Much of my week has been about being in community - on one side, coming together as a university community with collegaues and students to remember and on the other, being part of a group of people connecting land and stewardship. In different way, these events - and the process of preparing for them - has reaffirmed for me the importance of community to achor us in place, to hold and lift us in troubled times, and to enable conrete actions. (But I will note that by the weekend, I was desparate for ome time alone).
So for this week's topic - what part does community play in TLQ? Can do you care for yourself in the process of caring for those you choose and/or end up in community with.
On a community note, just giving everyone the update from the comments last week - allan wilson is in NZ and safe outside the earthquake area.
allan wilson
1. Reduce second helpings at dinner which have nothing to do with the fact that I am hungry.
2. Use appropriate coping strategies, not eating. Eg, walking, or resting.3. Have a go at finishing FS.
Contingent Cassandra
--enjoy time with niece; be kind to stepmother
--move a bit
--catch up with a friend (we have a date for Fri. -- another bright spot)
--follow up on grant project: finish financial stuff, work on scheduling meeting & setting agenda
--make parsley pesto
--follow up w/ stepsister
--enjoy time with niece; be kind to stepmother
--move a bit
--catch up with a friend (we have a date for Fri. -- another bright spot)
--follow up on grant project: finish financial stuff, work on scheduling meeting & setting agenda
--make parsley pesto
--follow up w/ stepsister
Daisy
1) Complete draft of Hills paper
2) Complete outline of Cold Area paper to collaborators
3) List of figures and data plots needed for Cold Area paper
2) Complete outline of Cold Area paper to collaborators
3) List of figures and data plots needed for Cold Area paper
Dame Eleanor Hull
2. Teaching: plans for this week; some TRQ.
3. Research: finish R&R; send some e-mails.
4. House/Life: prep for new windows (TRQ at this point), gutter estimates.
5. Stay away from news and some of my usual internet sites. Go outside or look at cat pix instead.
Earnest English
Mental Health: Stretch whenever I remember; planning; meditate twice this week, maybe at work?
Gardening: don't worry about it
Writing: work in the morning; read
Health: sleep, rest, relax, take supplements, eat well, make sure to bring and eat lunch.
Cooking: one meal this week
Planning: Figure out Thanksgiving
Spirited!: Connect and be here when I get home; keep up with therapy; spend time with him
Work: plod through grading
Gardening: don't worry about it
Writing: work in the morning; read
Health: sleep, rest, relax, take supplements, eat well, make sure to bring and eat lunch.
Cooking: one meal this week
Planning: Figure out Thanksgiving
Spirited!: Connect and be here when I get home; keep up with therapy; spend time with him
Work: plod through grading
Elizabeth Anne Mitchell
Get the other three appointments scheduled.
Write 250 words on Prudence x 7.
Work on fiction writing one half-hour x 3.
Keep the tortoise moving on causes.
Write 250 words on Prudence x 7.
Work on fiction writing one half-hour x 3.
Keep the tortoise moving on causes.
Good Enough Woman (held over)
HEALTH: Make well-child check up for kids. Walk 2x. Yoga 2x. Swim 1x.
HOME: Pay bills. Tidy study.
RESEARCH: Print out chapter one of thesis. Decide what sections to cut in order to reduce word count (by a LOT). Cut those sections.
FAMILY: Take daughter to movie, have a family outing to pool (and maybe dinner and another movie). Enjoy (?) our family time on election night as we watch the returns come in.
2 30 minutes of reading every day
3 finish book review 2. Because there’s no reason I have not done so yet.
1) draft my bits of the second Problem Child part one paper
2) comment in detail on two close to submission manuscripts (one of which I haven't seen for a year...)
3) referee three papers
4) write the Annual Report for Old Admin Job (about 35 pages of bureaucratise. There are bits that can be cannabalised, but it takes energy).
5) finish and mail externalling report
6) sort out my travel plans for November and make excuses as necessary
7) write one more week of the new statistics teaching
8) work through another revise and resubmit (we have until mid-December)
9) write one section and edit all sections of a grant, so it can go off to internal referees
10) make eye care appointment
11) declutter house to some degree
12) eat well, exercise, sleep a lot, all that stuff
13) keep up with NaNoWriMo, find nerve to go to one meetup this coming week
2. Drink water before caffeinating.
3. Go to bed at the same time as husband at least twice this week.
4. Pick a single small future-orientated task each work day and do it before emails.
2. maintain momentum on the distance learning courses
3. hand crafted items - hats and ideas/test drawings for Christmas card printing
4. outline cook book idea
2. Start work on expanding conference paper for journal forum.
3. Eat carefully, exercise.
4. Read books, limit social media to 15 minutes morning and evening.
2. make a stab at outlining pub from diss
3. make decision about aauw fellowship
4. Self care flew out the window this week, so I'd like to spend some time cleaning and cooking this weekend
Contingent Cassandra
--survive (Thanksgiving break can't come too soon)
Daisy
1) Complete draft of Hills paper
Dame Eleanor Hull
1. Self-care: sit 5x, yoga 2x, stretch 5x, weights 3x, walk or elliptical 5x, stick to diet and track food 7x.
Earnest English
Mental Health: Stretch whenever I remember; planning; meditate twice this week, maybe at work?
