Hello everyone! If I'd posted yesterday, this would be very upbeat, as it was suddenly warm and springlike here. The crocuses started coming out, I planted some bulbs, the garden was full of birds, my mother texted happily to say she had hung the washing outside for the first time this year. All the signs of spring...
Today it is wet, the sun has not shone all day, and we have weather warnings for gale force winds. The crocuses (croci?) are probably wishing they'd stayed underground longer, and my washing is on the dryer in front of the kitchen radiator. Heigh-ho.
Everyone seems to have a lot on their plate right now, and it is still February. So today's prompt is inspired by a blogpost I saw recently on 'What is saving your life right now?' What are you turning to for moments of sanity in all the madness, or what hacks do you have e.g. quick and easy meals, postponing things, for getting through busy days?
Last week's goals:
Julie
1. Write full draft of grant proposal to send to colleagues.
2. Exercise, sleep, healthy eating.
3. Trip to farm shop (they sell fancy candles).
4. Be kind to myself and focus on the kids.
JaneB
1) SELF-CARE (recovery and self-kindness)
* habits: something creative, D&D, read a novel, intentional movement 15
minutes x 3 days, a social thing
2) HOUSE-LIFE CARE
* decide about decluttering & communicate early
* 75% or more of the weekly minimal chores, tidy up the upstairs landing (one
day this WILL happen)
3) TEACHING AND ADMIN
* prepare teaching for next week & do ViLE stuff
* schedule individual meetings for all tutees
* write applicant letters
4) RESEARCH
* if possible, spend an hour on reading/writing for vague grant idea
* if time, look at the Consultancy Paper that is back on my plate, sigh. I am
so fed up with this paper...
Dame Eleanor
- tidy up the chapter and send to friend
- continue work on slides for at least one conference paper
- do some scholarly reading, take notes on HJ essay
- process at least 6 grad applications (this will not be the end)
- catch up with ViLE stuff
- yoga x5, swim 1-2 times, show up for trainer but try to take it easy
- continue work on application for the Revised Thing
- one appointment; visitation for former colleague; get birthday cards for two
friends
Susan
1. Actually get to work on moving forward on Rest of Life
2. Finish working on maps
3. Do the easy permissions
4. Clear out more email (it's very satisfying)
5. Start filling out tax information for accountant
6. Exercise: weights x3, walk to work once, 1 yoga
7. Healthy eating and sleep
8. Enjoy being Auntie next weekend
Daisy
Student thesis stuff
Grant application
All musical, all the time…
Contingent Cassandra
--Continue work on site as time allows
--Continue some movement
--Visit historical society and convey results to nephew (who has an interest in
the part of our family history I’ll be investigating)
--Enjoy conference & time away more generally; catch up with friends.
Heu mihi
On holiday, I think, or at least travelling!
What is saving my sanity is binge reading a crime series, getting out for runs when I can and using meals from the freezer. And seeing birds in the garden. I bought a new bird feeder last week and it is attracting a lot of birds. Hoping some tits will make use of the nesting box again.
ReplyDeleteLast week:
1. Write full draft of grant proposal to send to colleagues. - ALMOST
2. Exercise, sleep, healthy eating. - SOME, NOT ENOUGH (binge reading not compatible with sensible early nights), ISH
3. Trip to farm shop (they sell fancy candles). - YES (candle is grapefruit and lime scented)
4. Be kind to myself and focus on the kids. - YES (had a takeaway one evening, talked about their dad a lot, watched TV and a movie)
This week:
1. Finish last section of research proposal, send application to colleagues.
2. Do fiddly bits of grant: revising costings etc.
3. Write two references for students.
4. Read student's PhD thesis.
5. Advise other student about viva.
6. Start marking ALL the essays.
7. Research summer holiday options, book train tickets for two weekends away, organise lift-sharing for various sporting events.
That sounds like a lot of "wrapping up" tasks this week - making space for summer fun and hopefully new research activities!
DeleteHope the summer holiday planning was a bright spot!
DeleteGood luck with proposal.
Sounds like good progress. I'd love to know what the crime series is. And I aspire to once again live in a place where bird feeders are allowed/appropriate (my present apartment doesn't have room, and in any case I'm in a setting urban enough that, sadly, the food would probably draw as many unwanted rodents as birds, though we do have a fair number of birds, including but by no means limited to starlings, pigeons, and crows. I've even got a view over a river that sometimes includes raptors riding the thermals, which is cool.)
