Hello everyone!
Lots of extreme cold everywhere this weekend, I hope it is not causing too much havoc on roads and power grids and water mains!
I’m at a regional conference this weekend and it is wonderful being back at this one in person after two online editions. Catching up with people has been wonderful if somewhat exhausting, and I’m enjoying a much-needed break in my room before braving the poster area and talking to a hundred people. One of the fun things about small conferences is overhearing conversations and hearing things unexpectedly, and I had some really nice surprises in a few talks where presenters thanked me for things I did that I never really thought much about… Things like students mentioning me helping with interpretations, a couple of other presenters mentioned that ideas for talks came from conversations we had, all things that I did not remember as being particularly noteworthy, but clearly had an impact that I was not aware of.
So, for this week (optional as always) I would love to hear about two things… First, something you did this week that made someone else happy or helped out someone (big or little, expected or unexpected, part of your job or not, anything really…). Second, the reciprocal, something someone else did to make you happy…
Stay warm everyone, and have a great week!
Goals from last week:
Dame Eleanor Hull
- start work on expanding F into book
chapter
- make more progress with grad readings and both VILE sites
- read at least 500 lines of Irrelevant Romance
- scan stuff for grads
- grade 1 undergrad assignment
- write a letter of recommendation
- pay a bill, do some other Life Task (like put up grow lights)
Daisy
Reports and association meetings
Do 2 paper reviews for fancy journals that are due
Student recommendation letters
Two funding applications
Stuff for student poster
Read and comment on thesis chapters
Organizing and speeches for conference
Get out of bed for 6am exercise at least 4 times
Survive teaching
Keep doing ALL my physio exercises all the time…
Heu mihi
1.Research: Read/write 10 freaking
hours, please.
2. Routines: language x 5, keep up the rest.
3. Write book review.
4. Read dissertation chapter.
5. Other stuff that needs to be done, getting urgent: Pick a cover image for
edited book; send out invitation for journal special issue.
6. Schedule lunch with grad student.
JaneB
1)self-care: this week is about
getting back into better food habits. I kept up the stretching and mostly the
water drinking, but I have (no surprise) got sloppy around the food and my
sleep is all over the place.
1a) environment: do the small chores, 1 lot of linen laundry, and aim to
hoover/sweep every floor surface once
2) R - do something concrete towards the teaching-related R project
3) T - Get second week materials onto all the ViLEs and start third week.
remember to look out for work with extensions from last trimester! Sigh...
4) read a bit; post the letters; play D&D.
Julie
Do all the boring stuff and submit
journal article
Catch up on tedious admin
Prep some teaching to make coming weeks lighter
Declutter ahead of carpenter coming to fit new shelves and cupboard.
Have fun arranging new shelves and cupboard.
Self-care - exercise, batch cook soup for healthy lunches, book rest of Italy
trip, catch up with friends on Zoom.
Karen
KL draft pushed to approx 5000 words,
coherent enough (or leave notes in) to share with writing group
Intro/Week1 VILE fully polished, Weeks 2, 3 finished off minus external a/v and
interactives, Weeks 4, 5 roughed in.
Get some time away from kids each day (ideally, yoga or walk)
Start winter seeds
Susan
1. More work on chapter
2. Review 2 more chapters of Big Collaboration
3. Survive Wednesday
4. Do something fun at weekend
5. Keep exercising; include one 5 mile walk.
Hello. That was a week. I am tired... and we're only one week into teaching...
ReplyDeleteA quick drop in with goals, will think about the prompt later.
GOALS LAST WEEK:
1)self-care: this week is about getting back into better food habits. I kept up the stretching and mostly the water drinking, but I have (no surprise) got sloppy around the food and my sleep is all over the place. both are still all over the place.
1a) environment: do the small chores, 1 lot of linen laundry, and aim to hoover/sweep every floor surface once mostly, no and no
2) R - do something concrete towards the teaching-related R project yes. Which really makes me see how MUCH there is left to do. aargh!
