Hello everyone, I hope you had a decent and productive week.
If anyone didn't see in last week's comments, Elizabeth Anne Mitchell has got tenure approval! Congratulations! :-)
Last week we talked about how we keep track of what we need to do, and Good Enough Woman said she'd like to know more about how people manage their bibliographies (in my case - badly and reluctantly!), which led to me wondering about differences between different scholarly traditions - research journals and lab books probably aren't that different, but when I was a PhD student, you could spot a historian or classicist miles away by their plastic carrier bags full of note-cards, and there was much debate between scientists about what exactly went into a lab book as opposed to other systems. So, for this week's topic, let's talk about how to keep track of work in progess, whether that's readings or thoughts or numbers or sketches.
Last week's roll call:
allan wilson (carried over from week 1)
- finish draft and send back to MR
- begin revisions on CR
- resubmit W
- sort out data for SS.
Contingent
Cassandra
- Do detailed planning (group and individual) for grant project; hold meeting; follow up
- At least begin more detailed planning of whole summer
- Some exercise/movement (weights, walk, or gardening) each day
- Take at least one day off, and plan for both regular and longer break(s)
- Follow up/communicate w/ various friends and family
- Make some small steps toward decreasing household chaos
Daisy
- TRQ presentation
- Work on hideous paper to send to ex-supervisor before I go to the field in three weeks.
- Make all cat-sitting, medical, and travel bookings for rest of summer
- Do left-over accounting
Dame Eleanor Hull
- 2 hours gardening, stock up on cat food, and make a list, because those are already done. %-)
- Healthy Schedule
- Translation, Revision, Administrivia daily for 3-4 days
- House/Life Stuff on 4 days
- Talk to Sir John about when to go full-bore on readying the house for sale.
Earnest English
- Health: try not to eat ice cream and snack every night; eat good food regularly; get sleep; baby injury; be good to self. Moderate emotions at work because overwhelm will stress me out and make my health terrible.
- Scholarship: can I still get 3x done this week? I'm going to try and then re-evaluate this goal next week. Sabbatical application? Should I just give up on that until Summer, which would throw back everything but might be the most reasonable thing to do in light of everything? Again, I'll re-evaluate these goals next week.
- Farmstead project: must take good care of new animals (ducklings and chicks: ohmigod -- SO CUTE!) and start three new seeds. Keep watering outside (when needed -- it's snowing today!). Keep watering seedlings in basement. (This whole category has revved up because it's spring and there's no way around it. Focusing on this makes it hard to focus on SFP. Honestly, this is more important in terms of family goals.)
- Family: keep up on Spirited's therapy. Call Piano teacher and leave message on her VM about summer plans. Spend some time with family. Make clear boundaries about grading so I can get grading done without being a total bitch to family out of stress.
- Work planning: So much grading. I have to keep on a good clip and follow my own plans. (Worked Sat and Sun morning - so far so good.) Must get Service 1 distribution going this week. Must get Service 2 scheduled this week.
Elizabeth Anne
Mitchell
- Begin packing the dishes--1 hour x 4.
- Continue attacking clutter at work--½ hour x 5
- Catch up on course--2 hours x 5. Must do this!!
- Pierpont article--outline ½ hour x 5.
- Prudence book--footnotes ½ hour x 5.
- Walk--½ hour x 2.
Good Enough Woman
- Finish grading in-hand papers by Monday afternoon (or night).
- Grade Tuesday finals on Tuesday (okay to leave 5-6 research papers for Wednesday morning if necessary).
- Grade Wednesday finals and any other stray things on Wednesday.
- Tidy school office on Thursday morning.
- Finish all grading by Friday at noon.
- Help daughter sew dress. Be patient while I do this. Accept imperfections and help her to do the same. (Breakdown: Pin and cut on Monday night, sew the body on Tuesday, sew the sleeves on Thursday, add the eyelet on the weekend when daughter is home from camping).
Heu mihi – on
vacation
Humming42
- Organize articles in Bookmarks for RBP
- Type notes for Awesome Russian Author for RBP
- Read another 50 pages for Mars
- Open and read through existing RPB outlines (light touch, not too scary)
JaneB
- 500 words on Special Issue paper which needs a nickname
- 3 gym visits
- 3 decluttering 15 minutes
- meet with PDF about plans for the simulations
Karen
- find,read and note-take one SoTL paper
- 2 x exercise
- set defined tasks and pre-agreed computer shutdown times for evenings.
KJHaxton
- walk to or from work twice
- edit acronym report
- marking
Matilda
- Read materials for Section 2 of Chapter 2, and make a plan of revision.
- Re-read the book for the review and revise the outline.
