Hi all! Posting this early as I'm doing Outreach tomorrow (which involves getting up early on a Sunday, driving over an hour to a rather remote visitor centre, lugging tables and chairs and stuff around for a while, setting stuff up in an inadequate space, talking to strangers for a few hours, then packing up and coming back. Lovely. But the colleagues I'm doing it with are great so there will be some fun, and it is Worthwhile. Or at least I am told it is!).
If anyone wants a discussion topic for the week, let's think about lessons learned from this particular end-of-year/Spring (for those of us who teach at least). For me, once again, it's that it's always more work and stress than I expect!
Some lucky, lucky people finished cleanly for the summer in the last couple of weeks. Others have semesters which are dragging on, or unexpected monsters popped up to mess up their plans. As is normal for a period of transition like semester-end, participation here has fluctuated - we've had as few as 5 comments some weeks - but I at least am really grateful that it's still been here, a reminder of the Long Game when all the immediate stuff is yelling for attention and biting my ankles! Thank you all for taking part, whether it was for one week or eight, and remember to come back next week when the summer session will be kicking off (thanks to our new host, heu mihi! Did anyone else ever offer to help out? I can't remember?).
Reminder: we're always open to new joiners or returners, and to people who can only attend for part of a session signing up - so do share the new session widely!
Last week's goals:
Dame Eleanor Hull
I am taking this week entirely off from work! What I aim to
do:
*tidy, weed, plant in the garden; perhaps see about removing
a shrub if it doesn't perk up.
*watch all of the Tour of California.
*read fun books.
*enjoy three social engagements.
*book one routine vet appointment.
*prep for open house and then restore normal conditions.
*stretch and exercise daily.
*cook slightly more ambitiously than usual.
*make work plan for the rest of the summer.
And sleep. I am going to try to fix a sleep schedule that
works for me and my household, probably on the early side but not so very early
as during the semester, and make up the sleep debt I've been running.
Good Enough Woman
1) Get grading back to the forefront. I have subs for my
exams, but I still need to grade them.
2) Walk 3x (if surgery recovery permits)
3) Enjoy the present moment. Meditate 3x.
4) Do the chemo prep, of course.
heu mihi
1. Make realistic(ish) summer work plan
2. Read proofs of Weep
3. Homework for teaching workshop (due 5/22)
4. Submit Kzoo proposal for 2020
5. Start review book
6. Submit reimbursements of various kinds
7. Inbox 0! Or, at least, Inbox < 10!
humming42
busy fighting battles on other fronts – hope it’s going
well!
JaneB
1) self-care - continue to drink a great deal of water. Be
kind to self. Eat less bread...
2) consolidate lists and start making a summer list
3) keep up with paperwork on the Two Big Modules and don't
let other people's dilatoriness take up any of my emotional bandwidth
4) ten rows of square
5) finish marking current essay pile (I have about 60, I can
do 3-4 an hour, so that's 15-20 hours... sigh...)
6) put things into my summer calendar and finish the doodle
I'm doing around the edge..
Susan
1. Make real progress on Violence, so that next week I can
really finish it.
2. Do 3 hours of work clearing the disaster area that is my
desk.
3. Begin planning one of my fall courses to get book orders
in
4. Walk two times
5. Get regular sleep
6. Do something fun.
Session goals
Dame Eleanor Hull (never did formalise her goals list but this version is a fun read!)
I’m working a routine mission, and have nearly finished stocking a series of caches that will be really useful to the army when they get here, and incidentally managing to map a strategic piece of mountain that we haven’t had good plans for, when I hear a dull roar very far away. Uh-oh. When I come to the edge of the forest, towards a farm that has historically been not-unfriendly, the barn is burning. So much for sleeping there tonight. I hope that the farmers fired it themselves, after taking the animals higher up the mountain, but I’m not going to wait around to find out. I will have to go the long way around to get back behind my lines, and hope that the enemy hasn’t mined the mountain passes.
I now have companions, or subordinates, or something: three talking cats. I think the higher-ups were thinking of them as assistants, but since they are cats, they are more hindrance than help. It’s true that they are excellent at sensing the presence of the enemy, but this is not necessarily useful, as their response is usually to climb a tree rather than helping with the task at hand. It’s also true that they fight fiercely when cornered, but again, as a scout and quartermaster I’m supposed to stay away from action, and the cats are more likely to damage me than the enemy. As usual, the generals have no fucking clue what life on the ground is like.
