the grid

the grid

Sunday, 10 August 2025

Midyear session 2025 Week 13

This is the last goal-setting week; next week will be the end-of-session party at which we report on session goals and congratulate ourselves and each other.

So, whether the recipes were well-chosen and all is going smoothly, or they were overly complicated and the kitchen is now a disaster area, the guests will arrive soon. Are you setting the table, uncorking the wine, and looking forward to the gathering? Chasing the cat away from spilled cheese sauce, clearing up broken glass, and praying everyone will be late? Rushing to take a shower and put on something festive (because you can always ask a guest to set the table and another one to open the wine while you do final touches in the kitchen, but you do need to be clean and present when people start to show up)?

How did you do last week? What are your plans for the week ahead?

Daisy

Work on student projects
Send away samples
Finish depressingly overdue review
Write conference abstract
Write one section of new paper

Dame Eleanor Hull

- one campus day, meet with grad, spend 30 minutes tidying my office
- swim x 3, yoga x5, cardio x 3, do PT exercises 2x/day
- identify and contact reviewers for edited volume
- finish syllabus for one to-be-proposed course AND start a syllabus for one fall course
- finish organizing the guest room closet and shelves OR start on my study (preferably both)
- make some measurable progress on 2 research projects (M and W)
- try to get Basement Cat to the vet
- reschedule the eye exam that I totally forgot about today!

heu mihi

1. Teaching prep: Read 2 articles that I may assign for upcoming course
2. Fix basement closet door??? (I would have to do this today, and I'm not sure that I want to)
3. Start on anniversary book (select pictures)
4. Read grad student's prospectus

JaneB

1) building better habits: one creative thing with the hands, keep reading for pleasure, start a new yarn project, journal, play D&D, prepare for future D&D.

2) environment: Complete Large Financial Chore, work on simple financial chores/make list for complicated ones (including planning to pay for the car repairs). do serious investigation of sofas, cat litter box furniture, and shelving for the living room, do at least three house chores, keep the kitchen immaculate (the decluttering person worked miracles...). hopefully get the car back.

3) Work - ONE THING - do email triage mid-week to pick up some researcher-issues and reduce the overwhelm when I start back

Julie

- spot whales
- figure out Icelandic supermarkets
- other holiday activities as desired/possible

Susan

1. Catch up with all the admin stuff
2. See if I can sketch the article I want to write
3. As soon as I get anything from my editor, go into revision mode.
4. See friends
5. Prepare to leave... pack, organize, etc.

29 comments:

  1. All is chaos and I am calling out for takeaway pizzas and tearing off sheets of kitchen towel to serve as napkins because I'm saving my spoons for the human stuff! And the cat is probably currently finishing off the cream that was supposed to go with dessert, and feeling very pleased with himself.

    So, well, in yet another stunning act of effective communication, we found out who the new interim Head of School is when he sent out an email of greeting, how-to-contact-me (which included "when I am busy, I will not reply to all emails. Remind me after a few days if necessary" - what a recipe for anxiety THAT is) and announcing that he wants us to have a weekly staff meeting which will be recorded for those who don't attend, and will "only be announcements" (sigh). In that case, WHY can't we have a weekly EMAIL? I don't remember stuff well from watching recordings so I will have to write my own notes every week and worry about them, or there will ALSO be emails (the Research Director and Teaching Director both already send out weekly emails with all the information and reminders we need). So THAT makes us all feel properly informed. (We still haven't actually been formally told about the people who left in January, never mind the person who left in June...).

    LAST WEEK:
    1) building better habits: one creative thing with the hands, keep reading for pleasure, start a new yarn project, journal, play D&D, prepare for future D&D. made a birthday card for my Uncle and did some painting by numbers very messily, read somewhat, did NOT sort out the yarn project, journalled a little, played D&D and did rather a lot of planning for the next arc of the big adventure with my nibling. So 2/3rds yes
    2) environment: Complete Large Financial Chore, work on simple financial chores/make list for complicated ones (including planning to pay for the car repairs). do serious investigation of sofas, cat litter box furniture, and shelving for the living room, do at least three house chores, keep the kitchen immaculate (the decluttering person worked miracles...). hopefully get the car back. did next step for Large Financial Chore, now waiting for a code in the post from the bank to progress that (grrr). Did SOME investigation of sitting room needs but it's feeling a very big project. did some small chores but not enough, kitchen is not immaculate, car is not back and will not be until the end of the coming week at the earliest.
    3) Work - ONE THING - do email triage mid-week to pick up some researcher-issues and reduce the overwhelm when I start back did triage. Not as bad as it might have been.

