The usual verbal images I use for the end of the academic year imply some kind of extreme endurance challenge, with the participants limping or crawling over a finish line a muddy, battered mess. But it's also a time of year when actively practicing compassion and tolerance seems to come more easily - tempers flare and pettiness erupts and demands are made, yet somehow because I know everyone is very stressed and tired, I find it easier than normal to let things roll over me rather than bothering me (and hope thereby that MY snapping will roll off others). Maybe it's time to make a new mental picture - of a flourishing, power-stance finish to an amazing feat of skill, and as a celebration of a rather than a chore overcome or penance endured.
How do you imagine and talk about the end of the academic year? Do you have any positive year-end rituals that put a bow on the season?
* this is not because I've Discovered Sport, it was the result of extreme procrastination as a temper control measure via facebook browsing then the videos of the Australian Dad trying to do gymnastics with his daughter - GrantINeverShouldHaveStarted, which I triumphantly sent off last Sunday and ticked off this list, had to be resubmitted for the fourth time on Friday this week; it kept bouncing back thanks to errors not made by me, but requiring me to correct them
Last week's goals
Daisy
1) Finish the new figures
2) Do edits with co-authors
Dame Eleanor Hull
Self-care: the usual, plus 30 knee pushups with good form.
Research: finish and upload a chunk of translation, maybe
two. Finish proofs. Work on teaching and research statements for Full
application.
Teaching: grade one set of papers..
Admin: fill out some paperwork; finish setting up new
Moleskine.
House/Life: Do something beyond the usual keeping us clean
and fed.
Elizabeth Anne Mitchell
Unpack in the sabbatical office.
Try out the schedule to see if the time is sufficient, or
too much, and adjust accordingly.
Proofread the edition 1 hour x 5.
Transcribe handwritten notes 1 hour x 5.
Walk 5 miles x 7.
Good Enough Woman
1) Try to concentrate despite the Annie mania, my son's
upcoming birthday, and my father-in-law's weekend visit.
2) Order/acquire son's birthday presents. Stay calm about
the birthday dinner happening on Sunday (homemade enchiladas for 17 people).
Avoid procrastinating prep work. .
3) Stretch a little during the days. Try push-ups like DEH?
4) Write 500 words of fiction.
5) Grade first stack of essays by Wed. Grade stack of
revisions and in-class essays by Thursday. Grade half of next set of drafts on
Friday. (There is a lot coming in right now!)
heu mihi
1. Dive back into Silence on Wednesday and Friday. Read at
least two articles.
2. Prep for TA meeting.
3. Meditate some amount (this has really fallen by the
wayside; let's try again!)
humming42
1 Proofread manuscript page proofs
2 Write index
JaneB
1) read latest version of SurprisePaper and edit for
English.
2) make a full marking list and a realistic plan
3) do something other than mess with phone each evening - at
least one evening, do something OTHER than reading
4) finalise paperwork for visiting student!
Susan
(carried over from week 2)
1. Finish
long overdue book review
2. Do
some reading for Witch
3. Enter
admin stuff into website
4. Keep
walking. Every day
5. Get on
a good sleep schedule
I'm amazed at how easily both regular grading and end-of-term stuff have gone this semester. It's because I thought we'd be selling the house and moving, and planned accordingly. Now I think I'd better plan like this all the time!
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
Self-care: the usual, plus 30 knee pushups with good form.
YES (3 sets of ten).
Research: finish and upload a chunk of translation, maybe two. Finish proofs. Work on teaching and research statements for Full application. YES, YES! and NO, unless you count talking about a very rough draft of the teaching statement with my writing group. But I've got through !3! chunks of translation, so that's going great. Almost done!
Teaching: grade one set of papers. YES.
Admin: fill out some paperwork; finish setting up new Moleskine. YES and YES.
House/Life: Do something beyond the usual keeping us clean and fed. YES: but not something that was on the list. Since we had some ants in the kitchen, I caulked the counter/backsplash seam. No more ants. But this is how it always goes. Stuff just keeps coming up.
This week will see the wrap-up of the semester and the medieval conference at Kalamazoo, so it's a little different from usual.
Goals:
Self-care: Keep up with regular stretching and exercise, plus 36 knee pushups with good form; do what's necessary to eat safely away from home.
Research: finish and upload the last chunk of translation. Work on teaching and research statements for Full application.
Teaching: grade one set of exams, calculate and post final grades.
House/Life: Instructions for cat-sitter, mow lawn.
Good job on the goals, Dame Eleanor! I think talking about the statement is a good first step, honestly. I despise writing those statements, and end up writing them at the very last minute, so I'm impressed that you are working on them.