Elizabeth Anne Mitchell
Get the other three appointments scheduled.
humming42
1 30 minutes recherche every day. I know I won’t write on Monday because of teaching overload, so I will plan ahead and give myself some kind of researchy task to make sure I get that done.
JaneB
the impossible list redux
Karen
1. Find some time to work from home. Take screen break and plant seeds in peace.
KJHaxton
1. make progress on literature reviews for a few projects
Susan
1. Write 1 small grant proposal
Waffles
1. Finish RSA abstract
The place of community. Funny, because I’m having my students investigate the communities they are part of for our next assignment, so I was writing my various communities on the board and was surprised how many I actually belong to even though really we as a family don’t go out very much at all or don’t feel anchored in community in various ways. But of course TLQ is a community, and I come back to this community because its practices and people help me so much, and I feel part of it, part of what makes it work, and I miss it when I don’t come and read how others are doing.
ReplyDeleteMental Health: Stretch whenever I remember; planning; meditate twice this week, maybe at work? NO
Gardening: don't worry about it YES
Writing: work in the morning; read YES
Health: sleep, rest, relax, take supplements, eat well, make sure to bring and eat lunch. MUCH BETTER ON THIS
Cooking: one meal this week NOPE, but T-G is coming
Planning: Figure out Thanksgiving: working on it
Spirited!: Connect and be here when I get home; keep up with therapy; spend time with him: I’ve been grumpy and Spirited has been grumpy and so those things haven’t gone well
Work: plod through grading: YEAH RIGHT
Analysis
This week a significant dilemma has come clear to me: specific aspects and contextual features of my job make it near impossible for me to get my grading done at work. What this means is that either I can have a happy home life or I can get my grading done. Since this has come clear to me, I’ve had several conversations about it, though those conversations aren’t likely to change anything. But this is the most significant issue affecting my ability to have decent work-life balance. I have been working on making grading easier my making a rubric for every assignment, which is something I’ve done in some classes and not others, thinking that a rubric is really not ideal for those classes. What I’ve decided now is that ideal teaching practices are less important than work-life balance. (The students won’t suffer for this choice. Most students at my place probably find the “ideal teaching practice” overkill anyway; I’m not just justifying a choice I’ve made here, but unbloggable contextual factors all add up to the plain fact that my students aren’t very interested or committed to my classes, and only very few exceptional students ever comment on the ideal teaching practice as opposed to the rubric.) But I need to continue to focus on 1) how I can change my courses to make grading easier; 2) how I can change my approach to days I’m home and need to get grading done while also having a decent home life. With the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and then huge batch of grading I have to get done, I really need to wake up early, have my alone/writing time, and then get to some grading. I’ve utterly failed on that this weekend, but I need to figure it out for the holiday so I can return to classes after with a pile of grading done.
Mental Health: Stretch, plan, make key phone calls on Wednesday
Gardening: fall clean up as promised, get garlic in the ground, put beds to sleep
Writing: work in the morning; read
Health: sleep, rest, relax, take supplements, eat well, make sure to bring and eat lunch.
Cooking: Thanksgiving!
Planning: Keep checking in on my goals
Spirited!: Connect and be here now.
Work: grade 5 projects per day, preferably in the morning on days not going to work
Properly defining the dilemma always helps a great deal with solving it. You've made a big step there. And I think it's important to recognize institutional context. Awhile back there was a discussion at, I think, either Notorious Ph.D.'s or Dr. Crazy's, about trying to provide the SLAC experience at a regional comprehensive, and whether students at the regional school even want or benefit from the SLAC approach. Even the romanticized ideal teachers who change many students' lives don't change everybody (but the movies won't admit that). Save yourself and your family first, and then see what's left to give your students.
DeleteYes to all of that! When I used to work with graduate assistants, I would tell them not to spend too much time grading. I would relate a story from one of my mentors who told her story of the realization as the day when a student stopped at the classroom door on his way out, scanned her comments on his paper, and dropped it in the trash. Last week, I finally had that experience myself. And since I always say "happy to meet with you if you want more feedback" when I return the assignments that I don't feel I've paid inadequate attention to grading, I've been able to minimize my self-imposed shame for not being Most Amazing Teacher Ever. Be kind to yourself and your beloveds first.
DeleteAnother vote of agreement to thinking about which "best teaching practices" (which may or may not be best anyway) actually suit your context. I think the ideal approach is, as humming42 suggests,one that gets the basic job done for the great majority of students (and rubrics are a good tool for that) while leaving the door open for the few who really want and will benefit from further feedback (and office hours/optional conferences work for that). One does run the risk of missing an opportunity to help a few shyer but hardworking students along the way, but treating every student as if (s)he had the potential to do stellar work, if only one could reach hir, really doesn't make sense, either. Students have their own interests and priorities, and many want to get just the basics (perhaps as basic as a passing grade/credit) from any one class. That's probably just fine in many cases, especially if you can make sure that credit/grade comes in exchange for what you consider some basic knowledge and skills.