    COMING WEEK:
    Ugh. Back to work, and weather is forecast to return to levels of hot and humid where I do not even want to think. But I have to!
    1) Building better habits: yarn project, read, D&D, hobby things
    2) improving my environment: well, let's be ambitious! sorting out the war/floor-drobe situation, progress the sofa-and-shelving ideas, get the front gutters replaced, do chores.
    3) blocks: One block for the first year module - class slides and activities, handout, assessment questions. Make a revised revised block list.
    4) Writing - the week after next I have multiple meetings, so I am going to set the goal of at least 1 hour on each of the projects for which I have a meeting scheduled later in August.
    5) check in with all the graduate students
    6) Check the timetable for trimester 1 and make SURE it meets my reasonable adjustments. Complete one CPD thing (urgent). Catch up with all email. Make appointment to have the I Have Issues/Adjustments conversation with the new interim Head of School (who I don't want to do this with. I think he'll be polite but I also don't trust him fully to not gossip, manipulate, judge...).

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    1. Goodness, your admin people are something else! Why in the world would you have a meeting just to give announcements? E-mail is a vastly better choice.

      As to metaphors, yes, do let's just have a takeaway with kitchen roll and a snuggle with the smug cat, and leave all the faffing around to someone else! We need to celebrate your accomplishment in starting the Large Financial Chore (even starting is a big deal, and once started, these things acquire momentum); also it's good to see you got the e-mail sorted and had some fun!

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    2. Ugh... meetings for just announcements??? And recordings are the absolute worst - can you run them on teams and have the AI transcribe and take notes while you do something better with your time? Might not be perfect, but adequate would work for a silly thing like this... Much commiseration!

      Take-out pizza parties are the best!!! Love that plan...

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    3. Team NO MEETINGS JUST FOR ANNOUNCEMENTS. Really. (Sigh, and I even forget the ones we get in emails, so have a place where we can find out who we now contact about supplies.)

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    4. I used to have a department chair who did announcement-only meetings every month (although he didn't present them as this, it's what they were), and that was maddening enough. But weekly??

      It looks like you did a lot from your lists last week!

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  2. IRL, I'm the type that closes the door to the kitchen and goes to put on eyeliner; but that does rather depend on one's house. The current kitchen cannot be closed off, which means any mess would be on view. Metaphorically . . . well, I'm not going to mention to anyone that the cats have been on the table, I'll cut off the bits of butter that have tongue marks and make butter curls of the rest, and hope that everyone is thoroughly distracted by the glittering crystal glasses so that I can get away with the imbalanced meal! At least it's not blue soup and marmelade a la Bridget Jones.

    How I did:
    - one campus day, meet with grad, spend 30 minutes tidying my office: YES
    - swim x 3, yoga x5, cardio x 3, do PT exercises 2x/day: YES (3 miles), x2, x1, partly: I got new exercises on Wednesday and they did my back in rather thoroughly, am only now recovering!
    - identify and contact reviewers for edited volume: this remains IN PROGESS, alas.
    - finish syllabus for one to-be-proposed course AND start a syllabus for one fall course: YES, and NO except for thinking (but Daisy says that counts!)
    - finish organizing the guest room closet and shelves OR start on my study (preferably both): SLIGHT PROGRESS on both; my desk's surface is now visible!
    - make some measurable progress on 2 research projects (M and W): for extremely small values of measurable, yes.
    - try to get Basement Cat to the vet: days of phone tag resulted in an appointment for Monday; after months of his preferred food being out of stock, we now have it again and he seems pretty much his old self as a result. But we'll still subject him to the vet to see if there's anything we need to know about.
    - reschedule the eye exam that I totally forgot about today! YES (now in mid-September)

    New goals:
    - cardio x3, PT 2x/day, weights at least once
    - at least one campus day, meet with grad, continue project known as 'tidying' (actually cataloguing, but it will lead to a tidier office eventually); at least two other meetings
    - make time for 5 hours research on projects W and M
    - plan fall teaching, complete at least one syllabus
    - do something fun and summery b/c it's not over yet!

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    1. The absolute first thought I had for the prompt was "OMG I am totally in blue soup territory!" complete with marmalade and stepped-on mashed potatoes... Yeah, feeling that one!
      Lots of yes things in that list, glad Basement Cat is doing better with his favourite food.

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    2. Vet says he really is doing well! A recent bout of pancreatitis, which tracks with what we observed, but we've done the right things in treating it and it seems to be resolving. For 18, he's in good shape. Only the good die young, at least if you're a cat in our house.