3) T - Get second week materials onto all the ViLEs and start third week. remember to look out for work with extensions from last trimester! Sigh... yes, yes, saw it and did nothing with it
4) read a bit; post the letters; play D&D. yes; no, but did buy parental and sororial birthday gifts - early!; yes for an hour
THIS WEEK'S GOALS:
1) self-care: trying again about the food. And maybe even the sleep.
1a) environment: do the small chores, 1 lot of linen laundry, and aim to hoover/sweep every floor surface once
2) R - do something else concrete towards the teaching-related R project
3) T - Get third and fourth week materials onto all the ViLEs. MARK the work with extensions from last trimester.
4) do not work on strike day; read a bit; post the letters and the parental birthday gift; play D&D.
My goals are boring. _I_ am quite boring right now! it's February fill dyke, always a rather gloomy month for all it's short...
The final drag through the last bits of winter is the hardest. I hope you get some sunshine and a chance to be out in it this week.
DeleteJust do more than nothing. Remember WhatNow's February resolution: Suck Less! Much sympathy on the sleep. I lost circadian rhythms completely while I was sick and turned into a cat for awhile. I wish it had gone all the way (I would love to have a fluffy tail).
DeleteThis time of year is grim. I'm trying to focus on signs of spring - snowdrops, crocuses, and lighter mornings and evenings. It will come!
DeleteThere were a lot of yesses on your list! Incremental progress always counts even if it doesn't feel like much...
DeleteI like Julie's thoughts of spring, that is still a long way off for my area but the extra light in the evening is wonderful, makes a huge difference not coming home in the dark all the time!
I would also love a fluffy tail. And a lifestyle which involved a sun nap, a bed-on-the-desk nap, and a under-my-owner's-duvet nap before lunch time, followed by a bit of email-sabotaging and a long afternoon on-top-of-the-duvet nap, which is what Fluffball did today whilst I was working (7 hours of meetings and teachings... back to back...)
DeleteYup, that's the life!
Delete(How I wish I felt energetic enough for a little bug-chasing in between naps.)
Mmmm kitty life!!
DeleteNice prompt and I loved hearing about your conference experiences. We should do more to acknowledge things like helpful conversations.
ReplyDeleteI am exhausted and only finished writing my lecture for 9 am tomorrow about 30 minutes ago, so not very inspired on the prompt. I think the thing I most did to be helpful this week was to have a friend's son over on Wednesday when our kids were off school for a teacher's strike. Not that it was a huge deal and probably helped me out by keeping my son entertained. So maybe that's the reciprocity. Otherwise, being able to catch up with two of my closest friends and having them take an interest in how I'm doing.
Last week
Do all the boring stuff and submit journal article - NO, but made progress. It probably only needs a couple of hours more.
Catch up on tedious admin - YES, but more cropped up since.
Prep some teaching to make coming weeks lighter - NOT ENOUGH!
Declutter ahead of carpenter coming to fit new shelves and cupboard.- Some,
Have fun arranging new shelves and cupboard. -Some. Lots to do. But sooo pleased with how it looks.
Self-care - exercise, batch cook soup for healthy lunches, book rest of Italy trip, catch up with friends on Zoom. - Some exercise, but not enough, yes on soups, yes to Italy (yay!), yes to Zoom call
This week
This is only meant to be a 3-day week because of strikes. On the one hand, I get some time for decluttering etc. On the other hand, I have too much work to do in 3 days. It's another very heavy teaching week.
1. Survive 15 hours teaching and 3-4 hours meetings.
2. Somehow find time to finish paper (unlikely).
3. Somehow find time for admin that is getting urgent.
4. Don't feel guilty about only picketing on one strike day.
5. Finish decluttering
6. Organise shelves
7. Stock up at farm shop
8. Exercise
9. Bake or make a dessert at weekend
10. Book another theatre trip.
Wishing you all the best with strikes and a heavy workload on the remaining days. Even one day of picketing makes a big difference is making solidarity visible.
DeleteTime with friends, and time for your kid's friend, both sound like very good things! And yay soup, an excellent comforting winter food.