- Writing exercise 1 of Goodson’s revised book.
- 5 minute short exercise three times a day.
Susan
- Finish book orders
- Write response to readers reports
- Begin revisions on Chap 1.
Waffles
- Outline steps and timeline for F32 application
- Finish draft of relat manuscript
- Fix references in specific aims
- Touch base with colleague about social support and other papers/analyses
- Update LOR for summer institute
- Finish other sections of summer institute application
- Review interview questions
- Work on measures
Congratulations to EAM!
ReplyDeleteHow'd I do?
2 hours gardening, stock up on cat food, and make a list, because those are already done. (Excellent! Done!)
Healthy Schedule (Mostly: good about getting up early, not so good on exercising early)
Translation, Revision, Administrivia daily for 3-4 days (Trans, not at all; Revision, 3 days and 4000 words; Administrivia, 2 days: overall, well done)
House/Life Stuff on 4 days (3 days, well done)
Talk to Sir John about when to go full-bore on readying the house for sale. (Not yet done, though Friday isn't over in my time zone. But this depends in part on some travel that I have just booked, so I've done one thing related to this talk.)
Discussion: as I said chez moi, I've been down the rabbit hole of writing, so that has taken my attention. Progress is good. I've done the most urgent administrative tasks. On the House front, I'm doing the fun things (like buying flowering plants to go in assorted places, though I've not yet got them in the ground) rather than the duller ones like finishing sorting out the basement and taking things to charity shops.
Goals for the next week:
Talk to Sir John about selling the house.
Keep 9-1 office hours MWTh.
Finish Revision #1.
2-3 hours' worth of Administrivia, personal and professional.
Plant the plants.
Four hours basement sorting.
Get back to translating.
Topic: I keep track of work in progress via notes in my research journal (handwritten, paper), musings in my personal journal (typed, electronic storage), and a spreadsheet (Excel) where I enter words written, lines translated, pages edited, pages read. The research journal is for things like where I stopped and what I plan to do next, what keywords I used in a bibliography search, which electronic folder has the file, and what the file name is. The personal journal is for all kinds of things, but I sometimes find myself thinking through a writing or research problem there. The spreadsheet is to assure myself that Progress is Progressing---or to observe that it is not, or is Progressing on one project but another has fallen by the wayside. Curiously, this year February was very productive, whereas March and April each had a couple of stretches of days with no work goals met. This was partly due to taxes and cat drama. I'm hoping for more long strings of days with Goals Met now.
I like the sound of the tracking (I'm a scientist, I luuuurve data), but would find it hard to do, as I struggle to quantify a lot of things that take time and are ultimately writing-productive. Something to think about!
DeleteHoping for a lot of productive days to come!
Hi all,
ReplyDeleteA somewhat disastrous beginning over here. A first for me- complete writers block for two weeks. A series of deeply emotionally stressful events left me unable to expend any creative energy at all on writing. I am now beginning to resurface, and hopefully my mojo will return soon. Working on positivity and connectance!
Past goals:
1) finish draft and send back to MR - NO.
2) begin revisions on CR -had meeting with co-author prior to the storm to divvy up what we will do, but nothing achieved since
• resubmit W - NO
•sort out data for SS - good progress here! Given that I couldn't write, I spent my time searching for, entering and checking data. Essentially mindless task perfectly to the circumstances.
And, extra benefit, my exercise is cracking along as it is the only thing keeping me sane currently.
Topic: I track progress in immediate ways with postit notes, and doing quick reviews of progress at wider intervals for each project, checking against initial goals. I used to do monthly summaries of major tasks so I could see what I had been doing, and also have spredsheets, but have abandoned these at the moment, probably because my current institution requires intense reporting from all staff (eg, hourly accounting of time usage, as well as inputting all and sundry outputs of any kind, from meetings to publications. Seriously).
Next week: slightly modified goals from week 1.
1) finish draft and send back to MR
2) resubmit W
3)exercise daily
allan wilson
AND congratulations Elizabeth Anne on tenure. Wonderful news!
DeleteThere's nothing like a batch of tedious, minimal brain pwer work where progress is measurable for getting through the bad patches, is there? And amazing how unappealling such work is otherwise!
DeleteEmpathy on the endless reporting - we are spared the hourly accounting most weeks (we all have to do 3-4 sample weeks a year, selected as 1-2 in teaching weeks, 1 in an exam week, 1-2 in a 'vacation' week without a major public holiday), but it's all converted to percentages before anyone looks at it. Hope things get better this week and writing mojo comes back in a good way!
I hope the next week will not be so horrible. I'm glad the data work and the exercise got you through your disastrous week.
