Hello everyone!
We’ve reached the inevitable end of the
session! It kind of flew by as many of them do… Thank you for joining us here and
chatting, and for the empathy, encouragement, commiseration, and joy you’ve
shares. Thanks for humouring me with the intentions, I enjoyed that! Thank you
for sustaining this community, it is a lovely little corner of the interwebz
and I love that you keep coming back!
Picture this week is of local peaches and strawberries,
none of which are from anywhere near my garden… I am a terrible gardener who
loves the idea of gardening… The total sum of the fruit/vegetable things that
came out of the garden this year is as follows: one green pepper (my daughter it);
very sparse crop of sour cherries (a big fat happy raccoon ate those, we caught
her in the tree a few nights in a row, she just looked at us and I’m pretty
sure flipped off the cats who were staring…); zero raspberries (not sure who
ate those but maybe next year?); and four pods of sweet peas (I thought of
eating them but then picked them too late so now they are seeds I guess?)… But,
I did enjoy the process most of the time, so it was worth it. Maybe that is the
lesson…
So, on to enjoying our proverbial harvest we
planned at the beginning of the year with our goals and intentions!
Last week’s goals
below:
DEH
-
get back into a routine (for exercise; morning stuff; evening winding down)
- finish the most recently requested set of revisions to W essay & send it
off
- one hour each reading for next project and working on M festschrift essay
- probably more editorial stuff b/c co-editor has gone AWOL again
- write to some friends
JaneB
SELF-CARE:
* 4x20 intentional movement, 3 x making, 2 x small things with people, reading
every day
* update the tasting menu and do at least one thing a day
* take the time to make nice attractive meals that are not just "the
usual" a couple of days
HOME AND ENVIRONMENT:
* 75% of chores
* make more progress on the Living Room Project
* do all the personal finance tasks on the summer list
TEACHING AND ADMIN:
* finalise comments on the timetable release (due this Friday so can't wait til
next week)
* one high speed email triage (some missing resits, ongoing student support
stuff)
* set up new teaching bullet journal/daily notebook (fun because it involves
nice things like washi tape and writing in all the headings in nice writing,
NOT working!)
RESEARCH: nothing
Together those things should take no more than 2 hours
Julie
1.
Catch up on emails - lot of teaching prep, urggh.
2. Start on revisions to one article.
3. Try to spend some time on Big Article: get back into writing mode.
4. Teaching prep: write short introductory paragraph for first-year module, set
up meeting for first week of September, chase difficult colleagues.
5. House/life admin: post-holiday laundry, financial stuff, thank you gift for
friends whose house we borrowed in Toronto, nephew's birthday present, take son
for MRI scan (not serious, physio is just trying to figure out why he has shin
pain).
6. Self-care/fun: get back to running, be outside in the garden as much as
possible, read, carry on the cross stitch I started on holiday.
heu
mihi
Beach
goals!
Susan
1.
Look at manuscripts that might be helpful
2. Start thinking through plenary talk in November
3. Logistics for trip to archive next week
4. Book travel and hotels for research trip at end of month.
5. Enjoy time with friends and colleagues
6. Keep reading
Daisy
Work on dossier and make actual progress
New student chapters
Major grant task
Make a term schedule and plan for research and writing
SESSION GOALS
DEH
Intention: divide and conquer!
Complete
2 conference papers and 1 Festschrift essay,
Revise
2 syllabuses for fall classes
Stay
in shape
Go
on 3 trips with my husband
Take
care of necessary house and personal maintenance
Deal
with special-issue editing tasks
Urgently
finish way overdue essay
Daisy
Intention: breathe
One
new first-author paper ready to submit
One student paper ready to submit
Get reasonable start on new project
Help student finish up thesis work
Regular exercise, and some kayaking
Trip with kid
ADDED GOAL do promotion dossier for full
JaneB
Intention: life and work kintsugi
SELF-CARE:
regular intentional movement, making, doing small things with other people and
reading for pleasure. I want to do all these things an appropriate number of
times a week. I also want to explore a wider range of kinds of making over the
summer, and I have an aim of having a more habitual practice in all these areas
by the time we start back with students.