DeleteTaking care of an extra kid is a great reciprocal nice thing, everyone benefits! That is something I miss from our old town, that network takes a while to build...
DeleteSo glad the shelves turned out well! Even little bits of organizing go a long way to making things function well.
Good luck with the busy week!
Just taking strike action counts even if you don't picket, picketing one day is a bonus... and sorting out the shelves sounds like a great use of a strike day! I hope the shelves are satisfying every time you look at them...
DeleteThat is a very long list of things to do! #1 will take care of itself, as such things always do. And I hope that the baking is fun and delicious!
DeleteOn reciprocality, I have to shout out to my writing group, who are amazingly generous and insightful peers. I'm also trying to keep visible in mind the work that other family members do in maintain our home and family routine rather than only focusing on what I do and taking their contributions for granted. And
ReplyDeleteLast week:
KL draft pushed to approx 5000 words, coherent enough (or leave notes in) to share with writing group - didn't get as far with the word count, but did share it and after feedback now realised I need to pull it apart into two separate articles.
Intro/Week1 VILE fully polished, Weeks 2, 3 finished off minus external a/v and interactives, Weeks 4, 5 roughed in. - not exactly, but progress on interactives and recordings and roughing in most of the semester.
Get some time away from kids each day (ideally, yoga or walk) - yes, even if I have to count car time to do this
Start winter seeds - pull out and made a list of what seeds I'm missing.
This week I'm looking forward to some days with all kids at school, but starting to get more pre-semester contact from students.
KL article - pull apart and outline structure for the two articles
Teaching prep - have everything up to week 3 fully polished apart from the bits being done by the digital learning team
End of year exhibition - send out info to sound/session people
3 x yoga
Plant winter seeds
Two articles! That makes you sound very productive. You have a lot of progress this week---even "roughing in" is a great help. I hope the coming week is as good or better!
DeleteA lot of progress. I can sympathise on the two articles - I also came to the realisation a year or so ago that an article would be better as two. I'm seeing it as a bonus, even though I never know which one to work on.
DeleteYay for your writing group! And for the two articles! Hope the outline process is a fun thing to do, it will definitely show all the work that alreadyw ent into the paper I think, hopefully in a satisfying way rather than a frustrating one...
DeleteThat sounds like a really excellent writing week!
DeleteWell, I hope it will make my History of the Language students happy to have an extra exercise to do that will make up for some lowish quiz scores. Also my librarian friend and other medievalists at LRU seemed pleased that I turned up for a relevant presentation on a day I wouldn't usually be on campus. I liked seeing them, too (reciprocal), and also a student from another department (another field!) entirely came to my office to talk about things that he's reading just because he finds them interesting, and I translated some bits of Dead Language for him, and that was a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
- start work on expanding F into book chapter: NO.
- make more progress with grad readings and both VILE sites: YES. Grad syllabus complete! Grad readings all assembled except for one set of things I'll need to scan for a couple of weeks after spring break---loads of time!
- read at least 500 lines of Irrelevant Romance. YES (as of a few minutes ago!)
- scan stuff for grads. YES.
- grade 1 undergrad assignment. YES.
- write a letter of recommendation
- pay a bill, do some other Life Task (like put up grow lights). YES, NO.
I'm still spending most of my time lying around. This week was hard because Groundhog Day was my dad's favorite holiday, and I felt his absence for it much more than for Christmas or even his birthday. I'm getting by w/r/t teaching, and letting most other things go. I plan to skip a committee meeting tomorrow, so that I'll have more energy for my class (this is not at all my usual way of operating). Though I enjoyed the special presentation (mentioned above), and probably wouldn't have had the energy to go to it a couple of weeks ago, doing so wiped me out for the rest of that day. So I'm going to try to scale back my goals for the coming week.
- make more progress with undergrad VILE site
- read at least 500 lines of Irrelevant Romance
- create make-up exercise for HEL
- do other immediately necessary teaching stuff
Significant dates can be so hard. Take care of yourself this week.