DeleteOne thought re: getting grading done at school. I've moved to longer draft conferences, but less at-home grading/commenting (at least of big assignments; there are still a lot of little, relatively lightly-graded, ones). There are some downsides (long hours, exhausting), but I've found it helps keep the draft grading/commenting in check, because I have a set amount of time to do it. And commenting with the student in front of me is more efficient, because I can get a sense of what they know but didn't do, and what they genuinely don't know. I don't know whether that approach would work in your contexts (family, health, institutional, etc.), but if the bar to getting grading done at work is too many meeting or colleagues interrupting, it might be an option ("sorry; I can't do meetings in November; that's student-conference month").
I totally feel you on this, and I echo what everyone else has said. However, there will still be lots of grading to get done, and one thing that has helped me is to take one evening per week as a "work night." On my "work nights" I leave the office after office hours, and I go to a cafe (preferably a bookstore cafe), and I grade or prep for several hours, usually getting home around 10:00. Although I miss an evening with the family, it really helps me stay caught up, and it helps limit how much nickel and diming I have to do when I'm home.
DeleteThe kids have gotten used to having their "Daddy night" when I have a work night.
I realize this won't work for everyone, but I just thought I'd share.
I'm doing an experiment this semester in which I ask my first years to add a note to every submission, in which they can ask me to comment on up to three specific aspects of their writing, and tell me stuff they already know (e.g. Can you mark any words which are being used wrong as if spell-check doesn't pick them up I often don't see them? OR I didn't leave enough time to check the spelling so please ignore). Hoping that will let me give them more focused and useful feedback with a bit less work for me! We'll see...
DeleteThanks so much for the support as well as the brilliant ideas. I really appreciate it and will keep working on this.
DeleteHow'd I do?
ReplyDelete1. Self-care: sit 5x, yoga 2x, stretch 5x, weights 3x, walk or elliptical 5x, stick to diet and track food 7x. YES, NO, YES, YES, 6x.
2. Teaching: plans for this week; some TRQ. YES.
3. Research: finish R&R; send some e-mails. NO, NO.
4. House/Life: prep for new windows (TRQ at this point), gutter estimates. YES, NO.
5. Stay away from news and some of my usual internet sites. Go outside or look at cat pix instead. YES . . . sort of. What I've been doing is reading 5-10 year old posts rather than current news! Also some outside and cat pix.
New goals:
1. Self-care: sit 5x, 3 yoga classes, basic stretching 4x, weights 3x, cardio or walking 5x, keep up good work on food/tracking.
2. Teaching: write final exams.
3. Research: finish R&R, send e-mails.
4. House/Life: restore study furniture, 2 hrs basement.
I feel like there's something I'm missing. The windows are done; I'm experimenting with a new layout in the study; am wondering how many books I can just leave packed up, and whether I should attempt another cull of scholarly books. Students used to plagiarize by copying out of books, and I had copies of certain library books at home because the clever ones would check out the books they copied from and keep them out. Now they download crap from the internet, so why do I have those books?
Topic: ouch. I'm an introvert who has been feeling very prickly lately. And the Hulls (that is, my husband's family, and BTW IRL I use the name I was born with) are experiencing Family Drama, so that community is re-shaping itself. I agree with EE about the importance of this community at TLQ. At least for now, I'm able to get to some yoga classes at my gym with teachers I like, and those may strengthen my gym community (not sure what will happen after this term, as I'll be on campus different days next semester, but for a few weeks I'll hit those classes).
The whole thing about the books we have because before the internet... I have runs of two journals going back to the 1960s. I keep thinking about pitching them, and then I think, Oh, maybe not...
DeleteGood luck with the family dramas, even if it's just Sir John's family.
Topic: Like DEH, I'm an introvert, so cultivating community/relationships in general often needs to be a conscious TLQ task for me, since I don't naturally gravitate to doing something with people (or even calling a friend/family member) when I have downtime. Routine is a good way to build in such contacts (so attending church -- worship services, and even rehearsals and meetings -- works, as does getting together on holidays with family). I'd like to build a few more of those routines with both friends and family (while, of course, maintaining flexibility as lives and routines change). I suppose that one upside of the present political mess (and, to a lesser extent, ongoing family upheavals) is that I'm a bit more likely to reach out to people in the middle of an emergency (or what feels like an emergency, or potential emergency, or whatever we've got; one issue right now, on both the family/personal and the political front, is that it's not at all clear where things are headed).
ReplyDeleteGoals for last week:
--survive (Thanksgiving break can't come too soon)
--enjoy time with niece; be kind to stepmother
--move a bit
--catch up with a friend (we have a date for Fri. -- another bright spot)
--follow up on grant project: finish financial stuff, work on scheduling meeting & setting agenda
--make parsley pesto
--follow up w/ stepsister
Accomplished: survived; had a very nice time w/ niece (and little contact w/ stepmother, who was busy organizing event); had a pleasant museum outing and lunch w/ friend; caught up briefly but pleasantly with stepsister (and accomplished necessary business in the process). Also made some progress on grant project work. And also held about a zillion student conferences, but that was TRQ, so not on the list. Didn't really move much, and didn't make pesto.
