Hello all!
I finally had a good night's sleep last night, so I'm feeling far more capable of handling life than I have for the last several days--certainly than I did at the time of my check-in last week. I hope that you're all having a good weekend, whatever that means for you. It's great to see so many familiar names; I've missed this space and this community, which, I think, goes a long way towards keeping me from falling to pieces sometimes.
So for this week, the usual start-of-term drill: Set your session goals (some of you already did this) and your week's goals. If you set goals for last week (I didn't), I've pasted them below so you can let us know how you did.
I would also like to invite you to set An Intention, as they say these days: a larger meta-goal, quite possibly not linked to Being Productive, that will help you to get through the inevitable tough times. I'm currently deciding between the following: Rolling With It, Remembering That This Is Not Permanent, and Sustaining Larger Professional Goals and Keeping the Day-to-Day In Its Place. Or something.
Last week's goals, for those who set them:
Daisy:
1) Get schedules ready for all classes, and record intro videos and created first-week activities.
2) Have an uncomfortable conversation with my lab instructor. He is fabulous and wonderful and great with students, but also the most disorganized person on the planet. We normally work really well together, but he wants to do some really ambitious things for the online classes and is willing to do most of the heavy lifting for that, but I’m terrified that it will end up being a last-minute rush every week and even if I have my parts all prepared he will spend so much time making things interactive and whatnot that nothing will be done on time. He also works very different hours than I do and has no boundaries with time or students and I need those desperately.
3) Limit the crying to every morning in the shower to get it over with so I can be functional for the rest of the day.
4) Set up my schedule and my boundaries and priorities and write down everything so I will not be pushed into doing things in times and ways that will make me lose my mind.
5) Get more yarn for the rage-knitting project I started last night – apparently I only knit when things are awful. This one will join the “professional drama blanket”, the “grant rejection scarf” and the “grief afghan”…
Dame Eleanor Hull:
*Health: daily cardio and stretching, weights x 3, try to eat carefully and sleep enough.
*Teaching: Assign points to last week's discussions x2 classes, grade first assignments x2 classes.
*Research: make plan for addressing revisions; some time on both dead and live languages; maybe some other reading.
*Service: prep for next week's meeting.
*Fun stuff: watch the Tour de France with Sir John, read more mid-century women's fiction.
*House/life: weeding; sign & mail tax return; put together more bookcases.
Elizabeth Anne Mitchell:
Drop the course that is one credit yet takes 15 hours of homework every week so far.
Email the archive to move my research days, again.
Finish the lit review for the article.
Poke around the books on digital humanities, making an outline for that lit review.
Email my advisor, yet again.
Walk 2x7; eat real meals 2x7; meditate 1x7; write 2 hours x 5.
Write something positive in my planner 1x7.
humming42:
1 write a tiny project piece
2 work on creative piece--a prompt awaits
3 write weekly blog post--probably about Dots
4 finish and submit current book review
oceangirl101:
1. Read/refine Ch 8
2. Deal with DGS isssues
3. Get some data together for erosion collaborative paper
4. Paperwork for aunt going into state system Part 2
5. Exercise 3x this week
6. Weed raised bed
7. Fun x 2
Susan:
1. Start reading ms. for promotion review (720 pp!)
2. 3 x 1 hour on Famous Author, goal 15 minutes a day
3. Watch webinar for next week's class
4. Send invites to potential zoom guests for both classes
5. read two journals
6. Keep walking
7. Go to sleep earlier
8 Plan something nice for weekend
I'm looking forward to getting back in the swing of things!
Well that was a week… Everything that could go wrong with online teaching went wrong, including a super embarrassing failure of tech for the fancy first-day student orientation. Nothing inspires confidence quite like that kind of bumbling. It happens I guess. Mind you, if I had been in charge we would have tested the whole event the week before and not gone in cold like they chose to do, so it probably would have worked fine. Oh well, not my circus, not my monkeys. I wisely did not bother to have classes, just did intro activities on the LMS, and will be doing 90% of my stuff asynchronously.
ReplyDeleteOur contract instructors are “teaching” but they don’t have contracts yet… They also could not get into the admin systems for anything so their classes will start later this week. Pathetic admin decisions all round. They could have fixed all this in July but chose not to. So I’m recording all the lecture material for those classes even though they are not mine this year, I just can’t leave the brand new instructors to do all that on their own. The lecture stuff is easy for me because I usually teach that course, so this way they just have to worry about getting it all organized and set up for students to use.
I got most of my sulking and rage out of the way during the week, so I’m ready to start over with a more balanced outlook. It helped to get a bunch of material recorded so that I feel like there is some breathing room for the coming weeks.