DeleteSometimes just getting by is enough. And grief is weird in terms of what hits you. You never know.
DeleteScaling back goals is definitely the right thing for now. Grief adds to exhaustion and the combination of that and post viral tiredness is a lot to take. Hang in there and get lots of rest!
DeleteI agree with the above--scale back and rest. Take care of yourself first.
DeleteThat was a crazy week! Conference week is always nuts but for a very good cause. Most things got done, minor glitches only, and a great time was had by all.
ReplyDeleteI am really struggling with teaching planning this term, I have Mondays and Fridays completely filled with lectures and labs and those days is where I would normally plan the week ahead. So I really need to sit down and do a few days of batch planning/editing/printing/posting and get ahead as far as I can.
For my things that made other people happy this week I had the lovely task of informing our student award winners of their success – it is a nice set of awards because it is in part for being a leader in community/department activities so goes to students who may not be the academic stars all the time and can sometimes be overlooked for academic-only awards. At the conference I was able to connect a few people to each other for potential projects, and organized an invited talk for a junior person who was visiting for research meetings that will make it into her tenure file.
Things that other people did to make me happy: my daughter made me a nice cake while I was gone, the board of a volunteer group I work with were strangely and vocally impressed at a government budget letter I wrote (it was sooooo much easier than my own grant ones!), and I got lots of lovely comments/thanks at the conference for various random things. I love it when people actually tell other people when they notice good stuff, it dilutes the complainers so nicely! My goal for this week is to tell someone something nice every day this week…
Last week’s goals:
Reports and association meetings DONE
Do 2 paper reviews for fancy journals that are due ONE DONE, ONE DUE TOMORROW
Student recommendation letters DONE
Two funding applications DONE
Stuff for student poster DONE
Read and comment on thesis chapters MOSTLY DONE
Organizing and speeches for conference DONE
Get out of bed for 6am exercise at least 4 times TWICE, BETTER THAN NONE
Survive teaching NOT PRETTY BUT OK
Keep doing ALL my physio exercises all the time… DONE
This week’s goals:
Write results section of joint paper
Get ahead of teaching planning for the next month
Accounting for conference and research purchases
Requisition forms for equipment
Student meetings/planning for thesis
Student funding application
Two reviews, one due and one just annoying so I want to get rid of it
Keep physio and exercise going
It's so nice that people acknowledged what you've done! It sounds like a good but exhausting week.
DeleteWhat a great idea--to say something nice to someone every day. I mean, ideally we should all be doing that, I guess, but I imagine that nearly no one does. I'm going to keep this in mind.
DeleteThat is such a nice goal for the week! And a lot of 'done'. I also have a teaching-heavy Monday, which is leading to a lot of weekend prep this term, so sympathies. Good luck on trying to get ahead.
ReplyDeleteGoing to try and use those little half-hour gaps in the next few days to get some course stuff set up for the next few days. It is hard to think deeply in short bursts but I am sure I can do things like quizzes and lecture revisions i those times if I am organized and don't fritter away that time! One can hope...
DeleteI'm not sure I did anything to make anyone happy, but I went to a talk by a woman we might invite to join our department (but not my program), and took her to dinner. So that was a nice thing. And I worked with a colleague to get our grad admissions done, and she was awesome. We only got our admissions target number on Wednesday, so her committee had to cut people, but she did it. She just did her job, and we worked together, and WOW. It makes such a difference.
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
1. More work on chapter - YES, almost done, just have to figure out the conclusion
2. Review 2 more chapters of Big Collaboration - Only 1, but it's done. Still more to go, but one step at a time!
3. Survive Wednesday: YES, but it was a long day
4. Do something fun at weekend YES- went to a nursery and bought plants!
5. Keep exercising; include one 5 mile walk. YES on exercising, no on walk. I needed a day off, and the weather did not cooperate.
In general, a pretty good week. Lots of petty admin stuff, but I was able to make time for writing, and expect to finish my chapter either this evening or tomorrow. Then my goal is to go back over other chapters to fill in gaps, and write my epilogue. All the small interruptions are hard, though. (Today, for instance I went to the eye dr; it took a good bit of my morning.)