DeleteAnd although the work tracking might provide interesting information, it sounds tedious, annoying, and insulting. My sympathies. It hasn't come to that yet where I am.
Well, of course emotionally stressful things affect your ability to write. I'm really sorry that you have emotional stress, but please be kind to yourself. It's a crazy world that this surprises us (and it does all of us.)
DeleteWhat Susan said! Writing, even scholarly writing, does draw on emotional resources to a greater degree than other kinds of work, and it's hard to do anything else when your attention is on emotionally stressful situations.
DeleteCongratulations, EAM! That's wonderful news!
ReplyDeleteTopic
I track my research in an informal Annotated Bib that I keep running for each project. I do the citation first and then I write out quotes I like (which is an invaluable thing to do -- I never know what an actual quote is saying as well as when I type or write it out myself) and write comments. In my most fabulous moments, I also force myself to write a bit after I've looked at a couple sources to help me synthesize my ideas across texts/sources. I have a strategy for turning these notes into an outline to make a merely-okay but still workable draft. The running annotated bib is something that one of my grad school mentors taught me, though I found that it's more difficult to manage an uber-annotated bib so I tend to make one for each project, still knowing I can go back into old ones as well.
Last Week
Health: try not to eat ice cream and snack every night; eat good food regularly; get sleep; baby injury; be good to self. Moderate emotions at work because overwhelm will stress me out and make my health terrible. OKAY ON THIS THOUGH ICE CREAM CONSUMPTION IS OUT OF CONTROL AND MUST SLOW DOWN.
Scholarship: can I still get 3x done this week? I'm going to try and then re-evaluate this goal next week. Sabbatical application? Should I just give up on that until Summer, which would throw back everything but might be the most reasonable thing to do in light of everything? Again, I'll re-evaluate these goals next week. HA HA. GOT NOTHING DONE. THESE AREN'T REASONABLE GOALS AT THE MOMENT.
Farmstead project: must take good care of new animals (ducklings and chicks: ohmigod -- SO CUTE!) and start three new seeds. Keep watering outside (when needed -- it's snowing today!). Keep watering seedlings in basement. (This whole category has revved up because it's spring and there's no way around it. Focusing on this makes it hard to focus on SFP. Honestly, this is more important in terms of family goals.) HAVEN'T DONE THE THREE SEEDS, BUT LOTS OF FOCUS ON THIS DURING THE WEEK.
Family: keep up on Spirited's therapy. Call Piano teacher and leave message on her VM about summer plans. Spend some time with family. Make clear boundaries about grading so I can get grading done without being a total bitch to family out of stress. STILL HAVEN'T CALLED PIANO TEACHER, THOUGH I'VE BEEN DOING OKAY WITH FAMILY TIME. KEEP IT UP.
Work planning: So much grading. I have to keep on a good clip and follow my own plans. (Worked Sat and Sun morning - so far so good.) Must get Service 1 distribution going this week. Must get Service 2 scheduled this week. SERVICE 1 AND 2 NOT DONE. HAVE TO WORK AGAIN THIS WEEKEND BUT REFUSE TO RUIN FAMILY AND FARMSTEAD PROJECTS OVER IT.
Sounds like a pretty balanced week, despite all the STUFF - cute animals and baby plants are incredibly cheering, aren't they?
DeleteThe annotated bibliography sounds like a really sensible method for a reading-based study, one to tuck away for possible later use!
The ducklings and chicks sound wonderful. I, too, need to get back to my garden (literally, in my case, since it's a 25-minute drive away). It's been raining a great deal here, and, though that's a good excuse for not having gotten much done, I suspect the weeds are getting out of control.
DeleteI had one false start at an annotated bib during my thesis-writing process, and it's a major mistake that I did not keep it up. I knew better, too, but now, as I approach the end and trying to think back to sources I read more than five years ago (esp. while writing the intro), I realize the magnitude of my neglect.
DeleteCongrats on this week's attention to farmstead and family.
The annotated bib process you describe is similar to my way of typing up quotes and then writing my comments along with them. I've spent way too much time doing this for RBP and it's time to get started revising the outline.
DeleteAnalysis
ReplyDeleteToo much work. Low morale. I have little patience for stupid ego issues of Idiots and persistent problems of Institution to deny us decent parking, decent temperature of classrooms, and a decent workload. Want them all to take a flying leap. I want to be at home with my husband, son, neglected cat and chickens, and much loved ducklings. That is all.
This Week
Health: Try to be lovely to self. Watch movies and shows but do leg lifts or crunches while watching. Try not to eat quite so much ice cream.
Scholarship: forget about this for the duration. I have too much grading to think about writing, research, or sabbatical applications. Enough said.
