Well, we made it! The final week of 16, and the end of our summer session… Our next session will be hosted by Heu Mihi and Dame Eleanor Hull, thank you for that! We will probably start around the 2nd or 3rd week of September, I will let the new hosts pick a date. We’ll put up and intersession check-in post just for fun too.
I want to congratulate everyone on all the things we did this summer, all the things we took care of, all the people we connected with… There were lots of really big things to do, like moving, medical things, care-giving responsibilities, course preparation, research, and actual fun summer things. We had mammoths, hippogriffs, Research Fairies, a BollOx, a special appearance by the ever-awesome Stress Canary, and magical potions, elixirs, and fences… We also had a really great party in a beautiful garden!
First last week’s goals for our last check-in:
Daisy
1) Create order in house chaos, tidy up and throw out summer pandemic
detritus
2) Revive Albatross paper
3) Plan out two courses and try to keep existential panic to a minimum
4) Planning meetings with colleagues teaching in my program
5) Stop worrying about when co-author submits the damn papers
6) Fun things: kid birthday
Dame Eleanor Hull
Work regular office hours, with some on each of research, teaching,
languages. Finish undergrad syllabus, write grad syllabus, write more
assignments, put things into online course shells.
Regular exercise, stretching, safe eating, fun things.
~2 life admin tasks; clear areas of my study that would be visible on web cam.
Keep track of what I'm doing so I don't wonder where the day went.
Elizabeth Anne Mitchell
Concentrate on the lit review for Illuminated: 2 articles a day x 5.
Continue to cull, combine, and organize electronic files. 2 hours x 5.
Get everything in shape for the beginning of the semester.
Continue working on the lace curtains: 1 hour x 6.
heu mihi
1. Finish prepping for MA defense (which is today)
2. Brew beer (delicious Belgian abbey-style ale)
3. Prep for day 1 of seminar
4. Edit transcripts/cc for two lecture days
5. Process rest of tomatoes (approx. 40 lbs)
6. Get back o n exercise schedule
humming42
1 finish Square and submit
2 finish Fall syllabi
3 clean up leftover student admin issues from Spring and Summer
4 complete second round review for resubmitted article
JaneB
a) self-care. The usual. Try to get some better habits. TRY
b) at least make some good lists of what teaching prep needs doing, and try to
prioritise. (All The Things)
c) Get all my lists transferred to my new work journal
d) prepare for the next big meeting of community project, and get interns
started. UGH.
Susan
1. Set up videos for week 2 of undergrad class
2. Do welcome video for grad class
3. Have meeting about article prize #2
4. 1 hour on famous author
oceangirl101 (carried over)
1. Continue to prep stuff for new grad student orientation
2. Outline Ch 8 and start writing
3. Data bits finalized for Ch 7, rewrite text as needed
4. Data bits together for co-authored paper
5. Consider if I want to write regional text-like book for well known press
6. Paperwork for aunt in memory care to get her into state system
7. Consider buying porch furniture so outdoor space is more comfy and available
for social distancing with a friend at a time during cooler months
SESSION GOALS:
For check-in and end-of-session reflection, pick whatever question from the following long list… Or make up your own, we’re not picky J
What are you most proud of for your summer? What will you remember most about it? What inspired or motivated you? What was the worst part? Did you learn anything new about yourself or your work, good or bad? How did your fences hold up against the various creatures we wanted to keep under control? Are your fencing skills (double entendre intentional!) up to the challenging term that awaits?
Daisy
1) Focus on paper writing – I have three in progress where I’m the main author,
and two with students
2) Maintain healthy habits and keep moving
3) Focus on my child and make sure she has a fun, exciting summer even with
restrictions and uncertainty
4) Do one fun/frivolous/new thing every week
1.
Health/self: exercise & stretch daily, eat safely, get sufficient sleep
& down time.
2. Moving/life stuff: Pack, move, unpack, other house-related tasks, as
efficiently as possible.
3. Service: Evaluate promotion packet.
4. Teaching: prep fall courses thoroughly.
5. Research: brief but regular dead language review; read & take notes on
4-6 books; make plan for finishing my own book.
I will
probably add specifics later in the week, but here is a first shot.
Health:
Make mental and physical health strides by creating and maintaining
habits--walking, meditating, eating better, contacting people.