I’ve also been training some of the locals in some resistance techniques. They may yet make the war go my way, if they don’t revert to their old loyalties and make things much worse. So, like the cats, there’s some question as to whether they’re allies or not. But it seemed a risk worth taking.
At any rate, the sound of distant guns signals that the war has started. The steady nerves, good distance vision, and knowledge of the terrain that make me a good scout also make me a good sniper. I’ve stocked some of my private caches with weapons, ammunition, and explosives. Over the next few weeks, I may have to blow up a bridge here, take out an enemy sentry there, and continue to do a little mapping when I have a quiet minute to take notes. I really hope I can stay out of pitched battles, and get the talking cats back to a place where they’ll be happier. Like a general’s bed. I’d love to see one of the top brass get a set of talking cats their dawn nom-noms.
Elizabeth Anne Mitchell
Organizing Goals:
Finish the term with a clear organization to the scholarly apparatus for Prudence.
Slash and burn through one lateral file drawer by end of term.
Writing Goals:
Edit three pages a day of the dissertation.
Health Goals:
Continue to move.
Continue to eat better than I did a year ago.
Creativity goals:
Write at least fifteen minutes a day on a creative project--novella, novel, something.
Knit for at least a half-hour daily.
heu mihi1. Daily things x5: Language, exercise, write, sit.
2. Full draft of Amy
3. Reread Malory (400 pages to go!)
4. Knit a lot
Humming42
1 Write and submit four book reviews2 Finish Perform paper
3 Write abstract for Generations
I also am waiting for word on two abstracts, one for a journal article and the other for a book chapter.
JaneB
1) Self-care: water, fruit & veg, sitting, doing something in the evening, sleep, movement2)
Research: make project list, green data thing, get problem child 1 sent
off (please!), problem child 2 full draft, write seminar and public
talk
3) Craft: finish current square, start another, add some more china blue to the never-ending project
4) domestic chaos reduction: maintain current status throughout marking season! (that will be quite enough of an achievement...).
3) Craft: finish current square, start another, add some more china blue to the never-ending project
4) domestic chaos reduction: maintain current status throughout marking season! (that will be quite enough of an achievement...).
Susan
1. finish the semester (my final exam is May 11, commencement is May 19, so good timing for me) Right now I'm just so tired!2. Revise paper from last year for presentation in NYC next week.
3. Finish Violence, which editors want on May 3. This may be optimistic, but I'll try.
4. Keep plugging away on collaboration.
5. Get back to walking
6. Say no to anything new between now and the summer
7. Plan some kind of summer vacation
I think Susan offered to help for the summer, but if she's not ready, or needs to beg off, I could pitch in to give heu mihi some weeks off.
ReplyDeleteLessons learned: plan carefully, take care of health and sleep, and it will be so much easier than if you get tired and strung out. At the end of March, I thought April would be vile, but it actually worked out easier than expected.
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
*tidy, weed, plant in the garden; perhaps see about removing a shrub if it doesn't perk up. YES; plan to cut back the shrub severely.
*watch all of the Tour of California. YES.
*read fun books. YES. One volume of Naomi Mitchison’s memoirs, her Arthurian novel To the Castle Perilous, two novels by Pamela Hansford Johnson that were okay; gave up on Storm Jameson’s memoirs as too self-absorbed (I know, memoirs . . . but there are degrees of these things).
*enjoy three social engagements. Attended TWO. Cancelled the middle one due to high-FODMAP encounter during first one. Residue of that encounter made the remaining one v. tiring.
*book one routine vet appointment. NO.
*prep for open house and then restore normal conditions. YES.
*stretch and exercise daily. YES on days I was well; NO on days when I felt ill.
*cook slightly more ambitiously than usual. ONE item.
*make work plan for the rest of the summer. NO.
*And sleep. I am going to try to fix a sleep schedule that works for me and my household . . . and make up the sleep debt I've been running. NO, see above under social engagements. Sleep has been iffy since mid-week.