Farmstead project: take care of animals, take care of plants, try to plant three new seeds.
Family: keep up on Spirited's therapy. Call Piano teacher and leave message on her VM about summer plans. Spend some time with family. Clearly communicate about workload without becoming histrionic or stressed or bitchy.
Work planning: So.much.muchness. Must grade this weekend without destroying family time or sleep. Must continue grading at a decent clip without making myself sick. Am so behind and pissed about impossibility of it all.
I figured out that there is less than a month until freedom. (That is, this time next month, I will still be grading, but classes will be over.) I.CAN'T.WAIT!
Have a great week everyone! And let's read The Slow Professor!
"Too much work. Low morale. I have little patience for stupid ego issues of Idiots and persistent problems of Institution to deny us decent parking, decent temperature of classrooms, and a decent workload. Want them all to take a flying leap. I want to be at home with my husband, son, neglected cat and chickens, and much loved ducklings. That is all."
DeleteSounds perfectly reasonable to me!! Do you have/want access tot his blog for slow professor reading, or over at your place and we can link from here? Either way, really looking forward to it - I need a Slow Life Without Guilt, and am not doing a good job at that alone!
I, too, continue to be up for a Slow Professor discussion (sounds interesting, and fits in well with my resolution to read more long-form stuff).
DeleteI'm thinking maybe doing it over at my place, since I barely use my blog for anything terribly interesting anyway, but maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture and there are good reasons to do it over here. Any thoughts or preferences? Either way is great! I'm looking forward to it!
Delete"Try to be lovely to self" is this week's banner slogan/bumper sticker for me. Most excellent sentiment, and may all who endeavor succeed.
DeleteI need to buy the Slow Professor. . . but will follow where teh discussion goes.
DeleteI echo the congratulations to EAM; woo-hoo, well done!
ReplyDeleteTopic: I don't think I have any one workable system, unless you count stacking physical copies of books and articles bristling with post-its all around me when working on a project. That actually hasn't worked too badly in the past, even for the diss (perhaps because I don't always engage as much as I should with the scholarly conversation, and thus have comparatively few secondary sources), but I will have to come up with a better system before I try writing a book. So I'll come back and read what others do, and add this to my (mental) "stuff to think about as I try to move back toward writing and research" list.
Goals for last week:
1. Do detailed planning (group and individual) for grant project; hold meeting; follow up
2. At least begin more detailed planning of whole summer
3. Some exercise/movement (weights, walk, or gardening) each day
4. Take at least one day off, and plan for both regular and longer break(s)
5. Follow up/communicate w/ various friends and family
6. Make some small steps toward decreasing household chaos
Accomplished: pretty good progress on planning (both detailed and preliminary -- so, 1, 2, and the 2nd half of 4), less success on engaging in actual self-care activities (#3 exercise and #4 taking a day off -- didn't do either), some reconnecting with friends (#5) (though also some misses, not all of my making; we all have complicated lives), some very minor progress on household chaos (#6; I think I can at least say it didn't get worse this week).
Analysis: it's going to be a somewhat slow and incomplete transition from school mode this summer, since I've got the ongoing grant project, and will be teaching in July. I spent about half my time feeling depressed/stressed about how little truly free time I have available and how many things I have to do and half my time feeling that I'm on track to set reasonable goals and find a reasonable balance between work and rejuvenation of various sorts. I have at least gotten the grant project to a point where I'm beginning to get a sense of when I can ignore it for a while while others do their thing (because I've provided enough guidance/structure for that to be possible; it *is* truly a group project, but the group is just large enough that some leadership is necessary). I also took on another task this coming week (a brief outside-assessor gig) that may or may not turn out to be worth the time (and financial paperwork! ugh! briefly becoming an employee of another U.S. state is incredibly involved, up to and including finding a notary to whom to show my passport to verify my eligibility to work), but there's a reasonably generous stipend involved (and all that paperwork at least means that, unlike with an independent-contractor gig, the university for which I'm working will pay half the social security tax), and it will be interesting/good experience/a good addition to my c.v. However, when that is over, I'm very much looking forward to an extra-long Memorial Day weekend (which probably means I'll check in here a bit late -- Tuesdayish).
So, goals for next week:
Delete1. Work in some sort of exercise regularly, especially during time off.
2. Take time off Thurs.-Mon.
3. Continue planning for summer (and finding a balance between planning and then disappointing myself by deviating from plan and playing it by ear week by week), knowing that more complete planning, whatever form it takes, will come after long weekend (so, the week after this coming one)
4. Continue working on contact with friends/family
5. Work on chaos reduction if I feel like it over break; otherwise leave it 'til afterward and just read, eat, sleep, and exercise.