DeleteI hear you on the house stuff. There is always something that takes time one wanted to put toward something else.
That's great that you planned so well. I hope semester wrap up goes smoothly and that you enjoy the conference.
DeleteWhat kind of results have you seen from the push-ups? More strength? Stamina?
Any planning secrets to share (or just record for reuse)?
DeleteAlso, finishing with a conference sounds like a fun way to launch into summer, especially the famous (notorious?) Kalamazoo! Yay!
One secret, probably discipline-specific, is to keep giving the same kind of assignment, rather than a range of different tasks; students actually improve at writing that type of essay, so grading gets quicker, easier, and more pleasant as we go. Another is to set essay questions whose answers genuinely interest me. Example: what is the function of the hostile mothers in Fire and Hemlock and The Owl Service? This one seemed to touch a nerve with students, who wrote uncharacteristically detailed responses.
DeletePush-up results: the most obvious is better posture. I think they're building my core strength (obviously I don't do enough yoga, or hold the poses for long enough; I'm fidgety and like to keep moving). I now notice that I'm slumping because it is uncomfortable, which is a real change for me.
Thanks for the push-ups report! That sounds like a promising exercise regime. I love yoga, but I, too, get impatient.
DeleteAnd you offer such a good reminder for creating essay prompts that interest the grader!
Topic: I tend to slouch into the end of the academic year. I’m not proud of that, but it is true. I’m just glad that some of my committees, rich in faculty on 9-month contracts, will not meet for several months. However, I do have positive year-end rituals. Most years, Kalamazoo happens during our last week of classes--although this year, the eye surgery keeps me from attending. Then, when I come back all charged up from Kalamazoo, I go to graduation, marching through the ranks of students in full regalia. I suppose that some of it is that I enjoy the dress-up part of it, but I also enjoy the energy of the celebrations.
ReplyDeleteLast week’s goals:
Unpack in the sabbatical office. Almost done
Try out the schedule to see if the time is sufficient, or too much, and adjust accordingly. Done, although I’m sure I will need to adjust now and again.
Proofread the edition 1 hour x 5. Done
Transcribe handwritten notes 1 hour x 5. Done
Walk 5 miles x 7. Only five days.
Analysis:
So far, the sabbatical is wonderful. Despite a few minor glitches, I dived into the deep calm and quiet. In the first few days, I managed to do well over fifteen hours of fixing footnotes and tracking down citations, things I had not been able to get done for months.
As for the goals, I had some time to unpack the first day of my sabbatical, because IT had not added my computer to the network. Since I was expecting to work on cloud-based files, I hadn’t brought my thumb drives. It was okay, since there is no chair in that office (!), which was also okay because I then could justify setting up the office. Even so, I spent five hours writing or editing that day. I forgot to increase my goals for the sabbatical period, but I did more than the stated goals. I did not make the five-mile mark on Friday, because I didn’t feel up to snuff after the eye surgery. It went well, and I felt much better yesterday. I didn’t make 5 miles today either, because it rained all day, and I just couldn’t force myself out into it.
Next week’s goals:
Write or edit 5 hours x 5.
Avoid rabbit holes when researching.
Proofread 1 hour x 5.
Transcribe handwritten notes 1 hours x 5.
Walk 5 miles x 7.
I was right when I expected to be much happier this week. I wish I was going to Kalamazoo, but there’s always next year. Have a lovely week, everyone. Excelsior!
I love graduation too, but usually I can’t go because I’m at Kalamazoo.
DeleteDeep calm and focus are wonderful things. So glad you’re getting stuff done already. And walking 25 miles a week is impressive!
So impressed by the walking and the deep work! I'm so glad for you. Have you included time to just relax? Do things for pleasure? Rest?
DeleteSo pleased to hear things are already starting well, and impressed that anything is getting done with eye surgery in the mix, never mind all that walking! Go you!
DeleteI envy you the 9 month committees too - here it's all "let's just have a quick meeting in June... and in August... and get this report completed for September..."
DEH, I'm surprised that I am like a kid the first day the pool opens. I don't procrastinate, I don't find things to clean, I just dive in and don't want to leave. The walking is good thinking time for me.
DeleteGEW, I am making sure to keep up with my fiction groups, and went to my RWA chapter meeting yesterday. I do need to leaven some time to relax and have fun--I'll have to think about that.
JaneB, I have lots of 12-month committees; the beauty of the committees with 9-month faculty is therefore more striking.
Thank you all for the kind words!
My apologies for falling off in the comments last week. Things got a bit crazy. I've gone back and added a few replies. I hope all of the Kalamazooers had a good conference!
