Greetings all! I have a bad case of the Sunday Scaries, complete with anxiety dreams, and the new teaching year is three weeks away for us (two weeks until Welcome Week (we don't call it Fresher's Week because that implies binge drinking and hedonism and might be off putting to some) which means three weeks to starting classes and four weeks until the first serious outbreaks of Fresher's Flu at a guess). But the leaves on the bird-cherry tree outside my window are just starting to change colour and we had a lovely Autumn-feeling rain storm yesterday (back to summery humidity today but it was a pleasant reminder), so I am trying to Get Organised in ways that will help with the anxiety.
So, new session - I suggest we start with goal-setting on the 14th of September and end 14th December with a mid-session review 2nd November, does that work for everyone? And I think we can have a nice simple theme appropriate for the "back to school" season of stationary and writing tools.
Shoutypants is requesting food with menaces (several hours before food time)
Last week I said I needed to:
ReplyDelete**feed back on a LOT of text for Junior PhD Student (who is due to submit at the start of welcome week) yes, but he had the audacity to deliver a pile more on Friday!
**make some triage lists for teaching preparation and actually do some teaching blocks yes, and half a block - got distracted by a crisis meeting for Junior Research Masters student, there is a huge wildfire blocking access to and actively threatening one of her field sites, and she's already on tight deadlines for fieldwork (thank goodness she wasn't actually on site, she was due up the day after the fire started and there have been explosions of buried WWII ordnance on the site due to the heat! it was used as a firing range briefly in a not entirely well documented way - we now have a clear set of plans with either/or decision points to be considered after the fire is out and people are allowed back, which will be multiple weeks at best and months at worst
&&write for at least one hour on two different research projects (we have a paper deadline also in Welcome Week...).worked on one paper which has a meeting on Monday coming, ticked off all my tasks. Lots of Unexpected Things came in and just... ate my time. And I didn't feel great Monday and Tuesday
This week I have to feed back on the last bits for Junior PhD student, work on two papers (one revise and resubmit which was due today but we all forgot, one due 15th Sept), go to another Away Day (sigh), attend multiple meetings and do trainings, and MUST get a large chunk of teaching prep done. MUST. The remade list really emphasised that one!
Goodness, I can see why you'd be distracted by the crisis meeting for Junior Research Master's Student! That is genuinely distracting and scary, and I'm glad to hear she wasn't actually on site yet.
DeleteThanks for putting up another interim post! The proposed dates work for me: by mid-September I should have settled into the "real" schedule, with proper syllabuses posted for both classes, and be able to think sensibly about the rest of the term. I like having distinct sessions with a break in between, but I was just thinking how much I rely on TLQ to force me to focus on weekly goals rather than lurching forward with the most urgent things.
What a nightmare for your student! Can see how that would eat up huge amounts of your time and energy.
Deletewell look what a poor thin little shoutypants he is of course you should feed him now have pity you dreadful person why you even has cat if you not give all the foods
ReplyDelete(Morgana seems to have learned to type, with decent spelling even--or maybe this is generative AI for cats?)
DeleteCAT-GPT know all important fuuds words! (he did get some Dreamies...)
DeleteWhy have you been starving Shoutypants? His watch is accurate, yours is not.
ReplyDeleteAnd your schedule looks fine.
I have just sent off Famous Author and with luck it will go into production. That leaves both teaching and ALL THE ADMIN for this week. Posting here so I can check stuff off.
IH annual progress reports
IH assessment
IH Vote on revised P&P
IH Admissions stuff
Communications people
Also, I'm chairing a committee for my university system that is usually not much work, but this fall will be a huge pile of work because of trying (undoubtedly unsuccessfully) to Trump-proof our discipline system. It's going to be a lot.
CONGRATULATIONS on sending off Famous Author!
DeleteYes, huge congratulations! Think there should be virtual champagne all round.
DeleteThanks for another post. I'm very glad I don't have teaching prep, as I seem to have accumulated a lot of stuff for September. This week's most pressing task, sadly, is to deal with car crash PhD student, who is going to have to de-register. The option to come back and finish the thesis in the future is still there, but it's the end of the road for his current enrolment. On the plus side, I finished reading one of the two PhDs I'm examining this autumn, and it was excellent. So nice to send a report back that could be complimentary.
ReplyDeleteIt's so hard when there's a car crash student, for them, for us, and just the time. But delighted that you're examining an excellent Ph.D.!
DeleteOMG my grad class . . . they have an online quiz to take before class tomorrow night. They can take it as many times as they want to. It will help them prepare for the in-class quiz tomorrow. One third of the class has taken the quiz: once each. One sixth of the class has an attempt in progress. Half the class has not even looked at the quiz.
ReplyDeleteThere are going to be some very unhappy students tomorrow night. And they are not making a good impression. I could understand if by week 4 they were overwhelmed and floundering, but in week 2? You could attempt the online quiz open book, and at least make it look like you're trying!
In the UK, I might explain that as not realising that they had to do it, or maybe preferring to revise a different way. Could that be an explanation? I know my kids have occasionally been caught out by a school assignment being posted online instead of announced in class - their school is transitioning away from paper diaries and homework logs to everything being posted online.
Delete