And commenting above reminded me:
Delete6. Stay mostly off internet and read some long-form stuff (mostly leisure reading at this point)
Your tracking system is like mine! *dark archives*
Delete"it's going to be a somewhat slow and incomplete transition from school mode this summer" - sympathy! That can be very frustrating, can't it? Makes it hard to relax, yet easy to procrastinate.
DeleteHope you enjoy the long form reading this coming week!
Wishing you some open, empty space and time for yourself this week.
Delete"Stacking physical copies of books and articles bristling with post-its all around me when working on a project." I wind up building myself a fort when I'm writing hard, as books stack up all around me, on every surface, especially the floor.
DeleteCongratulations EAM!
ReplyDelete(And worth commenting on for the cute, if not in the same league of achievement, congratulations Earnest English on the ducklings!)
I really need a better system for tracking bibliographies - I used Endnote and paper notebooks during y PhD, but a couple of computers later (and however many new versions of Endnote) I've not kept it up. So now I just have ad hoc folders on the current computer and papernotebooks. I'll be interested to see what other people do.
This week:
find,read and note-take one SoTL paper - No
2 x exercise - Yes (gym and swim)
set defined tasks and pre-agreed computer shutdown times for evenings - reasonably good with this, at least in the sense of giving up and leaving work till later.
This week will be mostly marking and developing content for my online winter unit. But I have a writing retreat (one day) coming up the following week so it would be good to build some momentum towards that. So:
1. Exercise x 3 (gym, swim, yoga)
2. 1 hour of finding SoTL readings to prep for writers retreat.
3. Reward marking progress with moving/stretching not chocolate.
The writing retreat sounds good, even if the online winter unit is looming... and well done for leaving the computer in the evening, that can be very hard!
DeleteTopic:
ReplyDeleteDuring my PhD process, I have not used EndNote or any similar system. I never wanted to deal with the learning curve. Unfortunately, I also haven't used spreadsheets or a comprehensive annotated bibliography. Instead, I have lots and lots of Moleskins, what I call my "dark archives" because they are not easily searched. However, I have found value in flipping back through them--even those that go back 6-7 years--to mine for notes and quotes and ideas. I just wish I'd kept better an annotated bib. This is why I've wondering if I should get going with Endnote or something before/as I finish up.
Last week's goals:
1)Finish grading in-hand papers by Monday afternoon (or night).
2)Grade Tuesday finals on Tuesday (okay to leave 5-6 research papers for 3)Wednesday morning if necessary).
4)Grade Wednesday finals and any other stray things on Wednesday.
5)Tidy school office on Thursday morning.
6)Finish all grading by Friday at noon.
7) Help daughter sew dress. Be patient while I do this. Accept imperfections and help her to do the same. (Breakdown: Pin and cut on Monday night, sew the body on Tuesday, sew the sleeves on Thursday, add the eyelet on the weekend when daughter is home from camping).
Accomplished: Well, I did pretty much all the things, just in a slightly different order. As of Saturday at 1:00 pm, grading was finished (I had put some of it off in order to help daughter with sewing and talent show rehearsal). Office is tidy. Dress pattern called for a different order of things than I planned above, but progress is good and there has been no stress so far--all good juju.
In addition, my husband took the kids camping last night, so I've been working on a chapter revision.
Analysis: The upcoming weeks will be interesting as I balance family and intense PhD work. I haven't decided how much I will try to address personal health other than "get up to move around every now and then."
This week involves several appointment for the kids and me, some mid-day school performances, and a school open house. Although I will try to get a lot of PhD work done, I cannot completely disappear.
Goals:
1) Finish revision of Chapter 1
2) Finish text revision of Chapter 2 (perhaps leaving some footnote work for next week).
3) Read 200 pages of primary text.
4) Help daughter finish dress by Tuesday night. Attend school performances, etc.
5) Exercise 3x
Yay for doing all the things that matter!
DeleteI never really set up a system during my PhD which is partly why I don't really have one now... not sure I have it in me to set one up at this stage...
Thank you all for your congratulatory wishes! I greatly appreciate it, as there were no congratulations or announcement from my Dean, who did receive notification about it, and without an announcement, no one else knows about it.
ReplyDeleteTopic: I was one of those note-card-toting graduate students, and still tend to like paper, so I often write out my notes as I read. Like Earnest English, I tend to have a running annotated bibliography, which I used to keep in Word, but now tend to keep in Google docs, because I annotate widely and don’t want to fall into the rabbit hole of formatting until I absolutely have to do so. On my longstanding projects, I note titles that had promise, but turned out to be useless, because I have actually asked for things twice through Interlibrary Loan, only to find that I had already read it and found all the notes about my project minuscule or not at all germane. I note the disagreements and arguments I have with many of the sources, and also as noted by Earnest English, write out quotations I particularly liked (or disagreed with).