Goals for next week:
--move more (walk and/or weights)
--rest as possible (the week after Thanksgiving is absolutely packed, and will be exhausting)
--do my best to enjoy a family Thanksgiving that will have some sad/awkward elements (first without Dad; ongoing family tensions)
--cook (at least the pesto; maybe some soup?)
--work on other contacts with friends/family
--work on setting up meeting for grant project
one more:
Delete--do some long-form reading (leisure/novel, Bible, both)
Long form reading is such a welcome antidote to the bustle of 24 hour media - what a lovely idea to add to the week.
DeleteCommunity always strikes me as friend and foe. It fits well into TLQ but can also be the thing that stops TLQ getting done, particularly when others' needs take priority for one reason or another. Community is the distraction at your door when you're trying to get something done, but the friendly coffee to celebrate (or commiserate) an event. Like so many above, I need to work at community - online is easy, in person is hard. I should probably have some more definitive TLQ goals.
ReplyDeleteLast week:
1. make progress on literature reviews for a few projects - done for one key project
2. maintain momentum on the distance learning courses - making good progress
3. hand crafted items - hats and ideas/test drawings for Christmas card printing - I'm upto 25 mini hats now
4. outline cook book idea - started outlining using Scrivner and pulled in lots of old recipe blog posts.
This week:
1. more progress on literature review project, particularly looking for studies that could be used in a meta analysis of findings.
2. finish prep for outreach event on Saturday
3. hand crafted items - must finish the advent calendar thing I bought last year and haven't sewn up yet.
4. data processing of research tools from house and scary project
5. write the letters that I've been meaning to write.
Good luck on the advent calendar - I admitted defeat and bought a store one with chocolate.
DeleteChocolate is not defeat!
DeleteI feel like I've found some nice community in my workplace. I guess that's been one good thing to come from this election - my colleagues and I are bonding over our terror. :( One of my co-workers who has been on a cruise since election day is back today - and I am looking forward to catching up with her, and hearing about the reactions from people in other countries to what is happening here.
ReplyDeleteLast week:
1. Submit NSF application - DONE
2. Finish up RSA abstract and send to mentor - DONE and submitted!
3. work on one of 3 papers (aging, abuse or intersections) - DONE (well, I worked on one of them, but it's not done)
So, a wrench was thrown in my works - I got the reviewer comments on my fellowship app and per my program officer, it looks like my NIH grant won't be funded, despite my good score. So, I have to spend the next two weeks working on revising my application as the next deadline is in early December (and then not again till April). The comments hit me really hard on Thurs/Fri - as did the idea of having to re-apply (and do so so very quickly), but I was better on Saturday. On the upside, they were very positive about me, my mentoring team, my university, and my training plan - they just took issue with my statistical plan.
Goals for this week:
work on revision of NIH application.
I'm sorry to hear that your grant won't be funded, but I hope the feedback is specific enough that you can turn it around and have success! Glad there were so many positives!
DeleteGood luck with the revisions! At least the area needing change is something that you can control.
DeleteFirst, let me say I am glad Allan Wilson is safe.
ReplyDeleteTopic: Community is part of what keeps me in TLQ. I find it amazing at times that I have never met any of you in person, yet I feel that I know you better than many of the colleagues I see many times a week, not only because we often share what is going on with us personally, which is important, but because we encourage each other in our pursuits, and sympathize with setbacks.
As for caring for oneself, I find that this community encourages me to take better care of myself. GEW complains about making doctors’ appointments, as I do, but then we both (eventually) make them. Dame Eleanor shares her dietary issues, and shared the FODMAP success, which helps me research the possibilities for my own difficulties. I have several online communities of crafts-people and writers, and many of them are very supportive. While I don’t have a lot of IRL communities, the few I have do function in much the same way. I find them hard, as many others commented. I am right on the cusp of introvert/extrovert on the Meyers Briggs. I have good people skills (which is why I always end up in admin roles), but it comes at quite the cost, and I will happily spend most of my time alone, even when it is not particularly healthy for me to do so.
Last week’s goals:
Get the other three appointments scheduled. Yes, all are done, and one extra!
Write 250 words on Prudence x 7. 6 out of 7, so a good week.
Work on fiction writing one half-hour x 3. 3 out of 3! A win here as well.
Keep the tortoise moving on causes. Even here, I sent off money to a couple of causes, and have a couple more in the pipeline. In addition to the causes Dame Eleanor mentioned earlier, there is a segment of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight on not normalizing the new administration in the US, which gave several more possibilities for causes to support.
Many of us mentioned throwing ourselves into work to deal with the grief of the election--Waffles doing an outstanding job, for example. It took me a while longer to mourn, but I finally got to the point of diving into work to control what I could. I began to declutter at work, which is a task that I avoid at all costs. I made some headway, but want to continue this week.
Next week’s goals:
Prepare for being out on jury duty--which may be one day or a month.
Write 250 words on Prudence x 6.
Declutter the work space ½ hour x 5.
Cook on Wednesday what can be done ahead of time.
Relax on Thursday, enjoy Number 1 and 2 sons’ company.
Happy Thanksgiving to all my US compatriots, and a lovely week to all.
I love what you said about TLQ, and agree completely.