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  3. I am in the kitchen panicking because something hasn't worked out and I don't know how to fix it. Or everything is ready, but I'm exhausted and wondering why I decided to host a dinner party when all I want to do is collapse in front of Netflix....

    Last week:
    Love the goals!
    spot whales - Sadly not, whale watching was cancelled because it was too windy, and since we'd booked for our last day, we couldn't do a different trip. But we did everything else we planned to.
    - figure out Icelandic supermarkets - YES - once we located an actual supermarket that was open (note to self: never arrive anywhere on Sunday). Then we wandered round gasping at the prices - it was a case of 'yes, that really is the exchange rate, and how does anyone pay that much for a pepper???'.
    - other holiday activities as desired/possible - snorkelling between tectonic plates, lots of waterfalls, black sand, a spa afternoon at the Blue Lagoon, hiking on a glacier, geysers. I can definitely recommend Iceland. Scenery like nowhere else, Reykjavik is very pretty and easy to walk around, everyone speaks perfect English and is super friendly and helpful. I even thought, once we were outside the city, that driving there wouldn't be too bad...

    This week:
    I have an unexpected child-free nine days coming up, as my kids are off to Luxembourg tomorrow to keep their cousin company when his parents go back to work. So lots of time to myself for the first time in years - I cannot remember the last time I had more than a day.
    1. Organise trip for kids.
    2. Post-holiday email catch-up.
    3. Start reading one of the two PhDs I am examining in the autumn.
    4. Start some reading for chapter for second edited volume.
    5. House/life admin: pay car tax, physio appointment.
    6. Self-care/fun: meet up with old friend for the day, enjoy kid-free time!

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    1. That sounds like a marvelous trip! You really packed a lot in. I hope your kids have fun with their cousin, and that you take full advantage of the kid-free time to do some fun things you wouldn't do with them, as well as to work on things that are easier done with a quieter house.

      Let's say some very accomplished and kind guest arrives early and helps you out with the thing you don't know how to fix!

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    2. Iceland sounds absolutely amazing! What a wonderful trip, so glad that worked well.
      Enjoy the time to yourself and make sure to use it for things that are fun and restorative and satisfying.

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    3. Sounds like a great trip, even without the whale watching. And I hope you enjoy kid-free days, maybe eating in front of the telly, or just not worrying about meals...

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    4. That sounds fantastic--both the trip and the 9 free days (although I'm sure you'll miss the kids, too, of course). And I'm right there with you on deciding that I'd rather collapse with Netflix than host anything....

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  4. I am quite definitely still getting myself ready--that always seems to be the way, even though I get ready pretty quickly! My 8 years in the Midwest were a challenge, since people there seem to show up early for everything.

    Last week--I did not get much done.
    1. Teaching prep: Read 2 articles that I may assign for upcoming course - READ ONE
    2. Fix basement closet door??? (I would have to do this today, and I'm not sure that I want to) - YES, except that I didn't have any good wood putty to replace the strike plate. Still, the door closes without the strike plate, so I'm counting this a win!
    3. Start on anniversary book (select pictures) - NO
    4. Read grad student's prospectus - NO

    This week: I am bracing myself for the new semester, and I have several meetings, unfortunately.
    1. Read grad student's prospectus
    2. Read other article to decide whether I want to teach it
    3. Do some "for real" course prep (e.g. setting up some of the ViLE)
    4. Make the anniversary book! Our anniversary is Friday!
    5. Return to in-earnest exercise.... I took the week off from work-outs, which made me realize just how badly my body/mind/spirit need exercise. I am *crabby* (and *sleepy*) when I'm too sedentary! However, the break did my back good, I must admit.

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    1. Backs are so picky! That's what I'm doing PT for, and it's a balancing act between exercising enough to keep the rest of me happy and resting enough to let the back calm down. I hope yours continues to do better. Good luck with the meetings!

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    2. Good luck with back. It is tricky to balance what different body parts need... Brain should have first dibs but other parts sometimes veto that!