Last week’s goals:
Begin packing the dishes--1 hour x 4. Not at all
Continue attacking clutter at work--½ hour x 5. Exceeded goals here. 1 hour x 5
Catch up on course--2 hours x 5. Must do this!! 2 hours x 3.
Pierpont article--outline ½ hour x 5. No.
Prudence book--footnotes ½ hour x 5. No.
Walk--½ hour x 2. Exceeded goals here. ½ hour x 5.
Analysis:
We were starting to panic about having potential buyers troop through the house, so I spent the time I was going to pack dishes scrubbing counters and walls and getting cobwebs out of corners. I decided the idea of the house looking staged was not my problem, so I took down and carefully packed all our framed pictures. Now at almost the close of the weekend, we can manage to make the place look neat with a few hours notice.
The decluttering bug has extended to my cubicle at work, so I spent a lot of time shredding personnel documents and recycling less sensitive papers. I still have a pile of filing to do, but the place is looking neater, which helps my mood immensely.
The class at work continues to be a massive pain--I now have a group project to finish this next week, which will demand all my energy so as to keep from being the curmudgeon I am about such things.
Part of the decluttering uncovered my notes from when I gave a talk about Pierpont at Kalamazoo in 2014. I was very happy to find them, even though I have some cryptic notes from people talking to me after the paper that I can’t quite decipher. My mother had passed away two weeks before the presentation, so I did not give my best presentation, nor take the most coherent notes. Still, it is great to find the annotated presentation, as there was much I tweaked the night before. I did not get anything done on Prudence, but I plan to do so once I am shut of the course.
I did walk every day last week, which was very helpful for realigning my back after cleaning and packing. I don’t know how my grandmother scrubbed her floors every week at my age--I’d be in traction!
Next week’s goals:
Keep the house tidy and clean
File some papers at work. ½ hour x 5
Do the [expletive deleted] final project for the course.
If course allows, ½ hour x 5 on Pierpont or Prudence.
Walk ½ hour x 5
Again, thank you for being so supportive. I hope everyone has a lovely, productive week!
How inconsiderate of your Dean! I hope they announce it soon. And that you manage to channel your inner Project-Grouch into productive routes - I have much empathy! And although I KNOW what all the pedagogic research says, and what most of the students themselves say, I ALWAYS feel like a total meanie for setting group work...)
DeleteAnd I think finding the old presentation for Pierpont counts as working on it, so something else to add to the progress list!
Belated congratulations! This is a huge accomplishment, and I hope you feel really good about it!!!
DeleteBelated congratulations! I learned about one colleague's tenure when she posted on facebook. Our chair had not been told by the dean. Our current Dean would never announce these things, but our chair has (and we made a stink about chairs not getting the information).
DeleteYou could *tell* one person, and get them to announce!
Belated congratulations! I learned about one colleague's tenure when she posted on facebook. Our chair had not been told by the dean. Our current Dean would never announce these things, but our chair has (and we made a stink about chairs not getting the information).
DeleteYou could *tell* one person, and get them to announce!
Or show up at work with champagne, or at least sparkling cider, and/or cake, whatever the celebratory items of choice are, and announce "Cake/Cider for all, because I got tenure!" No one minds self-congratulations if they come with food.
DeleteAnd since it sounds like you're not getting the celebration you'd like IRL, here: virtual Veuve Cliquot for all those who like fizz, Martinelli's for anyone on the wagon, an artisanal beer if you must, petits fours that are almost to pretty to eat and taste as good as they look, and a big platter of JaneB's raspberry-chocolate brownies (non-allergenic and non-fattening). I'm also distributing party hats, confetti, and those little things that you blow into and they unroll a paper tongue (what are those called?). Everybody, we're celebrating Elizabeth Anne's tenure and every time she shows up, we blow the little thingies and drink to her! Monday party!
toO pretty . . . I can spell homonyms, really.
DeleteTWEEEEEEEET!