HOME AND ENVIRONMENT: regular chore habits, plus working on the living room
(shelf-box-sofa project), working on clothing storage/management, and working
on my finances.
TEACHING
AND ADMIN: it is summer, but...
* I need to rewrite my final year honours module to fit into a different
trimester (and fit around the honours project drama - modern students canNOT
seem to work on anything else around the few weeks before the project is due,
and I'm leaning into that because there's no point fighting it any more)
* I have a lot of minor tweaks to do to my other teaching (spread across four
modules)
* I WANT to work through the practicals from another colleagues modules - they
teach GIS mapping, and I want to be up to date on how they are teaching it so
that I can better support my students (and know what I can expect from them so
push them to deliver on it in assignments - most assignments should have a map
included, and this is one of the tools we can ask them to use).
* I'm on a "task and finish" group (i.e. co-producing a report for
Faculty) which might or might not involve a lot of work
* There will be extra work around trying to show we are taking the current
recruitment crisis seriously (so much drama and stress and other people not so
much dropping balls as yeeting them into orbit or dropping them into random
abysses), but I don't know what will be my part. I'll roll that in with getting
settled in to my new admin role
* I also want to get one of my MSc by Research students completely done (and
working on publishing her work) and the other much closer to submission than
they are now
RESEARCH:
As ever, balls in the air!
* contribute to governmental advice reports
* keep up contributions to Big Project (which is doing my head in because, too
many people and too little clarity and organisation)
* progress at least three writing projects from a list substantially
Julie
Intention: be more
focused
1.
Research/writing
i) Finish 30,000 word chapter asap and get irritating editor off my back. (I
have kept to deadlines, he keeps deciding I need to add stuff.)
ii) Have a full draft of Big Article for people to read and comment on. This is
top priority.
iii) Make some progress on a grant application, but this is lowest priority.
2. Teaching & teaching-related
i) Preparation for new team-taught module next year.
ii) Sign off final corrections on a PhD.
iii) Meetings with students about final-year dissertations for next year.
3. Life admin/house
i) Finalise summer travel
ii) Get a standing desk & proper adjustable chair.
iii) New chair for reading corner in spare room.
iv) Persuade kids to declutter their rooms?
v) Clear more garage space?
4. Self-care/fun
i) Exercise: run at least 3 x week when at home, find weights and/or pilates
class
ii) Travel and meet ups with friends.
iii) Read, preferably in garden.
iv) Journal, also preferably in garden.
v) More creative stuff
Heu mihi
1.
Writing for fun: Get to a point with a (creative?) project where it will be
easy-ish to sustain going into the school year. In an ideal world, this would
mean about 40k of a messy draft, but I'm not fixing a number on it.
2. New research: Read some primary sources to find another topic for a case
study. (I have an idea for a very different kind of book that I might enjoy
working on.)
3. Existing research: Complete and submit festschrift, which includes writing
the introduction.
4. Home: Annual deep cleaning stuff (garage, windows), clean out computer
files, get patch of ceiling fixed, scrub or otherwise deal with the stupid
popcorn finish on the bathroom ceiling
5. Crafts: Finish knitting shawl, start sweater, anniversary book, new journal?
6. Italian: Make my way through a substantial part of this rather more
difficult (and very long) novel that I've started
7. Habits: Add some actual sitting, maintain exercise
8. TLQ: Check in on Mondays at least 75% of the time!
Susan
Intention: welcome new adventures
Teaching and admin:
1. Finish my time as graduate chair without leaving too many unfinished tasks
Research:
2. I am expecting to spend much of the summer dealing with copyedits of Big
collaboration (a collection of 30 essays on my historical period I am
coediting). We have been told that we'll start getting copyedits in early June.
3. Keep up with research on Rest of My Life project, especially preparing for
the keynote I'm giving at a major conference in November
Have a marvelous few weeks before term starts and we gather for the next
iteration! Thank you to Dame Eleanor for offering to host, I got a sneak
preview of the planned theme and I’m very much looking forward to the creative
possibilities in there!