DeleteCrime series is the Simon Serrailler novels by Susan Hill. They are cliched in some ways (how many serial killers can one small English town have?), but not in others (police detective is not an ageing drunk with failed relationships and maverick approach to policing but a good-looking and charming man who is also an artist, though his love life is a disaster). What I like is that the central character's twin sister, a doctor, becomes as important over the series as he is, and she is interesting in all sorts of ways. Plus the crime dials down from sensationalised violence to more believable kinds (drugs, theft). And they are an easy read in terms of the prose.
DeleteBeaufort Scales series by Kim M Watt - mysteries with added magic/fantasy elements and cake - the ladies of the Women's Institute in a small Yorkshire village seem to attract all sorts of excitement since they befriended the local dragon clan, encountering crimes committed by both humans and supernatural creatures, and determined to help the hard done by police. A bit too whimsical sometimes for me, but they are well edited and the importance of cake is very WI- realistic!
DeleteThanks, Julie and JaneB! I've enjoyed the Simon Serailler series, but am not sure whether I'm caught up. Will need to check. Beaufort Scales is new to me; will have to check it out!
DeleteI'm not sure I have much sanity to save at this point! I am rationing out a cozy detective series with dragons and cake, D&D is a fun bit of escape when I manage to play, and at least when it's cold I can wear a ridiculously oversized fuzzy hoodie garment and/or my fuzzy dressing gown.
ReplyDeleteLAST WEEK:
So many meetings. SO MANY MEETINGS. Also having to commute to campus for 1-2 hours in person wrapped around by 4-6 hours shut in my office on computer calls is not something I enjoy. Sigh!
1) SELF-CARE (recovery and self-kindness)
* habits: something creative, D&D, read a novel, intentional movement 15 minutes x 3 days, a social thing yes - birthday card for my sister & thinking of you card for my uncle, yes, yes, 3 days, nothing in addition to D&D
2) HOUSE-LIFE CARE
* decide about decluttering & communicate early decided - I cancelled on Monday
* 75% or more of the weekly minimal chores, tidy up the upstairs landing (one day this WILL happen) no, no
3) TEACHING AND ADMIN
* prepare teaching for next week & do ViLE stuff yes
* schedule individual meetings for all tutees tried. Most tutees are busy pretending they didn't get the message, so this is an ongoing nag the undergrad situation
* write applicant letters some. It takes a while as multiple clicks have to be made to open files on two different systems to personalise each letter and the main records system is very laggy at the moment
4) RESEARCH
* if possible, spend an hour on reading/writing for vague grant idea hahah no. But I DID have two research-related meetings about other projects that weren't on my radar and did a few things related to those, so not ZERO research activity
* if time, look at the Consultancy Paper that is back on my plate, sigh. I am so fed up with this paper... no
and I still did more hours than I get paid for...
And got some New Stress - Senior Grad Student submits their thesis at the end of the month, but has to have all their paperwork in order to do so, and one of the last forms got "lost in the system" before Christmas - partly my fault as I should have hovered over its progress until people were mad with me eevry step of the way but I trusted the (at that point, demonstrated) efficiency of the last person in the line and... they just forgot. They've apologised but show no sign of urgency in fixing it and so far I haven't told Senior Grad as they don't need the stress. It SHOULD be fixable... big sigh.
NEXT WEEK:
my days are different again, and I have my teaching being "peer-observed" by the new Head of School (who isn't really a peer and has never taught here so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) in a statistics workshop. Ugh. Two weeks til reading week...
1) SELF-CARE (recovery and self-kindness)
* habits: something creative, D&D, read a novel, intentional movement 15 minutes x 3 days, a social thing
2) HOUSE-LIFE CARE
* 75% or more of the weekly minimal chores, tidy up the upstairs landing (one day this WILL happen)
* get a birthday package in the post for my sister (it includes a plushy baby goat as we have been exchanging screaming goat memes over some parental frustrations lately)
3) TEACHING AND ADMIN
* prepare teaching for next week & do ViLE stuff
* nag all tutees about meetings
* mid year monitoring for one grad student, check in with another (who has personal drama going on which has required her to pack up herself and her dog and move back in with her mother at no notice, so is not having a good time and possibly needs to take a study break),
* write applicant letters
4) RESEARCH
* meetings about five differenet obligations will probably take ALL my research time this week... but lets pretend magic will happen and have a couple of "an hour on" stretch goals!