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  5. Definitely scrapping the recipe for that fancy-ass thing I was going to make and don’t even remember what it was… Swapping all that for absolute basic BBQ – we’re doing salmon, zucchini, peppers, asparagus, pineapples, just-off-the-tree-peaches (oh yes, desert, they bbq perfectly!) and there is a cooler full of fizzy drinks of all stripes. And a giant pile of cheese of course… Note what all those things have in common? They need zero prep except a quick seasoning, and we’re good to go. I do not have the bandwidth for putting more than two ingredients together, so here we are…

    My borrowed committee that was supposed to be seat-warming only and turned out to be insane is finishing up, I will go back to being regular member but I do have to finish up all the stuff that came my way, some of it even ended well… Dilemma of the week, I am trying to decide whether to go for promotion, if I do everything is due by beginning of next month. That was the original plan for July, but then I turned into emergency department head and will be that for the foreseeable future, so things are complicated, and I am not sure I can manage the volume of work required for that application. If my field school gets cancelled for fires I might, but I am NOT wishing for that at all! Argh… New music is fun though!

    Last week’s goals
    Work on student projects ONGOING
    Send away samples SOME
    Finish depressingly overdue review NOT QUITE
    Write conference abstract DONE
    Write one section of new paper DID ONE SMALL SECTION

    This week’s goals
    Next major document from giant meetings
    Finish up pile of work from committee
    Decide on promotion, if yes, start writing
    Work on student projects
    Send away rest of samples
    Finish really depressingly overdue review
    Write one section of new paper
    Keep learning new music

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    1. The thing about promotion materials is that it is a task that STAYS DONE and the sooner you do it, the less you have to do, as well as getting more money sooner. And having been on the college-level committee that deals with promotions, your write-up does not have to be beautiful and perfect, just competent and plausible. You probably already have stuff you can tweak for the teaching and research narratives (nobody is going to look at your tenure packet to see if it is just the same). Probably struggling with Acrobat to make all the PDFs merge properly will be worse than the writing part.

      And yay for all the chipping away you have done! Enjoy the new music!

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    2. Oh dear, "speaking as one who has been on the committee, I think your write-up . . ." The write-up has not been on the committee! I should go to bed.

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    3. Seconding DEH's advice here!!

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    4. You are both right, it will stay done... But we just got a new CA that might change big part of how the process works, so I will talk to my Dean and find out what the story is... Either way, I am close enough to starting my job here that a great deal of my application package is very relevant, it got me hired as senior associate so it is pretty decent, can start with that.

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  6. Fortunately, the one thing widowhood has taught me is simplicity when I have a party, so everything (usually) is done in advance, unless it's a friend who sits in the kitchen while I make one of my easy pastas. But I may take too long of a nap, so the table may not be set... It's all good. I no longer have anyone to a party I want to impress. They just get me. (Getting older is definitely good for this.)

    How I did last week:
    1. Catch up with all the admin stuff YES
    2. See if I can sketch the article I want to write NOT REALLY
    3. As soon as I get anything from my editor, go into revision mode. NOTHING (PROMISED THIS WEEK)
    4. See friends YES
    5. Prepare to leave... pack, organize, etc. YES

    Well, I had real trouble focusing because I kept expecting something from my editor, and he didn't tell me until Friday that I wasn't getting it till later this week. But I decided to do some busywork admin stuff in advance, so trying to be zen.

    And I made it home, but (a) my original (direct) flight was cancelled the night before, so I was rerouted through Dame Eleanor's local airport and (b) my second plane was delayed by 3 1/2 hours after they decided they had to get a new plane for us, so from the time I left home to the time I walked into my brother;s house was 24 hours. I am still recovering.

    Goals for this week:
    1. Get over jet lag
    2. Do as much admin stuff today and tomorrow so I can pivot to Famous Author when it arrives.
    3. Get going on next round of revisions, which I've been promised are not huge
    4. Get back into exercise regime
    5. Finish organizing the odd stuff that I haven't put away yet
    6. Draft syllabi. (I got as far last week as putting my classes into my calendar.)
    6. See friends, enjoy myself.

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    1. Oh, my, how miserable! One of the things I hate about the post-9/11 world is that it's no longer possible to go hang out with a friend passing through at their gate at the airport; that used to be a good way to make use of living near my local airport, especially when people had unexpected delays. I hope you can take some time to recover properly.

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    2. Love the sentiment of not having people for parties if they need to bebimpressed! Everyone invited to yours already thinks you are awesome! A most excellent rule...

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  7. "I no longer have anyone to a party I want to impress." A new mantra!

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    1. (This is obviously supposed to be in reply to Susan's post.)

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    2. Putting it on its own makes it that much more memorable!

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    3. It's worth remembering that I'm also a recovering "faculty wife" from an elite institution that did NOT employ me. Now, if you are upset at hanging out in the kitchen with me, life is too short!

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    4. And kitchen hangouts are empirically superior to most other kinds! So there!!

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