Last week’s goals:
1) Get schedules ready for all classes, and record intro videos and created first-week activities. DONE AND MORE
2) Have an uncomfortable conversation with my lab instructor. DONE AND ON SAME PAGE – he’s got free rein to do whatever he wants for labs, I’m pre-recording my stuff and programming assessments so I’m always ahead, and he is willing to be totally in charge of building anything complicated he wants with anything I record. We do work really well together!
3) Limit the crying to every morning in the shower to get it over with so I can be functional for the rest of the day. MOSTLY
4) Set up my schedule and my boundaries and priorities and write down everything so I will not be pushed into doing things in times and ways that will make me lose my mind. DONE
5) Get more yarn for the rage-knitting project I started last night – apparently I only knit when things are awful. This one will join the “professional drama blanket”, the “grant rejection scarf” and the “grief afghan”… IT IS VERY PRETTY YARN!
This week’s goals:
1) Open Albatross and figure out what to do with it first, then do that thing
2) Record more lecture material
3) Stick to “action plan” for the whole week
The idea of an INTENTION for the term is wonderful! I’m putting up both session goals for concrete things and session priorities in the attempt to let the priorities guide my choices about which balls I drop and which to keep in the air, and which to just send out with the garbage! To go with that my INTENTION (I think it needs caps for importance!) is going to be “FOCUS ON THE GOOD PARTS” and that can include the good parts of the job (the research I love) or the good people (I have the best child, and the best co-authors) or activities (enjoy the things I love).
DeleteSession goals:
1) Finish and get rid of the Albatross Paper
2) Learn and do some computer-based analysis with fancy tool for new paper and local grant
3) Get DEI program approved and instituted in my professional society
4) Deliver excellent graduate course for new project students.
Priorities:
1) Health for household – mental and physical.
2) Two research projects: local grant and Albatross. The rest will putter along by themselves mostly so these are the ones that need the most focused attention.
3) Be excellent for my good people and help them as much as I can, be those child or co-authors or grad students or the good colleagues
4) Be good enough for/with everything and everyone else.
This last week was a stress-fest and I suspect most of the Fall will be similar. So there are things I really need to do during this session to stay healthy and I’m writing them out because otherwise they will disappear in the mess. There’s irony in having to reign in both the bad habits and the good ones!
Actions:
1) Don’t drink any two days in a row
2) Don’t run any two days in a row
3) Stretch something every day
4) Do basic strength training (aka push-ups and planks, I hate everything else!) at least once every 2 days.
5) Do something for fun every week
Sympathies for the administrively caused debacle. I like the priorities.
DeleteLove the idea of appreciating the good people--I need to do more of that myself!
DeleteStudents are back tomorrow (well today actually - I didn't actually get up until about 4pm today (well, I got up, fed the cat, had some food, then went back to bed in between somewhere with a reread of a nice soothing novel (Swordheart, T. Kingfisher)). On Friday evening we got an email confirming the upending of our perfectly functional advisory system for undergrads (because it apparently didn't work in all faculties, and the usual Northern University answer to a problem like that is not "manage the problem section" or "allow local diversity" but "replace the whole thing causing extra work for everyone and ignoring the fact that the problem section will almost certainly ignore the new system just like they ignored the old one". UGH) AND that we have to add two new pieces of software to the Required Software For Tracking things. Honestly, the amount of things we have to log into every day is getting ridonculous. Also had training on the T3ams thing we recently began to introduce and HAVE TO use from Monday for student interactions AS WELL AS both email and the VLE, in which I learnt that there are no students added to the system yet, that they are turning on new features, and that academics have to individually add every single synchronous class session in their timetable to the system because there is no connection possible between the timetabling software and the T3ams stuff, and there is no admin staff capacity to handle it. The latter is definitely true - students who waited until August to hand in their last piece of work, other than graduating finalists, still don't have their results following a major glitch in the VLE which is absorbing all the energy of the admin people who actually do useful things for us. Sadly that doesn't include the people who do things like design new advisory systems and choose extra layers of software complexity rather than actually make the data systems work for individuals.
ReplyDeleteRant rant whine.
Theme for the "quarter" - Be Kind. Kindness to myself - self care and deciding good enough is good enough - to my colleagues, to my students....
I still don't have session goals.
Week goals:
1) comment on a manuscript for a student
2) get through the many meetings of the week with a Positive Attitude
3) self care stuff - get my bullet journal habit back into shape and tick off most of my "habits" every day (water, fruit & veg, the usual stuff).
4) Community Project stuff. An hours worth.