ReplyDeleteI am not heading gracefully into the end of the term. I have made several missteps among colleagues (small missteps, but as I am a people pleaser, I have a hard time dealing with such things), and other people are driving me crazy. At this time of year, the grading load is heavy, students are needy (and some are failing), and there are way too many social things to attend (especially this year b/c we have a lot of retirements). I am already thinking about how I might beg out of a few of them in order to preserve my mental health. Usually, I just power through, but for whatever reason, I'm feeling delicate this year.
Last week:
1) Try to concentrate despite the Annie mania, my son's upcoming birthday, and my father-in-law's weekend visit. MEH. NOT GREAT.
2) Order/acquire son's birthday presents. Stay calm about the birthday dinner happening on Sunday (homemade enchiladas for 17 people). Avoid procrastinating prep work. YES and FOR THE MOST PART.
3) Stretch a little during the days. Try push-ups like DEH? I FORGOT THIS.
4) Write 500 words of fiction. WROTE SOME BRAINSTORMING NOTES.
5) Grade first stack of essays by Wed. Grade stack of revisions and in-class essays by Thursday. Grade half of next set of drafts on Friday. (There is a lot coming in right now!) NOT QUITE.
With the Annie business (which has settled down a bit) and other things, I had a difficult time concentrating, so I'm a little behind where I wanted to be with grading. That means the next few days will be ugly. I'm also on a hiring committee right now, and I need to screen all of the candidates before Friday morning. That's going to be tricky because I have several evening events this week.
Last week of classes. Here we go!
1) Get all of the grading finished and recorded by Friday.
2) Screen candidates by Thursday night.
3) Write 500 words of fiction.
4) Give proper b-day attention to my son on Wednesday. Wrap his presents (etc.) by Tuesday evening.
5) Go to our literary journal reading on Thursday.
6) Maintain a sense of patience with other people and with myself.
7) Do some stretching and push-ups.
OMG with the social things this year. We have a few retirements and such too, and a few other things, which means that I have/have had FIVE social events in EIGHT days, four of them with my (10-person) department! I'm skipping the post-dissertation-defense surprise party this evening because I simply cannot. And also, I'm leaving for Kalamazoo on Wednesday and need some quality time with the Boy-o.
DeleteMuch empathy about the small missteps - I also tend to do middle of the night brooding about such things, and have managed several lately.
DeleteI am refocusing on being kind and tolerant... and sometimes only achieving it by reminding myself I'm really tired, and if I get mad it's a waste of energy PLUS messes up my sleep (I worry, or ruminate beyond the point where it is productive, or just can't fall asleep without obviously doing either of those things), so it's in my own interests to let things roll over me. Move like water, be the stone in the rain, and all that!
I like this prompt, but I have nothing very profound or interesting to say about it. I do think that metaphors are powerful, though, and may be more intentional about how I think about the last few weeks of the year in the future; April is always so crazy, but perhaps dwelling on it and categorizing it as such isn't all that helpful.
ReplyDeleteLast week:
1. Dive back into Silence on Wednesday and Friday. Read at least two articles. DONE. I am now seriously wanting to finish and submit this article by the end of May. Can I do it? Let's see!
2. Prep for TA meeting. DONE
3. Meditate some amount (this has really fallen by the wayside; let's try again!) ONCE
This week:
Kalamazoo week. And yet, here's what I'm going for:
1. Meditate twice
2. 5 hours on Silence (I like the idea of taking writing breaks at the conference, since I love the social aspect but also find it overwhelming.... Plus, a lot of my friends won't be there this year, because NCS is in July and they aren't doing both)
3. Finish grading
Have a great time conferencing!
DeleteMetaphors are very powerful for me - just finding the right words to describe a feeling can be very therapeutic and a key step on the road to processing things, even if the words are really gloomy and negative... One thing I enjoy about our community here is that most of us seem to take the same pleasure in an apt description or image, which is something I don't really have in my "real world" circle at the moment.
Are you interested in getting together at K'zoo? E-mail me at my RL address if so!
DeleteLove the thought about metaphors...
DeleteIt's a bank holiday weekend here in the UK, so although I got the prompt itself up on time, I'm only just reporting in. Spent the whole thing marking, but marking with pyjamas, naps, a cake making break (ginger and pear), reading a Dinny Gordan book around the edges to see what Dame Eleanor was talking about, and freedom to cuss at the screen if I want to is better than doing it at the office, and the big pile of topic-students-hate essays is now marked (and some of them were outstanding which makes me happy).
ReplyDeletelast week's goals:
1) read latest version of SurprisePaper and edit for English. YES, done
2) make a full marking list and a realistic plan near enough. There WILL be surprises, but I will survive...