Be kind to myself and others.
Maintain the contacts I have, and expand to some of the people I’ve neglected.
Scholarship:
Return scholarship to my schedule, rather than stuffing it around the edges.
Continue to organize and declutter paper and pixel files, keeping only what
furthers my work or sparks joy.
Create an order of approach among the special issue, Illuminated, Perseverance,
and North.
heu mihi
1. Reintroduce some of the good habits that I've neglected: any combination of
sitting, journal-writing, waking up early, reducing alcohol/sweets, yoga
2. Required writing: -Fairy tale paper; -Nunnery paper; -Promotion statement
3. Read at a steady rate for New Project (NP), and take *sensible, ideally
helpful* notes
4. Draft a grant proposal
5. Clean the workroom and figure out a better way to organize it
6. Make progress on the yard--I'm thinking that I need to pick a bucket of
bishop's weed (which I've taken to calling My Episcopal Foe) a week
humming42
1 Write and present at PH online conference
2 Write and submit four book reviews
3 Submit three conference abstracts
4 Write and submit Square
5 Revise and submit two online courses
6 Finish Perform
7 Write 20000 words for Tiny Project
JaneB
1)
Self care: lose the few lb I put on in the first panic of the Pestilential
Pivot and get my diet back into a better balance, improve the amount of
movement I'm doing (let's say 5x a week I want to do a 25-30 minute online
workout - each one has 5 'tracks' and at the moment I'm doing 2-5 tracks spread
through most working days, so I think it's realistic to be doing it all in one
go in two and a half months!), and have done a few clear things to improve my
home environment ready for the new semester (when I expect to be working from
home quite a lot, regardless of the official decision...)
2) collaborative research/science: run a free course on the theory and software
WeirdBugMan wrote years ago, since I'm getting more interest from ECRs (because
if fieldwork and lab work are disrupted, modelling or synthesising published
data suddenly seems like something worth investigating...), continue to work
with SocietyThing to build community and progress at least three of the
projects where I'm mostly supporting ECRs or helping out colleagues (I count 14
currently on my radar... some have been in abeyance for a long time, some are
very early stage, some are at the sending manuscripts around stage. So
progressing three seems like a realistic amount of work).
3)
teaching planning and preparation. This has to be a bigger chunk of the summer
than usual! Here I'd like to have a clear PLAN for who is teaching what and for
how we are rearranging the contents of the big first year class (which usually
starts with six weeks of outdoors and indoors very practical group work which
just cannot be relied on), have a session by session plan for all my own
teaching up until Christmas (team teaching, so I don't teach all the sessions
in any of my modules), and keep CommunityThing going effectively (as so often, someone
has to keep things moving, and apparently that's me in this group).
CommunityThing has a workshop in late August so that should be a solid
achievement in this summer.
4) MY research. This has to take a back seat, but I'd like to do some thinking and documentation of stuff before the new PhD student starts this autumn, I'll be working with FormerPDF on a paper for a festschrift for someone who's been a great support and inspiration to us both, and I have a smallish but useful idea I want to start writing about to see if it wants to be a grant or a small paper or a whatever.
1. Finish
book ms, writing 3000 words a week.
2. Redesign course for remote or semi-remote teaching
3. Maintain physical health by keeping up with walking
4. Maintain mental health 1: get regular sleep
5. Maintain mental health 2: read for fun
6. Maintain mental health 3: keep in touch with friends in whatever way
possible.
oceangirl101
1. Finish Ch 7 and 8 of book and be done with it!
2. Advise two graduate students and undergrad in summer research
3. Maintain healthy habits- exercise 3x a week, cook and eat as well as I can
4. Work in the garden and make my own DIY compositng bin
5. Maybe try to learn Tahitian??? I have DVDs somewhere but no way to listen to
them now. There might be online sources or someone I could Zoom with.
To everyone, thank you for showing up here! Many of us mentioned in this session and the last one how much we value this little space because it is constant and encouraging and has not been wrecked by the pandemic and is always a guarantee of a friendly virtual smile and some fun. We all need quiet spaces like this one, and it is what it is because of all the lovely people in it.
So, raise a glass of real-life bubbly stuff or magical potion of choice to all of us! Best of luck for the term ahead, and come check in again when our next session starts!