DeleteWell, that was a week. Work stuff and emotional processing and hayfever kind of took over, my sleep got messy, so everything else got rather neglected. plus ca change
ReplyDeletelast week's goals
500 words on Special Issue paper which needs a nickname yes
3 gym visits no gym visits, sigh
3 decluttering 15 minutes once
meet with PDF about plans for the simulations yes. Not a very satisfactory meeting, but we had it
analysis
End of term itis. marking. Knowing summer will be continually disrupted by meetings and changes, but NOT knowing any kind of time frame, and generally getting very stressed out about it, which is probably not the most useful reaction, but I was upset about other things too (see bloggy whining if curious). this week will be interesting, as there's a strike called, plus we have the End of Semester staff meeting (even though it's not really the end of semester at all) when In Theory Incoming will explain all sorts of important things (in practice, probably not, but...). Assume I'll be stressed, and plan accordingly.
goals for the week
1) 500 words on the special issue paper draft
2) gym at least twice
3) decluttering whilst on strike!
4) review summer calendar
5) make some sort of measurable progress on admin task before it becomes TRQ
The strike seems kind of scary to me! Hoping for less stress this week.
DeleteI take notes on the articles I read in my notebook. I use papers for mac, and also highlight relevant text. Papers then keeps all of those highlights under a little tab, so I can easily see the sections I thought were most important when I read it. When I'm organized, I re-type my notes into a word doc - making sure to put things in my own words, and then I can just pull those into what I'm writing. I haven't done that in a while, but it's super helpful (and more easily searchable).
ReplyDeleteIt looks like I did a decent job on my goals last week
Outline steps and timeline for F32 application - DONE
Finish draft of relat manuscript - NOT DONE, but that's because I'm trying a different analytic method and meeting with a stats person this week.
Fix references in specific aims - DONE
Touch base with colleague about social support and other papers/analyses - NOT DONE. I think I got replaced on this project, which I'm okay with because it is a super boring project, but it smarts a little because I was told they needed someone who was more knowledgeable with stats.
Update LOR for summer institute - DONE
Finish other sections of summer institute application - DONE (well, drafted - they need work still)
Review interview questions - DONE
Work on measures - DONE
Goals for the week:
1. Draft research strategy for F32
2. Draft sponsor's section for F32
3. Finish analyses for relat paper
4. LOI (due June 15, not critical)
5. Finish summer institute app
6. revise LOR to add in more about diss
7. revise stats in Science paper
Analysis: This week has been a rough one - my confidence has been super duper low. Yesterday morning, I burst into tears twice because I just felt so incompetent. Seeing that I made so much progress on my list really really helps. I also sent a revised results section to my mentor today, and her feedback was good and it was in better shape than I had thought. I'm meeting with my diss chair later this week, and I'm hoping to talk to her about an aspect of my diss defense that has been bothering me (long time mentor - who was on my committee - was the only one who didn't think it should pass - and she keeps telling people that, even at my defense celebration. I'm unclear why and what this means about her belief in my skills). I'm also meeting with postdoc mentor this week, and want to talk to her about the F32. I've been reading samples of others - and the applicants are all the best of the best. I'm not sure I stack up, and this is part of what has been affecting my confidence this week. I'm good at writing about my insecurities (particularly to relative strangers, like here!), but it is very hard for me to talk about them - and even harder to do so with mentors. But my productivity is suffering, so I need to try something different, and will risk talking with them about my confidence issues.
I'm happy to know that checking off the items on your list helps you see how productive you were, especially when you're having a hard week. A few people I know use both side of an open journal page each day: the to do list on the left, and the done list on the right. You can have a very productive day and not cross anything of the list, but documenting the other things you got done can be satisfying too, often when you have many plates in the air.
DeleteI like that idea.
DeleteI do a version of that and I love it, it really helps me regulate my feelings about how little I get done some weeks...
DeleteI have returned to the land of the living, and am slowly catching up with life.
ReplyDeleteSo: I have used multiple note taking systems over the years, and am now primarily using Zotero for bibliography, and for notes. When I start my new project, I think I will move either to Evernote or Word for note-taking, because Zotero does not have a way to search your notes for key words -- they have to be in a title or a tag, and I'm not always that organized when I'm taking notes, particularly in archives. (I'll do a some test runs with Evernote and see if I can make it work; otherwise I'll use Word.) I still have boxes of note cards from my dissertation, so. . .
I am now much less careful about taking notes on books and articles, and I'm trying to reform myself, but...
Goals for this week:
1. Finish book orders Done
2. Write response to readers reports Done -- will email tonight
3. Begin revisions on Chap 1. No
Analysis: well, it was a short week, and instead of chapter 1 I fiddled with the Preface, which will also need to be done by the end, so *nothing is wasted*. And one of the readers said something about it that sent me back to it. Also, even this work has helped me realize that this will be an emotional time - the book I'm finishing was started by my husband before his death, so this is almost a final burial.
The week ahead is a short week, as I leave at the crack of dawn on Thursday for a college reunion. I have two long flights, so I'll try to do some work then, but realistically, it's Monday-Wednesday.