DeleteI was called for jury duty last month and made all kind of arrangements and contingency plans for my classes. I stood in the hallway of the courthouse and read a book for an hour before the judge called everyone to say that all of the defendants decided to settle/plea instead of going to trial. I was home and done before my first class of the day would have met! May your court be kind to you and your schedule as well.
Congrats on a productive week, and I'm especially happy for you that you did your fiction writing!
DeleteAnd my fingers are crossed for you that your jury service will be extremely limited. My guess is that no one else will do your day job while you're gone, so I'd hate for you to have to do double duty!
Good luck on jury duty! I was called last June, and was in the pool for a "big" trial (made the local paper, involved a cop and misconduct), and was delighted both to be interviewed, and then to be the defense's first challenge. Turned out they did not want a professor on the jury!
DeleteAnd yes re. this group...
Humming42, I suspect the same may happen to me. Here, one calls on Saturday evening to see if one's number will be reached for the next week's trials. So, there is the possibility that I won't have to report at all. Then one calls Sunday evening for Monday trials, and so on. It's a pretty efficient system, certainly better than when I was called in graduate school, and spent the better part of several weeks reading books in the hallway!
DeleteGEW, thank you--it felt very good to dip back into the fiction. My sister and I are planning a series of vignettes about our brother, too, which should be good to write.
And you are right--the work will pile up on my desk while I am out. I was in the hospital several years ago for orthopedic surgery, and then ended up with a pulmonary embolism that put me in the ICU. I came back after a month to nearly six hundred emails, and a desk piled a foot high!
Susan, I was dismissed quickly as a graduate student in my small college town. I was completely honest when interviewed, and sometimes my clear biases are what got me dismissed. (I haven't changed much in that way, either!) I'll be interested how it will work here--it is the state capital, and the jurors are called for about six different courts in the county.
I learnt a new word! So that's what US people call a bureau, a secretary. How interesting that it's THIS sort of desk, the sort which sits in the corner looking like ordinary furniture until actually in use, the sort which kind of hides away writing work rather than the 'desk' where it's all laid out in importance and status, that seems to have words associated with it which have come to refer to particular kinds of doing. I've always thought of this kind of desk as comparatively feminine, as neatly tucking away and being there amidst the rest of household life, in a controlled space, discrete, almost the antithesis of the room of ones own, but... hmmm. Words are interesting!
DeleteMy Mum has one of those little table-top ones you describe, CC, she calls it a 'writing slope'. I hope to inherit it eventually!
OOps wrong conversation, should be on the one below. Think that's a sign its past bedtime!
DeleteI started drafting this last night and came back this morning to find a recurring theme of introverts who have deep appreciation for their online communities: count me in! Community tends to be primarily in digital spaces for me. Even though they are not face-to-face, those communities matter greatly, and TLQ is one of them. I have small groups of friends from graduate school, from the time in my life when I was an 8-5 person before going to graduate school, and even a group of childhood friends on Facebook. Like EE, I don’t really have much community where I live now. And being an introvert, like so many of us, I often find the time I spend on campus to be enough time in the company of others.
ReplyDeleteLast week
1 30 minutes recherche every day. I know I won’t write on Monday because of teaching overload, so I will plan ahead and give myself some kind of researchy task to make sure I get that done: missed so many days I stopped counting
2 30 minutes of reading every day: maybe 5x
3 finish book review 2. Because there’s no reason I have not done so yet: yes, finally.
I don’t do a big Thanksgiving celebration and have always used the holiday to get caught up on things. This year, I pushed some projects to Thanksgiving so I’m hopeful it will be a productive and enjoyable week.
This week
1 30 minutes recherce 7x
2 30 minutes reading 7x
3 finish reading book for book review 1
4 make substantial progress on R&R
Wishing you a lovely week ahead.
One great thing about online asynchronous communities is that you can check in with them as nerves allow, rather than having to deal whether or no.
DeleteI know F2F interaction is good for me, even when I don't especially like it. If I weren't teaching, I would put more effort into finding/participating in RL communities---and this is a consideration as I contemplate whether or not to retire early: go when I have the energy to meet people and make a life somewhere new? or stay where I'm accustomed to interacting with the people I'm used to? Teaching and service provide a lot of interaction, yet I'm not sure it's the most nourishing kind (and OTOH, I like being useful, which I think I am at LRU).
I imagine that if we were being us a century ago, assuming birth into a suitable level of privilege, we'd all be the sort of people who had lively and extensive lives through their correspondance but quite local, circumscribed and modest lives in person. One of the things I loved the most about my college room was that it had a writing bureau (one of those things that is basically a chest of drawers with a sloped structure on top, which opens out and rests on supports to become a writing surface and to reveal a collection of little cubbyholes or drawers for keeping pens and paper and stuff in. I loved my bureau so much! It was a lovely working space because it felt much more connected to scholarly tradition and to all the women who'd worked there before me (it was from the late 19th Century) than the nice modern desks they've now all been replaced with, even if there is more room to spread out your papers (I used the bed, the other chairs, and other random surfaces...)
DeleteJaneB, I love "secretary" desks. . . am even thinking of buying one for my spare room!