3) do something other than mess with phone each evening - at least one evening, do something OTHER than reading listened to a pod cast if that counts, whilst NOT doing anything else (although I should have been doing something else...). This slipped off towards the end of the week...
4) finalise paperwork for visiting student! YES. Under the wire...
the coming week:
Ugh. Meetings (and other types of events with multiple people in a room who only sort of chose to be there), of varying degrees of formality, are cluttering up my diary every day this week. Frustrating, especially as I have a new visitor joining my group for 6 months and would MUCH rather talk science with them! I have a pile of reading waiting for them, and two days set aside next week for sciencing, so I must be strong and keep marking. (grr)
goals for next week:
1) be professional in meetings etc. Make steady progress with small bureaucratic niggles that keep coming up right now.
2) finish marking all the work that came in on time
3) do something other than mess with phone each evening - at least one evening, do something OTHER than reading
4) visit the summer's calendar and try to find time to do NOWT
5) try to get work hours down to more like 8 a day than 10 a day (maybe a bit too ambitious for THIS week...)
I hope the naps, cake-making, Dinny Gordan, and swearing at the screen gave you to the fortitude to get through this busy week!
DeleteFor me the end term has always been more endurance than celebration in terms of academics. But in personal terms it marks the change from being a slightly frustrated stuck-in-office scientist to the wonderful metamorphosis of being a real-outside-field-scientist, so the celebration always comes when I start thinking about that. I've also instituted an annual detox-from-caffeine fortnight at the end of each winter term which kind of functions as a health-oriented reset button for the beginning of summer.
ReplyDeleteLast week's goals:
1) Finish the new figures DONE
2) Do edits with co-authors IN PROGRESS
This week I'm away for field work,so my only goal here is going to be:
Don't fall into the ocean or off a cliff!
Enjoy your trip!
DeleteI hope the field work has been great and that you are still ambling around on solid ground and that you aren't headachy from caffeine withdrawal.
DeleteI definitely want to stick the landing! Arms up in the air, grinning big. It has not occurred to me that I could repackage end-of-semester. It doesn’t have to be a beastly monster. This semester, I did myself a disservice by allowing students in three of my classes to have open deadlines on some of their quizzes and short papers, leading to a massive grading load for me. But I know that in 8 days, I will be free of all of that, so I will just jog these last few miles and cross the finish line (I know, change of sport, but I am so incredibly clumsy that I can’t hold up the gymnastics metaphor for myself!).
ReplyDeleteAlso, JaneB, I loved your footnote.
Last week, still at it:
1 Proofread manuscript page proofs: yes
2 Write index: yes
That was interesting. Book becomes real when I have it in hand.
This week:
1 Read half of next book for review
2 Set up project pages in new bullet journal
3 Copy project notes to bullet journal
4 Decide whether to submit abstract to nearby conference
I hope have the book in hand was a good-kind of interesting!
DeleteIt really is interesting to think about a strong and stylish finish at the end. I feel must more like I'm crawling to the finish line or falling off the beam. I wonder if I can turn that around.
Well, I wish I could think more positively about the end of the year -- one reason I missed last week is that somehow the end of the semester came with all sorts of craziness to deal with. So my end of semester ritual (after my second commencement ceremony on Sunday) will be to collapse into a heap. I wish I could be inspirational, but one consequence of the current political climate is that people are mean to each other on a regular basis. And I'm just tired of it.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, here we go:
Last set of goals
1. Finish long overdue book review DONE
2. Do some reading for Witch NOT REALLY
3. Enter admin stuff into website A LITTLE
4. Keep walking. Every day YES. (I've managed the 10,000 steps at least 5 days each week, usually 6)
5. Get on a good sleep schedule MEH. On and off. I have to get to bed early...
Reflection:
Well, it's felt like things are coming at me from multiple directions, so I haven't done well (see my difficulties in switching activities...) So I just need some mental space where I'm not trying to solve problems. That gives me time to think.
Goals for the next week (what's left) -- keeping it simple because the weekend is messed up with a bunch of commencement related events + a mother's day tea.
1. Get moving on Witch (I've been thinking about it, so it's probably not as bad as I fear)
2. Keep moving on items for my review this summer
3. Keep walking
4. Try to go to bed early.
I can't imagine taking a lead political service role on campus right now. With that in mind, it's great that you are doing all of the walking. I've done no exercise for the past week, and it's just not good. And congrats on finished the book review! You did some good TLQ stuff regardless of the craziness. I hope you will have some "mental space" very soon.
Delete(And your post reminded me that I need to set up some stuff on the assessment database. Sigh.)