things are being accomplished. Hopefully your future self will look back and feel proud.
DeleteHowever carefully one tries to plan, there are always months when the diary has a traffic pile-up! Wishing you a successful smooth-running January!
DeleteI feel that I got a gift yesterday: excellent readers' reports for my book manuscript. Really, truly the-best-I-could-hope-for reports. There are revisions, but they're very minor, and both readers said such nice things! One said that the book was "riveting," which is not a word I would frequently use of academic writing, so I'm feeling pretty over-the-moon about that. The press will take it to the editorial board for a contract at their next meeting!
ReplyDeleteA gift that I want to give myself is the power to delegate and/or to say that I won't do something right now (or maybe even at all). I'm starting to test this one out a little bit, within the confines of my extremely limited power, and it turns out that it's more feasible than I'd thought.
And finally: Read for pleasure, whenever I can. My husband got me the first two Maisie Dobbs novels for Christmas and I'm really enjoying them!
(If anyone doesn't know me: I'm a professor of medieval literature at a Northeastern US university, with a husband who's a minister, a 12-year-old son, and two cats.)
Session goals:
1. Good habits: Continue with exercise regimen; practice inversions three times a month; reintroduce meditation into my life to any extent
2. Read 1 Italian book (I've just ordered "L'amica geniale" from our local bookstore!)
3. Finish reasonably polished draft of article due in April (for workshop)
4. Final revisions to book manuscript
5. My actual job: Create online teaching supports for grad students; work on data to advocate for an administrative change
6. Finish two in-progress knitting projects and make progress on my big new fun one
This week:
1. Make a good start on the essay: Aim for a messy 3000 words (I started the week at about 1200 from the abstract and notes, so this isn't un-doable)
2. Write up a paragraph for this administrative thing
3. Write and send my response to the readers' reports
4. Finish reviewing graduate applications
5. Exercise x 6, sit x whatever I can manage
That is splendid news about the reader reports! Yay! Fistfuls of confetti and champagne all around!
DeleteYay on the readers reports! Riveting is good! I don't blame you for taking that as a gift! (I got "pellucid" in the fall, and was likewise over the moon.
DeleteThat is fantastic news! Congratulations! What a great start to 2025.
DeleteCongratulations!
DeleteHm, so, this session will run through Janfarch, ending just about the time I will get my light/warm seasonal energy surge, and about a month before my end-of-semester. This makes planning and goals interesting, because I'm definitely low-energy this time of year, and since the teaching won't come to an end during this session, I feel like I can't make it an excuse for not getting to research, or focus on teaching as an achievement. I also have deadlines for an article and two conference papers, but not until at least a month after the session ends.
ReplyDeleteSo let's start with the gifts first! Three sounds good (three Magi, fairy wishes, etc). First, the gift of low expectations. Get by. Suck Less. Let It Go. Leave It Till Later. Second, exercise. I would love this gift to be "sleep," but it's too hard to control. However, I can certainly get to the gym at least 5 days a week, so I'll do that. Third, more jigsaw puzzles. I really love them. They can be a time suck, but see Gift the First.
So, session goals:
- make measurable progress on two research projects
- manage teaching and GTAs effectively
- gym and yoga 5x/week (each)
- be adequate at committee assignments
This week's goals:
- keep working on revisions to a chapter
- do some scholarly reading
- attend three meetings, one in-person
- process at least 4 grad applications
- draft syllabus
- gym x5, swim x3, yoga x5
I love the gift of low expectations. It really is amazing what happens when we are kind to ourselves.
DeleteSorry if the session dates don't work so well. I will almost certainly be away for Easter, so if we run a longer session, there would be a break. I was assuming same length as last session.
DeleteWhatever works for you! You're the host! "Interesting" is good, b/c it does help me think about ongoing research and other projects, rather than just trying to get through the semester.
DeleteEaster is unusually late this year which is changing up a lot of things (just been going over my teaching timetable, and yikes, some tweaking needed to avoid marking-crazy weeks due to the Easter move) - and the length makes sense for planning - much beyond 3-4 months becomes too foggy to see, given the vagaries of the academic system with applications for grants and roles, changing teaching assignments etc.
DeleteThis is a P.S., information for those who know I'm in an area with several big wildfires right now. One is not far from My Favorite Library, and only about 4 miles from where I live. My place is pretty safe, but the air is not good.
ReplyDeleteGlad you are safe, but it all sounds very scary. Thinking of you.
DeleteThank you for letting us know. I've been thinking about the air quality for all my friends (and everyone else) in the area, remembering how poor it was here when there were Canadian fires hundreds of miles away, and there you are practically at Ground Zero.
DeleteThinking of you and hoping things improve soon!
DeleteI've been thinking of you and hoping you weren;t where I thought you were - glad that you and MFL are safe, long may that continue!
DeleteGlad to hear it, since I, too, had a sense of which library it probably is, and that's one of the places I've been looking for on the maps and lists of places in peril or destroyed. It's a truly scary situation.
DeleteAnd sorry to hear that both cats are now gone. My own "my life is too much in limbo for a cat to make sense" period has lasted considerably longer than I planned (and will probably last a bit longer), but I did end up with a visiting cat just around the time childless cat ladies were in the news last summer, and so felt I could (re)claim the title.
DeleteOnce again, I'm starting with apologies for hopping into the thread at the last minute, and disappearing from the previous session. It was a busy fall, with a new LMS and the headaches attendant on teaching researched writing to students with access to AI-based tools (but very little idea of how to use them well or responsibly). Despite my best intentions, I did not manage to work ahead on my study leave project, other than to prepare for the one presentation I had scheduled for the fall. That went reasonably well, and I also managed to more or less keep up with regular exercise, which was my other goal, so I guess that's a start.
ReplyDeleteSo I'm starting more or less from the beginning, with the huge gift that I do have a study leave this semester (which also feels like a pretty big responsibility, since this is only the second year in which study leaves have been a possibility for contingent faculty at my institution, and, because of a budget crunch, only two were awarded in my college this year. Still, the idea that doing research is my job for the next 4 months still feels wonderful verging on miraculous.)
The study leave project is tangentially, but only tangentially, related to my original field of study. I'm a literature Ph.D. who always tended toward the "studies" end of things anyway; has now been teaching writing and rhetoric, mostly to STEM students, for several decades; and am currently working on a digital humanities project that is more history than literature, though there are still various sorts of documents to be closely read, and eventually, I hope, some interesting stories to tell. It also mixes the professional and personal to some degree (I'm looking at the history of an institution to which I belong). All of that feels somewhere between okay and good in terms of my professional arc (I probably now qualify as late-career, though I hope not to retire for another decade), but a bit more ticklish in terms of the current political climate (I'm in the U.S., in a state that currently has a Republican governor, who has now appointed the majority of the board of trustees at my public university. They probably wouldn't much like my project if they noticed it; fortunately, that seems unlikely.
So, goals for the session:
Delete--Make substantial progress on Study Leave project (which has multiple components and possible outcomes, so one of the things I need to do soon is some more detailed prioritizing and planning)
--Continue exercise habit
--Work on other self-care activities, especially identifying leisure activities that are truly restorative
--As time allows, make progress on making my home more livable for me, and workable for having guests over (I've lived in a one-room apartment for the past 17 years, and, while it has its attractions, and at this point feels like home, it's also both overcrowded with stuff and in need of some repairs, replacements, and updates, starting with the fridge and stove).
And goals for the week (cheating a bit since it's nearly over):
Delete--Prepare to group discussion that is at least tangentially related to study leave project; write related publicity and outreach emails
--Keep up with exercise to the extent that weather allows
--Do something new/different/active