1. Revise chapter 1 and 2. (The revisions are very minor, so I should be able to do this.
2. Start reading for chapter 3, which needs some interpretive work.
3. Keep going on the giant desk clearing exercise. (I'll work on some of it as soon as I finish writing this!)
4. Garden: deal with the field of weeds at the edge of the garden. Finish planting new creeping thyme. (The plants have to be watered daily, and if I'm out there and can do ten minutes of clean up, it will be great!
That sounds like a hard project to finish.
DeleteI hope you enjoy the gardening and can get lots of work done M-W. Fingers crossed for an empty seat next to you and the ability to get things done during the flights, too, if that helps! Or a good novel or tv/movie binge if you'd prefer.
Currently in a middle seat for a 3 1/2 hour flight. We all have to grin and bear it.
DeleteIt’s been a strange week, trying to adjust to have nothing TRQ and maintaining progress on TLQ things. I will be teaching and traveling early June, so the lethargy will give way to lots of busy.
ReplyDeleteLast week:
1 Organize articles in Bookmarks for RBP: Yes, it was tedious and awful, as many articles I had bookmarked were now 404
2 Type notes for Awesome Russian Author for RBP: Yes, and discovered I’d done half of this already
3 Read another 50 pages for Mars: Yes, and quite a bit more
4 Open and read through existing RPB outlines (light touch, not too scary): No, but it is time to start writing
I hesitate to notice that I am putting off writing, but I need to acknowledge that and come to some terms with that. There are many deadlines ahead! I don’t want to do rushed panicky writing when I really do have time to do good quality work.
Week ahead:
1 Write to Mercury editors for clarification
2 Read another 50 pages for Mars
3 Read parts 1-4 for Mars
4 Open and read through existing RPB outlines
5 Type up notes from two RBP books
And yes, JaneB, there will be a Venus project coming up soon. I don’t think summer will give me time to get to all of the planets though.
Transition periods can be awkward. Seems like you made good progress though and effectively took on some tasks despite the strangeness of the week.
DeleteI hope the writing starts to chug along even if it's slow, uphill going.
I'm definitely the little engine that could!
DeleteI keep everything for current projects in electronic form, specific files in cloud and also backed up regularly. I'm experimenting with tracking tasks and jobs in a spreadsheet too, there's too many things going on for my head to handle...
ReplyDeleteLast week's goals:
1)TRQ presentation DONE, WENT WELL
2) Work on hideous paper to send to ex-supervisor before I go to the field in three weeks. WORKED ON IT, STILL DISLIKE IT
3) Make all cat-sitting, medical, and travel bookings for rest of summer DONE
4) Do left-over accounting HALF DONE
This week's goals:
Today was a holiday, I'm therefore behind already! This week I have to concentrate on organizing things before starting field work in a few weeks.
1) Accounting
2) Data organization for local project
3) Data organization for far-away projects
4) Contact lab collaborators and arrange end of summer visit
So glad your presentation went well!
DeleteYour tracking system sounds very organized, proper, and grown up. I'm envious.
Good luck with the rest of the week!
I so appreciate your honesty about hideous paper, and the all caps format so well suits your comment.
ReplyDeleteHello, everyone, late checking - in,
ReplyDeleteTopic:
I usually record what and how I am working on my project in my journal, without special format. The journal is the common notebook I use for everything - my daily plan, research plan, children’s projects and others. I have tried writing log using Excel file or digital journals, but I have found I like paper and pen, maybe because I like making notes with lots of lines, arrows, circles, and other graphics, which is difficult to do on PC, for me, at least.
Last goals:
1) Read materials for Section 2 of Chapter 2, and make a plan of revision. - Some.
2) Re-read the book for the review and revise the outline. - Not yet.
3) Writing exercise 1 of Goodson’s revised book.- I have read and tried only one day. Maybe it needs efforts to do the work every day, but I like the atmosphere. When I read it and do its exercises, I feel cheered to be a good writer.
4) 5 minute short exercise three times a day. - 3 minutes, but done for several days.
Next goals:
1) Read materials for Section 2 of Chapter 2, and make a plan of revision, again.
2) Re-read the book for the review and revise the outline, again.
3) Writing exercise 2 of Goodson’s revised book.
4) 5 minute short exercise three times a day.
Have a good week, everyone!
Last Week:
ReplyDeletewalk to or from work twice - walked to and from work so done!
edit acronym report - did a bit, but editing lengthy printed documents on a train journey without the benefits of my stash of clips, sticky notes and coloured pens was too hard.
marking - done some but not as much as I should have!
This week:
Marking
Meetings
- it's just one of those weeks!