DeleteI've got a smaller, portable version of that sort of writing desk, refurbished by my grandmother. It's a fairly ordinary-looking rectangular wooden box (unless you notice that the division between the lid and the body of the box is slanted rather than straight) which opens to a slanted, fabric-covered writing service, a few immediately-accessible cubbyholes for supplies at the bottom of the writing surface, and two larger compartments under the the hinged halves of the writing surface. I've never used it standing up, but it could certainly be placed on top of a chest of drawers and used more or less as you describe.
DeleteMy husband inherited his parents' secretary, which is exactly as you describe, JaneB, with the addition of shelves above the writing surface and cubbyholes covered with glass doors. It is a lovely piece, not as old as the one you had in school, but probably from the 1920s or 30s.
DeleteNice topic! I love this community, and the looser community around the academic blogosphere generally (although it is getting a bit thinner as I don't seem to be finding new people to replace all the ones who are either stopping blogging as part of a change in life circumstances or moving to using the wretched book of face or the like, or are changing up their blogs to not be about academic stuff). I also keep in touch with my real life friends who don't live around here via internet means - whether that's texting or hangouts or just old fashioned exchanges of emails - and those also make community of a sort - long thin threads, but strong ones that make a big difference in my life. And of course there's family too. Although that feels a bit awkward in some ways at the moment as the parents are a bit annoyed with my sister and they are loud and proud Brexit supporters with whom I always used to happily discuss liberal values and share funny political stuff from the news/internet which they don't see, but now they take every opportunity to lecture me about how wrong the remain side was and how lousy the EU is and how great it will all be and we even ended up having a spiky disagreement about the Supreme Court (a British court) ruling that British Law states that the British Parliment needed to approve the Brexit process, not just the PM or the 'popular vote' - the CRITICAL POINT was British Law for Britain, as far as I could tell, yet apparently only when that suits some people. It's really painful.
ReplyDeleteIn 'real life' work provides quite enough people exposure for my nerves but probably not my humanity. I realise thinking on the topic that I have two contradictory feelings about my workplace community - that the 'official' community of the structures like 'research clusters' and the like increasingly leaves me feeling somewhere between excluded and a nuisance, but that I do have community there, and it's other people who care about students and ideas rather than 'success' in the preferred sense - my in-real-life-with-stickers-writing-group, the teaching team for the giant pain in the butt new module, the people I talk to most weeks. One reason I'm so miffed about losing my admin role is that I actually really liked being part of the relevant committee - yes, committee work is a pain in the butt, but the people on the committee shared my values, valued my input, and I felt like part of something useful which was bigger than I am, which I really seem to have lost from much of my work. Huh. I need to think more about this lot.
And then there's my very new community of local NaNoWriMo writers. I went again this week, just for an hour as I've been quite unwell again, and it was great. Fortunately I'm not the only one really enjoying it, and several of us are talking about having a once a month meet up after the end of November... hope that comes off!
The thinner blogosphere makes me feel sad. I was reading old blog posts at the weekend (think 8 years old) and I miss the carnivals and the memes and the general sense of community. I struggle to find new blogs to read. The book of face is not really a substitute - too many different audiences from different parts of life to talk freely.
DeleteOh, I KNOW! There was a golden age . . .
DeleteI miss carnivals too :-( Met so many lovely people through Scientiae and they just went off and left me :-(
DeleteLast week: well. Not a good week. I am so upset about all the political and budgetary bad news and changed messages at work, which was kind of the Last Straw on top of the election of a vain, touchy tussock-headed pumpkin who is trying to undo the Paris agreement and all the other hard, scary things going on in the world, and I am tired to the bone (antibiotics are often tiring and depressing for me especially the ones I was given, which seem to have shifted the infection but not the cold-remnant coughing and sore throat/sulky voice and general sinusy malaise, and my mental health is rocky, and I realised last WEdnesday was the first day since October the 8th when I did not do some work, and most of those days including weekends have been work with a little other stuff round the edges - and I'm on an 80% contract because doing that makes me sick).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I went in Tuesday as planned, to do the tutorials and go to a couple of meetings, was in about 5 hours, my voice held out (just sitting in my office and talking, I don't think it would handle a classroom, but it held out) and that was all fine. Then I started to get the old 'flu-y without the fever' feelings of having really overdone it that evening, and Wednesday I woke up with a migraine-like headache, and just decided Enough Is Enough, cancelled the rest of the week, and went back to bed for the day. Am upset at missing the seminar at nearby university, frustrated at the disruption and the necessity of other people covering stuff adding to THEIR stress, and also frustrated that on Wednesday and Thursday I 'just' picked up email but have been working close to full time since (including the weekend) to make sure stuff does get covered. That said, I've still got all the classroom classes covered for this week. Sod it, I have to get over this stuff, and just because I imagine Incoming thinks I'm swinging the lead, being overly dramatic or even lying outright (bad timing of getting sick in relation to telling him that I WILL get sick if I don't get the support I thought he'd promised and he said he didn't and I was imagining things), and because I feel like my colleagues are going to think terribly of me, sometimes, it has to be me first. This is HARD :-(
Anyway, so I'm going onto campus tomorrow, for four hours or so of student meetings, then counselling Wednesday (which will be enough talking!), then in on Friday for an all day research meeting, then hopefully back to normal the following week. We'll see! I have one class to write and a pile of grading as well, and I can do those at home at least.