Since I never explained the allegory of my goals, I’ll attempt to do so here, though I may have forgotten what I meant, and certain elements may have been pure embroidery for the sake of the story line. “Stocking a series of caches” = setting up all assignments and creating a final exam. “Map a strategic piece of mountain” = some piece of research; not sure now if it related to my Zoo paper or to the Translation. “The barn is burning” = some harbinger of the end of the semester, such as being invited to pick up my student evaluation forms. The three talking cats were a combination of my real-life cats and any other person in my life who might be in some ways helpful but also possibly not; one week, Sir John was a Cat, to whom I delegated something. “Training some of the locals in some resistance techniques” = teaching my students to write good thesis statements and support them in a short essay; that worked, as their final papers were pretty decent, which definitely helped me to grade faster at the end.
“I may have to blow up a bridge here, take out an enemy sentry there, and continue to do a little mapping . . . . I really hope I can stay out of pitched battles.” Blowing up bridges = grading, and mapping = research, as I explained somewhere along the way; I think I dropped the idea of enemy sentries in favor of Leathery-Winged Avians (= administrivia). Pitched battles would have been the miserable last-minute grading marathons we all hate, or else an all-nighter to pull off my conference paper prep, and I did manage to avoid those.
I have just made a reasonably-successful pan of brownies with potato flour. The recipe will probably need some fine-tuning, but it's a good start, and marks another stab at the "slightly more adventurous cooking" goal from last week.
DeleteI love your allegorical journey through this session. Also, your point about health and sleep is so true; those aspects are far too easy to sideline, despite their enormous impact.
DeleteLesson learned: Stop saying Yes to things. These last two months have felt brutal.
ReplyDeleteLast week's goals:
1. Make realistic(ish) summer work plan
It's not really fleshed out but I'm working on it. I need like 20 minutes to finish this, so I'm not sure what my problem is.
2. Read proofs of Weep
Yes
3. Homework for teaching workshop (due 5/22)
Yes (should reread it before it's due, though).
4. Submit Kzoo proposal for 2020
Did that this morning (Monday), so Yes!
5. Start review book
Finished it this morning!
6. Submit reimbursements of various kinds
Yes. I'm pretty sure that one of the publishers (from whom I bought almost $100 of books) simply didn't charge me (despite my handing over my credit card), so I decided to go ahead and move forward rather than continuing to check my credit card statement. And now I don't have to hunt down a lost receipt!
7. Inbox 0! Or, at least, Inbox < 10!
This was an excellent reminder for me to re-undertake this project before submitting my comment, and I'm down to Inbox 3!
Session goals
1. Daily things x5: Language, exercise, write, sit.
Dropped off towards the end, but I gave myself permission for that, so it's okay? Maintaining reasonable expectations is definitely one of my challenges.
2. Full draft of Amy
Not quite, but getting there. Will have it by June 1.
3. Reread Malory (400 pages to go!)
YES
4. Knit a lot
Yes, pretty much. Started and finished a light summer cardigan.
You've done a ton! I hope you have a relaxing summer of NO after the past brutal months of YES.
DeleteDespite a brutal two months, you got a lot done (as Dame Eleanor says), including a sweater. I'm also very jealous of your inbox cleanup--I plead the fifth on revealing the number in my inbox!
Delete...and late to my own session. Sigh! But a good indicator of how this season goes...
ReplyDeletelast week's goals
1) self-care - continue to drink a great deal of water. Be kind to self. Eat less bread... yes, mostly, and a big fat no
2) consolidate lists and start making a summer list mostly, started
3) keep up with paperwork on the Two Big Modules and don't let other people's dilatoriness take up any of my emotional bandwidth yes, YES - this one is a win! Was calm and slightly bored and just kept saying "I can't control how other people choose to prioritise" and think that kind of shamed one of them into being less dilatory...
4) ten rows of square NO
5) finish marking current essay pile (I have about 60, I can do 3-4 an hour, so that's 15-20 hours... sigh...) YES
6) put things into my summer calendar and finish the doodle I'm doing around the edge.. put the easy bits in. Thoroughly enjoyed the doodle (orange slices), also was inspired to start dis-involving myself with one thing which no longer looks like fun (present JaneB is not how past JaneB assumed she would be...)