* if possible, spend an hour on reading/writing for vague grant idea
* if time, look at the Consultancy Paper that is back on my plate, sigh. I am so fed up with this paper...
It's hard enough doing our jobs, but when the administrative structure crashes in some way, or someone forgets some trivial thing that has big consequences... Ugh. Anyway, I hope everything with Senior Grad Student works out.
DeleteAnd as always, I enjoy the different implications of our acronyms in the different countries: we talk about the LMS (learning management system) which is bad enough, but I never know whether to laugh or cry about something called ViLE!
I hope there is something nice this week with all the rest.
I think ViLE was my misreading of VLE, Virtual Learning Environment, and it caught on!
DeleteViLE is a perfect acronym or mis-acronym, if that's a thing!
DeleteYay for getting lots of bits of things done, they all do add up in the end. Hope you get some good reading to fit into business!
DeleteMystery series seem to be a theme this week. As mentioned above, I welcome recommendations (I actually seem to read a lot of mysteries set in the UK, though I've been trying to identify US writers with good a good regional focus as well).
DeleteAnd ugh, indeed, for paperwork snafus and usually-reliable people falling down on the job. We're all under a lot of stress, so it's understandable in a way, but also makes things unnecessarily hard.
Hope the teaching observation goes well. My colleagues and I are once again discussing whether we should agree to formally observe each other, since otherwise we're observed by people with very different jobs/experience (but who are fortunately mostly appreciative of what we do, so for the moment the answer seems to be that we're holding out for comprehensive workload reform rather than agreeing to adjustments around the edges that have their upsides, but run the risk of our ending up with significantly more service but no less teaching)
ViLE was indeed immediately adopted from Dame Eleanor because VLE is harder to say and less accurate (even though our current system is less awful than previous ones, it is still a pain in the backside, largely because it's designed for the US degree system and last I checked we are still and always have been in the UK!)
DeleteI should be heading to bed, but if I don't check in now I probably won't manage it till Wednesday. Things saving me: (1) knowing there are only 2 weeks till spring break; (2) pre-cooked sliced turkey; (3) the very great charm of Mor, who sometimes is extremely cuddly and at other times very silly, as for example attacking and killing tea towels, sometimes managing to grab onto both sides of a hanging towel so that she dangles from it like a sloth.
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
- tidy up the chapter and send to friend: SENT, with minimal tidying (2 footnotes fleshed out, formatting tidied; there are still lots of notes to self about citations, quotations, further examples).
- continue work on slides for at least one conference paper: YES, one slide
- do some scholarly reading, take notes on HJ essay: YES, notes taken anyway, and I must have done some reading but maybe it was all for teaching purposes . . .
- process at least 6 grad applications (this will not be the end): YES! And I did finish the batch sitting in the system. I know there will be at least one more b/c I wrote a rec letter for that student, but I am thrilled not to be the person clogging things up anymore.
- catch up with ViLE stuff: IN PROGRESS
- yoga x5, swim 1-2 times, show up for trainer but try to take it easy: YES, NO, YES.
- continue work on application for the Revised Thing: NO
- one appointment; visitation for former colleague; get birthday cards for two friends: YES, YES, YES also bought extras.
ALSO: wrote fall course descriptions (this took 3 hours of going through old notes and studying potential textbooks); arranged to be interviewed in the coming week about the museum-ish thing that I've been darkly alluding to for awhile; read the novel for this week's book group meeting, went to it, went to another library presentation by one of the group's members; made two phone calls; ordered flowers for my niece, who is not at all well. And a student I nominated for a scholarship (if that wasn't an ALSO item a week or two ago it should have been) has been awarded the scholarship, so that was a lovely piece of good news!
New goals:
- measurable work on essay for proceedings volume
- continue work on slides for at least one conference paper
- do some scholarly reading, take notes on whatever has stickies sticking out
- fill in two sets of forms that involve money
- catch up with ViLE stuff
- revise syllabus
- yoga x5, swim 1-2 times, trainer session
- finish application for the Revised Thing
- find & print some tax documents
- send birthday cards for two friends
- go to former student's presentation
I think a cat pretending to be a sloth would brighten anyone's life! Sounds like you are making a lot of progress, particularly on extra things.