And hoping nothing ELSE will change...
4)
The amount of administrative incompetence that all of us are dealing with is breathtaking. I'm trying to extend the same generosity to administrators as I do to my students, but it's hard.
DeleteYour university seems addicted to new systems! Given that none of them work that well, certainly not for everyone, I don't know what they're aiming for. I'm sorry! Self-care should definitely be in #1 position for you right now.
DeleteMy Intention: Make Do. I can make do most days and even most weeks, but then I hit a wall. I have had four dreams in the last two weeks of being in the islands at my field sites, with my local family, and then bad things happen. So they are dreams of longing to be away, longing to be doing field research, longing to see my "second family" and longing for normalcy. Since its not looking like normalcy anytime soon I need to figure out a way to make do. What helps- making sure I can get work done on my book at least three times a week, exercise which will be aided by my purchase of big piece of home exercise equipment which arrived last week, and more stretching as hours and hours of sitting and ZOOM time are wrecking havoc with my mind and body. I also need to make do in terms of being ok with teaching not being as fulfilling as normal.
ReplyDeleteSo, here is how I did last week:
1. Read/refine Ch 8- yes
2. Deal with DGS isssues- yes
3. Get some data together for erosion collaborative paper- no
4. Paperwork for aunt going into state system Part 2- yes
5. Exercise 3x this week- no, x2
6. Weed raised bed- yes
7. Fun x 2 -yes but barely
This week:
1. Work on Ch 1 and Ch 8 at least 3 days
2. Erosion data to colleagues
3. DGS stuff
4. Exercise x 3 at a minimum
5. Try to make healthy food choices
6. One night of non-TV watching
7. start reading student diss
I don't have the hatred of Zoom that most people express (it works fine, has some good features, etc.), but I am definitely feeling more tension in my upper back and shoulders. The regular stretching is a must!
DeleteAn intention for the session: Be kind and generous -- to myself, to my colleagues, and to my students. Remind myself always that we are all (or most of us) doing the best we can.
ReplyDeleteI'm still struggling with the teaching -- both the time involved in the asynchronous work, and how to manage the synchronous time -- so I really need to do this for myself.
1. Start reading ms. for promotion review (720 pp!) Got as far as downloading it
2. 3 x 1 hour on Famous Author, goal 15 minutes a day NO
3. Watch webinar for next week's class YES
4. Send invites to potential zoom guests for both classes 1 down, 1 to go
5. read two journals - 1, but I really read ...
6. Keep walking I CAN'T GO OUTSIDE
7. Go to sleep earlier YES -- success
8 Plan something nice for weekend Not really
Well, the week tanked in interesting ways. Partly, it was a short week. My grad class helped me see what I need to do the rest of the semester, so I think I'm a bit ahead on planning that. But that involved developing a whole new class session on "how the university works" that took considerable time. Then on Friday afternoon a friend called me to say, "have you looked at your email"?, an email that created an emergency for an organization of which I am Vice President, and which led to work and a meeting on Saturday, and will continue. Because of issues our president currently faces, I'm taking the lead on this. 2020, the year that keeps on giving. THat has taken time from famous author, though right now I'm watching a seminar on zoom related to famous author and his relation to another almost as famous author... which also makes me think about new things, which is good. (Though I"m also aware listening that there are disciplinary differences, and that famous authors have people who have lived with them for decades.)
Meanwhile the fires mean that I can't go out and walk -- we're in no danger, but the air is *not good*. The good thing in the past week is that I've been eating dinner earlier, and getting to bed earlier, and therefore getting enough sleep more often.
Thinking about the week ahead, I'm going to need to make room for this admin work, putting together a proposal and communicating with publishers and...
Goals for the week ahead.
1. Finish invites for undergrad class
2. Finish schedule for grad class, and record power point.
3. Read Ms. for review
4. 2 x 1 hour for Famous Author
5. Keep editing proposal document
6. Read 1 journal
7. Keep getting exercise
8. Keep going to bed relatively early
9. Do something nice at the weekend (maybe going to the foothills to pick up wine).
Not going outside would be HARD. I'm sorry. Sorry for the whole West Coast, in fact.
DeleteI, too, think an Intention is a wonderful idea. I am choosing Let Things Go. I have been fighting my perfectionism for several months, and I need to realize when to stop, when things are Good Enough.
ReplyDeleteSession goals
Research:
Incorporate research from hoped-for archival trip into the critical edition.
Finish one article, preferably Illuminated, although Flowers is a close second.
Finish the annotated bibliography on critical editions and digital humanities.
Life:
Achieve 10,000 steps a day.