So onto goals: the impossible list redux
1) draft my bits of the second Problem Child part one paper - NOPE
2) comment in detail on two close to submission manuscripts - ONE DONE
3) referee three papers - NOPE
4) write the Annual Report for Old Admin Job (about 35 pages of bureaucratise. There are bits that can be cannabalised, but it takes energy) - NOPE
5) finish and mail externalling report - YES
6) sort out my travel plans for November and make excuses as necessary - YES
7) write one more week of the new statistics teaching - NOPE
8) work through another revise and resubmit (we have until mid-December) - NOPE (waiting on the other person)
9) write one section and edit all sections of a grant, so it can go off to internal referees - NOPE
10) make eye care appointment - NOPE
11) declutter house to some degree - NOPE
12) eat well, exercise, sleep a lot, all that stuff - NOPE
13) keep up with NaNoWriMo, find nerve to go to one meetup this coming week - YES
AND one of the papers we all worked on last week was resubmitted and accepted within 24 hours, so YAY!
DeleteThis week's goals:
1) contact the editors of the three papers I need to referee, let them know I've been ill, do one
2) write the Annual Report for Old Admin Job (about 35 pages of bureaucratise. There are bits that can be cannabalised, but it takes energy)
3) finish up paperwork related to external examining
4) write one more week of the new statistics teaching 5) declutter house to some degree
6) eat well, exercise, sleep a lot, put self first
7) keep up with NaNoWriMo, go to meetup
And for a later date:
8) make eye care appointment (don't think opticians like being coughed at from close quarters)
9) work through another revise and resubmit (we have until mid-December)
10) write one section and edit all sections of a grant, so it can go off to internal referees
11) draft my bits of the second Problem Child part one paper
12) comment in detail on last of the close to submission manuscripts
13) worry about December travel, conference talk writing etc.
You remind me I need to check when my last eye appointment was! I rather think I was supposed to go in last summer, but can't remember whether I did or if it just fell off the list.
DeleteHow useful this community is!
Congratulations on your quick acceptance!
DeleteAnd having the ridiculous list divided up into immediate and later seems like a good way to triage it.
We are going through a curriculum renewal following a restructure and goodness knows that's enough with supportive leadership. You can't control what Incoming thinks, but what does seem clear is that you are the person who can best look after yourself. So make sure you do that and hold the boundary.
Congrats, indeed, on the acceptance! You seem to be getting a great deal done despite being sick (which, of course, may be part of the problem, but getting work accepted rather than needing to revise it again = good).
DeleteAnd yes, at least from my nosed-pressed-at-the-window stance, I think service can actually build community. I would like to do service (but not as an addition to my present job, which is the current threat; it would have to be in exchange for at least a token reduction of course load). Best of luck on finding a substitute outlet for those energies, and building those connections. It's frustrating when something satisfying (and, it sounds, necessary) is taken away.
This TLQ community has been extremely beneficial for me since as a part-time PhD student who teachers at a two-year community college, I don't have a research community. This group has been so helpful because we all share the challenges (and rewards) of attending to TLQ.
ReplyDeleteLike others, I am fairly introverted. Mostly, I just want to hang out at home with my immediate family or be by myself. But I do have a couple of other communities. One is a strange but rewarding one. I've never been a fan of professional sports, but I married a football fan. A number of years ago, we found other fans of our team (which is out of state) in our community. Since then, we've become friends and our kids have become friends. So during football season, I really look forward to football parties (which we do for most games). It's group of educated people with liberal politics (for most) that includes awesome women (not perhaps the typical NFL party image), and our kids all have a great time together and go to school together. It's a great community. I also have community with a couple of other families (our kids are very close). Finally, several years ago, I attended a book group with other professors, and although I left the group, I made a great friend of someone who teaches at the neighboring four-year college. I'm so grateful that I have her to connect with (even if we only meet up every month or two).
All of these communities help me reflect upon (and enjoy) the different roles I have in my life. One of the most important is my friend from the nearby university, but she is also the most difficult one to connect with since we usually try to do so without children. The other groups are so convenient because we cart the kids along, and they have a blast. It's difficult to find time away from family and work to see see a friend, just as it's difficult to find time for self-care.
From two weeks ago:
HEALTH: Make well-child check up for kids. Walk 2x. Yoga 2x. Swim 1x. (NO appt, but I did some exercise this past week, including one awesome swim session.)
HOME: Pay bills. Tidy study. YES.
RESEARCH: Print out chapter one of thesis. Decide what sections to cut in order to reduce word count (by a LOT). Cut those sections. PRINTED. NOT EDITED.
FAMILY: Take daughter to movie, have a family outing to pool (and maybe dinner and another movie). Enjoy (?) our family time on election night as we watch the returns come in. WELL, YES, except for enjoying election night. We were all devastated. My 11-year-old daughter was SO sad. She really likes Hillary (she has liked her ever since she saw her DNC speech), and she and my son have seen the debates. My daughter cried a lot. But kids bounce back quickly and live in the present moment, so she's better now. I'm trying to be like the kids.