Goals for next week:
1. Finish Chapter; review earlier chaps and fix gaps/etc
2. Draft Epilogue
3. One more chapter from big collaboration
4. Keep up with admin stuff for graduate program
5. Keep up with exercise / healthy eating
6. Make "grapefruit-cello" and some marmalade
That is great to have the chapter almost finished! Epilogues must be fun to write... I always love reading them and frequently feel a little cheated when a book does not have an epilogue!
DeleteSo nice to work with good colleagues who do their jobs well, makes a huge difference to everyday tasks!
Going to talks and candidate meals is always a good thing---often enjoyable, and certainly necessary.
DeleteFINISH CHAPTER! I love that goal. And isn't it glorious when people simply do their jobs??
DeleteI will begin with a very long story--the conclusion to my should-I-be-chair saga.
ReplyDeleteI put my name in for consideration, and felt pretty good about it, though also a little anxious. Then the search committee convened to discuss the candidates. One of the members of the committee is my program director (the department has about seven programs with their own directors), and she sort of flipped out--because she had wanted me to take over as director next year. I knew that I was in the running for this, but I had thought that one of my colleagues was also interested. Turns out that she quite definitely isn't. So...that left me.
There were/are two other candidates for chair, both of whom have a lot more experience than I do (although for other reasons, I think that I still might have secured the position). I gave it some thought, worked out what our budget will be once I'm back to 100% salary, conferred with a trusted senior colleague/friend/mentor, and decided to withdraw from consideration for chair. For now. I'd like to do it someday. But I was feeling quite a bit of trepidation about the time commitment (you work all day every weekend, apparently!), and, in terms of money, my husband really ought to have a job by September. Honestly, being program director is much more manageable and appealing than being chair--plus I'll have time to write, which I'm enjoying these days. I do still feel a little pang about the path not (currently) taken, but I've got about 20 more years with this department, so it's not like I won't have another chance.
Anyway: A nice thing that I did for my current director was to tell her that I would be director next year. And a nice thing for me? I had drinks at a friend's house, which was lovely, and her dog really connected with me for some reason. The nice thing was when he drooped his head between my knees and his big silky ears spread out across my legs. He was sweet.
Last week:
1.Research: Read/write 10 freaking hours, please. - YES
2. Routines: language x 5, keep up the rest. - YES (although I skipped a run because it was so cold)
3. Write book review. - YES; submitted
4. Read dissertation chapter. - NO
5. Other stuff that needs to be done, getting urgent: Pick a cover image for edited book; send out invitation for journal special issue. -NO; waiting on my co-editor (who is the same for both)! She was supposed to get back to me last Monday....
6. Schedule lunch with grad student. - YES
This week:
1. Read/write 10 hours: work on CM section of chapter; begin drafting conference paper
2. Read dissertation chapter
3. Journal/edited collection stuff!!!!!!!
4. Answer grad student email from last month (yes, this needs its own category to make me do it)
5. Continue all routines, including language work
The director role seems to be an excellent alternative to the chair one, and as you mention will have more writing time and definitely more flexibility. You have great options, and lots more time to be chair.
DeleteLots of good done things last week too... Good luck on getting the edited volume stuff done!
That seems like an excellent outcome! And it's not exactly as if you're shirking responsibility . . . chair might be better left for when your son is out of the house, and in the meantime, program director is a good way to test out how you like administration at a less demanding level.
DeleteOne of the REAL reasons that I said no to chair was that I had to have three phone conversations in the wake of my program director's freak-out. While all three of these conversations were actually fine, the prospect of each one caused me SO MUCH STRESS that I was like, oh, yeah, *that's* why I used to say that I had no interest in being chair. (I do still want to do it someday. But I think that it will be a Growth Experience for me that I'm not quite ready to face.)
DeleteI agree that this seems like a good way to take on an admin role before diving in on the Chair role.
ReplyDeleteBut the DOG. Oh, my, that sounds so lovely!