Achieve 60% better meals.
Improve positivity about life.
Last week’s goals:
Drop the course that is one credit yet takes 15 hours of homework a week. Yes, thank goodness!
Email the archive to move the research days again. Yes, hoping to get a space in October.
Finish the lit review for the article. No, one article left.
Poke around the books on digital humanities, making an outline for that lit review. Yes.
Email my advisor, yet again. Yes, but no joy.
Walk 2x7; eat real meals 2x7; meditate 1x7; write 2 hours x 5. A mixed bag. Walked twice; ate better about ten times; meditated seven times, and wrote for ten hours.
Write something positive in my planner 1x7. Nope, not even once.
Analysis: Life is getting crazier by the minute, as I watch the positive cases rise on campus--we are more than halfway to the magic “send them all home” number. However, life got easier after I dropped the course from hell. Although supposed to be for beginners, the professor’s response to any question was to Google it and figure it out by ourselves. No, thank you! I have my fingers crossed that the archive I want/need to visit will be open in October. They are opening for a few days in late September, so I am cautiously hopeful. The article lit review is dragging on, but the end is in sight, while the one on digital humanities is becoming unwieldy, although fun.
I still cannot get my advisor to reply to emails, or to meet with me, which he was supposed to do over a month ago. Sigh. I get it--there’s little incentive (only one course buy-out per semester), but it is unpleasant to be the ever-annoying supplicant. It also has a direct impact on my taking care of myself, in that I don’t sleep or eat as well when I’m feeling sorry for myself. All right, enough of that!
Next week’s goals:
Write something positive in my planner 1x7.
Really finish the last article for the lit review.
Email the other three professors who work in my sub-specialty.
Start organizing the digital humanities references.
Walk 2x7; eat real meals 2x7; meditate 1x7; write 2 hours x 5.
A small set of goals, but I can always add things if I get through them all. Take care, everyone, and float like mist.
Your advisor and my chair should get together.
DeleteAlso, my intention is the blunter version of yours! I look forward to supporting each other in letting things go. Well done on the meditation, eating, and writing last week!
Oh, my chair too. Emails to him go to the void, and then two weeks later I get a response. It's driving me mad. (I know he has a 7 y.o. first grader at home, but...)
DeleteI am empathetic with all the troubles, but I also think: You are getting PAID MORE, chair.
DeleteI usually set a word or phrase for the year, which I did this year, but then another emerged, which is Shine. To keep focus, I’ll carry Shine over as an intention, which I like because it’s not just about Shine as a by-product.
ReplyDeleteA difficult adjustment to make: over the summer, I enjoyed a steady stream of online book releases, readings, discussions, and conferences, and I find that I’m struggling to make time to virtually attend half of the things I’d like to. So I’m learning to commit to fewer things so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on something that I can’t fit into my schedule.
I also usually read fiction only when classes are not in session because I will toss everything aside to read a good novel, and didn’t realize my excess until I was enthusiastically into my second novel of the Fall semester. It was worth it though. My current strategy is a slow novel, heavy on description rather than plot, so I can read just in that before-bed zone.
Last week:
1 write a tiny project piece: I planned to do that today but dragged my feet on the book review
2 work on creative piece--yes, and turned it into a blog post too
3 write weekly blog post--yes
4 finish and submit current book review--yes, and could have been more efficient
This week:
1 spent time organizing tiny writing so far
2 write a tiny project piece
3 work on creative piece
4 write weekly blog post--probably about Dots
5 finish and submit current book review
6 read five essays for award judging
7 make edits to almost-finished online course
I'm much happier when I have a fun book going. I'm depriving myself of that at the moment because I have so much else to read, but...I may need to rethink that strategy.
DeleteMy intention phrase, I think, is going to be Drop It. Just drop it. When the time comes that something isn't working anymore, or I'm sick of banging my head against a wall, I need to Drop It and move on. The phrase sounds fatalistic, or even disgusted, but I actually mean it in a much more positive way; try to imagine someone cheerfully telling you to lay down a burden that's been dragging at you.
ReplyDeleteI need to practice this with respect to my chair, who STILL hasn't sent my promotion materials to my external reviewers, but I also need to be a strong self-advocate here (clearly, since my chair is supposed to be my advocate but isn't doing this little bit of his job), so I can't quite drop it altogether YET.
Term goals:
1. Research: draft an article by summer 2021; prepare a grant proposal by mid-summer 2021
1a. (Re)read NunG books 3-5
1b. Research relevant theology on death in the 13th c.