And for the session (which was disrupted by a kidney stone for a couple of weeks and characterised by lots of student problems and grading - HOW can the end of semester drag on so long?? Grades are due in next Friday, but there are still 2-3 weeks of process and meetings after that):
1) Self-care: water, fruit & veg, sitting, doing something in the evening, sleep, movement
Water - YES, especially after the stone! F&V MOSTLY. Sitting ALMOST NONE (using the soundtrack of the meditation app to distract my brain whilst I fall asleep doesn't count), evenings VARIABLE, sleep VARIABLE but better than last session, movement POOR but not none
2) Research: make project list, green data thing, get problem child 1 sent off (please!), problem child 2 full draft, write seminar and public talk
Project list NO (I do not understand why this is so hard to start), Green Data Thing YES, ProblemChild1 went off yesterday YESSSSSSS!! \o\/o/\o\ <-- happy dance, ProblemChild2 full draft is out with the other co-authors as of two weeks ago YES, seminar and public talk (this week and next) NO
3) Craft: finish current square, start another, add some more china blue to the never-ending project
NO to the squares (did a bit more), YES one and a bit rows to never-ending project - I AM now in the last section of the main design, so it is a little closer to ending
4) domestic chaos reduction: maintain current status throughout marking season! (that will be quite enough of an achievement...).
YES and more - the back bedroom/study has gone from humiliatingly chaotic to organised, sorted and with enough floor area open that I can use it to do a few exercise like moves as a computer break. BIG WIN
Yay chaos reduction and self-care!
DeleteI very much appreciate your kind words about my allegorical goals: your accounts of Otherworldly Uni have inspired me, and if I can slightly repay the enjoyment you've given me with those posts, I'm really pleased!
I will echo Dame Eleanor's yay! You made several steps on every subset, which is great. I sympathize greatly with the kidney stones--good on you for drinking water to prevent the darn things in future!
DeleteLesson learned: Stress takes its toll. Like heu mihi, I dragged myself through the last two months. My work situation, which started to ramp up in January, finally resolved in my favor today, with a fair amount of bitterness on both sides. In short, the battle dragged me down mentally and physically. Despite posting in March that I was going to be back, I was so depressed I stayed away. I am hopeful that I’m back. I’m planning to be back, but as the main reason I said above that stress takes a toll, I have surgery next Tuesday, and won’t be very present for a few days.
ReplyDeleteSession Goals:
Organizing Goals:
Continue to organize the dissertation files, which I swear reproduce at night. Some progress here, in compiling versions and creating a file naming convention that has made keeping things straight easier
Continue to organize the new veal-fattening pen, with the goal to minimize. No, but this was a conscious decision. My shop will have a freeze for about three weeks beginning in two weeks, so I decided to live with the chaos until then, so I have something to do during that time.
Writing Goals:
Write 750 words a day, whether morning pages, character profiles, or back story. Laughs hysterically. I have discovered stress and depression kills my creativity.
Edit three pages a day of the sabbatical project. Some days were better than others, but I did not achieve the goal.
Health Goals:
Walk at least forty minutes a day. Yes. Walking is excellent for stress, as well as keeping one from screaming at one’s supervisor.
Use the standing desk at least three hours a day. It was closer to two hours a day, but at least that.
Keep current with medical appointments. Yes, a win!
Creativity goals:
Draw once a week. No, nope, nuh-uh. I did continue to color, and managed to move past foul language into pretty pictures.
Knit for at least a half-hour daily. Yes. Another win! I’ve completed lace curtains for three windows, a sweater, a pair of socks, and a dressing gown. I’m halfway through another set of lace curtains and a cowl.
Analysis: Fighting the establishment was worth it, but it tore me down. I really ticked off some people who had a huge impact on my daily worklife, which they exercised with glee.
My sincere apologies for hiding from all of you. I hope to catch up with everyone in the next session. Float like mist, everyone!
Hi, Elizabeth, nice to see you! It looks like you prioritized your health and did well on that goal, so that's the most important thing, and you did a lot of knitting, as well. I hope your surgery goes smoothly and that the summer is much better than the spring was.
DeleteI'm glad that things worked out in your favor, and I hope that, with time, the hostility of others will settle down. Also, your knitting accomplishments are amazing! We'll be rooting for you through the surgery.
DeleteThank you both for your good wishes. The summer looks to shape up as better than the spring, thank goodness. And yes, I got a lot of knitting done; working with my hands helped immensely.
Delete