The world has been intervening, and it will continue to do so during T-giving. My husband's sister's family of four will come stay with us in our not-so-big-house. I've gotten better over the years of moving like water through the week rather than feeling like I need to know the plans in order to be a good hostess. These in-laws never like our food or our music or anything, so I've stopped trying to make them happy, and started not caring that they bring their own food and set the schedule for the visit. We have more fun when I just move like water (thanks EE!).
This week (abandoning categories for this week):
1) Get some grading done so that the week after T-Giving isn't a nightmare (presentation grades plus one set of essays *at least*).
2) Review chapter one to plan basic cuts for conversion into an article.
3) Exercise 3x.
4) Move like water with in-laws.
5) Make Christmas lists.
Forgot to mention that I now have a date for my viva: January 12th.
DeleteGreat news! :-)
DeleteSkype or do you get to travel?
Saw this and thought of you:
Deletehttps://avoidingthebears.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/preparing-for-my-phd-viva-expressed-through-black-books-gifs/
Congrats on the viva!
DeleteI love the theme of community. I think I'm a bit more extroverted than some others in this group, but that depends on a fair bit of solitary time. I realized some years ago that I learn well in conversation -- it's why I do really well at committee work. So I have a combination of online and F2F communities of which I'm a part. Here, there are a few colleagues at work, and some people at the gym, who provide real community; also my small church group. In the wake of the election, I decided I needed to be more anchored in my place, so I went to a "Heathen Ladies Crafting Circle" at our local chain bookstore, where I talked with a woman I didn't know and knitted; and I went to a meeting of a community action group thinking about what we can do (and mostly leveraging people into existing organizations.) THese were both a bit outside my comfort zone, but I need to do that.
ReplyDeleteBut there are more far flung groups -- this one, which has provided structure and accountability for my work, and which has been great; a few blogs (I was led here by Dame Eleanor, thank you!); the book of the face, where I connect mostly with people I know, but some people I know a little I have come to know much better. There are academic colleagues who I meet at conferences.. . and this leaves out family and surrogate families which keep me sane. So many communities. But I live alone, and live mostly in silence...
Anyway, from last week (My goals seem to have been truncated, so this is what I posted:
1. Write 1 small grant proposal DONE, about to submit another one!
2. Start work on expanding conference paper for journal forum. STARTED, less than I hoped.
3. Eat carefully, exercise. PRETTY MUCH
4. Read books, limit social media to 15 minutes morning and evening. NO. I got sucked back in. But I did finish one book.
Analysis: I was gone for two different things for a week, and I think I really spent last week recovering, and trying to get myself ready for the next round of work on the book. I did get sucked back into the book of the face and twitter (which I use in teaching). Am thinking about whether I should stop following some of the political types on Twitter because I go on and am confronted by the evil orange one and his doings.
Goals for this week:
(Very limited, because I'm taking my mother to my brother's, a four hour drive, and she has agendas, and my brother has almost 3 yr. old twins)
1. Start working on proofs as soon as they arrive (Wednesday). Do at least one chapter a day.
2. Keep exercising
3. Eat sanely (will be easier because we're not hosting the food fest, and the food fest will center foods I don't particularly like)
4. Read another book.
Oh, that's one I forgot, my discipline buddies from conferences and collaborations - some of them are real friends, and nearly all of them are great! (Mansplainers aside, but...)
DeleteI forgot about conference folk as well. I'm lucky that a lot of them are on twitter so conferences spill over.
DeleteThe 'Heathen Ladies Knitting Circle' sounds like a lot of fun.
One of my groups of conference buddies calls themselves "the women who Dine Well". We have a leader who always figures out the best restaurant, and all troop over together and have a high old time. The women's groups are a great corrective to the men who dominate our field.
DeleteLike other TLQ-ers, I value this group for the consistent but undemanding asynchronous online format, the way it makes me feel connected to a larger academic community from a very small regional location that doesn't prioritise research to the extent that my PhD institution did, and that it encourages me to think of ways to care for myself (which, going back to the discussions of The Slow Professor) is also a way to care for my community.
ReplyDeleteApologies on the terrible cut and paste of the week's goals and typos.
So last week:
1. Find some time to work from home. Take screen break and plant seeds in peace.
Yes, though planted seedlings rather than seeds and in doing so managed to pull together ideas for a sound piece for the exhibition on the weekend. Yay!
2. Drink water before caffeinating.
Some.
3. Go to bed at the same time as husband at least twice this week.
Yes. He now really needs to remove the Movember moustache to make this a more attractive prospect.
4. Pick a single small future-orientated task each work day and do it before emails.
Sort of. Managed to keep some things moving forward.
Overall, it was a week of mostly managing before emotionally collapsing around 5pm
This week:
Assessment is done, we are shifting into summer. Ongoing emotional fallout. Demanding postgraduates (or needing to chase the ones who should be demanding).
1. Write x3. Even if it is crap. Just get going.
2. Move. Find one way each day to do that.
3. Focus. Make inroads into the big list by choosing one thing at a time.
Love that you figured out ideas while planting seedlings. That's really nice.
Delete