1c. Situate readings of nuns within theological context
2. Draft my part of intro to collection
3. Language: Make some progress. Aim for 3x week, any length of time.
4. Life: Exercise, yoga twice a week (any length of time), sit some amount every week
5. Watch Pride and Prejudice by myself in the newly fixed-up basement.
6. Try to do at least one of each week's Big Tasks on Monday or Tuesday, to keep them all from piling up on the weekend.
7. Relax into what happens. Change or abandon goals as needed.
The "any amount" goals--I'm going to see how that goes. If I feel that I can turn them into more set lengths of time at mid-term check-in, I will; if I don't, I won't, and No Guilt. Life is messy right now. (Today's yoga class, for example, was interrupted by my son's need for me to clean the tub so he could take a bath, and then my husband's getting a phone call, because his phone was in the bedroom next to my mat.)
This week:
1) Back into exercise - yoga x2, running x5
2) Language x3, any amount; sit at least once, for at least 5 minutes
3) Read 5 chapters of NunG per day (total of 35)
4) Write 1 letter of recommendation
5) Next batch of powerpoints and lectures
6) 3 Gen Ed reviews
I read your comment to Elizabeth before getting down here, and was thinking, "Did she decide her intention was Fuck It"?"
DeleteI would be so angry at your chair! (I'm on a promotion committee, and was furious that the staff member didn't send out requests to outside reviewers for 2 months after we'd identified them!)
DeleteBoth your chairs deserve a circle of Inferno, but I haven't yet decided which. Their unwillingness to do their job is unconscionable!
DeleteI am STILL furious with my chair. And now I've emailed my program chair (subordinate to the department chair, but I wanted to clue her in, especially because she wanted me to join a committee that the dept. chair is forming, and I wanted to explain to her why I was not particularly okay with doing that right now), and SHE hasn't written back to me.
DeleteAt least my union is trying to help. They've contacted the associate provost to see if he can pressure my chair to DO THIS ONE VERY SMALL PART OF HIS #$&(@#$&(*@ING JOB (because really, all he has to do is enter email addresses and send a form letter to *people who have already agreed to write*, and I cannot IMAGINE why it's taking so long).
Daily rant now ending.
DEH: Very close.
DeleteOh, I'm so sorry! My advisor has to do actual work, like figure out my transfer credits and stuff. There's no excuse for your chair, and I would be using DEH's guess at your intention right now.
DeleteI'm glad the union is involved, and I hope you know you can rant away here.
My intention is Take Care of Things, for all senses of "take care," and things including people, animals, stuff, and tasks.
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
*Health: daily cardio and stretching, weights x 3, try to eat carefully and sleep enough. MOSTLY, x2, NO, very bad sleep week.
*Teaching: Assign points to last week's discussions x2 classes, grade first assignments x2 classes. x1 discussions, x2 assignments (as of today, Tuesday).
*Research: make plan for addressing revisions; some time on both dead and live languages; maybe some other reading. NO. Read through advice re revisions & wrote them out in my research journal.
*Service: prep for next week's meeting. NO: no meeting!
*Fun stuff: watch the Tour de France with Sir John, read more mid-century women's fiction. YES, YES.
*House/life: weeding; sign & mail tax return; put together more bookcases. YES, NO, YES.
And since Elizabeth (and maybe others?) want to know what I'm reading, here are some names/titles that I have enjoyed in recent months; I'm getting most of this on Kindle, for 3.99 or less. O. Douglas (a little preachy at times, but delightful on the interactions between impoverished gentry and new rich in the 1920s); Ursula Orange, whom I mentioned last week; Barbara Beauchamp; Elizabeth Cadell; Elizabeth Fair; Susan Alice Kerby; Doris Langley Moore; loads of D. E. Stevenson (a blessedly prolific writer). In fantasy, I recommend Andrew Caldecott's Rotherweird trilogy, and in literary fiction, I enjoyed Vesna Goldsworthy's Monsieur Ka.
New weekly goals:
*Health: daily cardio and stretching, weights x 3, try to eat carefully and sleep enough.
*Teaching: Assign points to last week's discussions x2 classes, grade second assignment x1 classes.
*Research: make plan for addressing revisions; some time on both dead and live languages; maybe some other reading.
*Service: prep for next week's meeting.
*Fun stuff: watch the Tour de France with Sir John, read more mid-century women's fiction.
*House/life: pruning; sign & mail tax return; put together more bookcases.
And for a more succinct statement of session goals than I managed last time:
DeleteLook after my health first.
Do a decent job teaching, and be kind to students.
Revise essay; try to make progress on book, and do at least a bit of language work every week.
Get boxes out of storage unit.
Thank you for the reading list!
Delete