DeleteMor sounds delightful! Tea towels and other soft things must be vanquished!
DeleteCats are wonderful, and at least a temporary solution to many things (though I will admit that I'm glad that the elderly family cat who visited last fall, and whom I came close to adopting, will not be trying to sit on my head as I sleep in the coming months. Pouncing on soft things -- as long as they're not socks with my feet in them -- is more acceptable, and fun to watch.)
DeleteNothing like a happy cat! Someone bought me and the current cat a fancy laser pointer type toy for Christmas, and we are both getting a lot of pleasure from it!
DeleteWhat's saving me? Partly the luxury of being on sabbatical, but I strictly limit news and social media; I watch Great British Bake-off before bedtime; and while I eat at home mostly, I don't cook a lot of complicated stuff. In other words, keeping life simple.
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
1. Actually get to work on moving forward on Rest of Life SORT OF
2. Finish working on maps YES
3. Do the easy permissions NO
4. Clear out more email (it's very satisfying) NO
5. Start filling out tax information for accountant YES
6. Exercise: weights x3, walk to work once, 1 yoga YES NO YES
7. Healthy eating and sleep SOME
8. Enjoy being Auntie next weekend YES, less than expected
It was a pretty good week, but on Wednesday I felt like I was getting sick, and stayed home Thursday not sick but just exhausted. And that was what was needed. I've had a couple of not much sleep nights, so am trying to be better about both eating earlier and not playing solitaire too long before going to sleep. I'm just really tired.
I had a good time with the nibblings, but I was really supporting my SIL, who has just lost her job; I was really just there Saturday, but I cooked dinner, which was a favor to everyone.
Goals for this week:
1. Put final touches on lecture for next week
2. Figure out what I'm doing in the 3 other talks I'm now giving before the end of June, use that to plan my time. (It's all theme and variations, but I don't want them to be all the same.)
3. Read for pleasure
4. Weights x 3, walk to work once, yoga x1
5. Keep up with regular bedtime, earlier dinner
6. Make plane reservations for summer
(and I'm sure there is something I'm forgetting, but for now that's it.)
Hope the rest continues and you feel better.
DeleteSimple is good! Hope talks shake out well, I'm sure they will all be very satisfying. Have recently gotten into the Bake-off series, so much fun, and very relaxing.
DeleteSeconded on simplicity and sabbatical. It's a good combination.
DeleteThirded!
Delete
ReplyDeleteWhat a week! Saving me right now is definitely the fun part of the musical. The production is awesome, the kids are just working their little hearts out and it is so much fun to see them shine. Also helping that I am doing literally nothing at home for either cooking or cleaning or anything other than cat feeding. Snuggles at night with cats is good for relaxing and winding down after shows.
Last week’s goals
Student thesis stuff ONGOING
Grant application DONE
All musical, all the time… ONGOING
Also done: three separate conference abstracts, bunch of
This week’s goals
ENDLESS student thesis stuff
A different grant application
Three student grant applications
Reference letters
Final bits of all musical, all the time…
Yay cats! They help with everything. Well, most things. They would probably hate the musical, and knock your samples off the tables. Good luck with the musical and applications!
DeleteJust under the wire, again. Will try to do better.
ReplyDeleteSaving graces right now:
--Taking things off my schedule (I’ve withdrawn from an online class/reading group and from a conference, for reasons I’ll explain below)
--Being on study leave (it’s amazing how busy one can be without teaching – but I knew that from the last few summers)
--Having reasonably-clear priorities but taking each day as it comes in terms of weather, energy, anxiety level, amount of sleep I got the night before, etc., and adjusting plans accordingly (being on study leave and having fewer commitments with inflexible deadlines helps to make this possible, of course).
Delayed Midterm Checkin:
DeleteI’m keeping my goals, since they’re still appropriate, and were framed in a reasonably flexible way. At the same time, I’m seriously considering more heavily prioritizing some of the “get my environment in better order” ones, especially those that require heavy lifting (once again, reasons below).
The background/context to that is that, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve been undergoing some medical testing, and the upshot is that I have thyroid cancer, and will need surgery in the next few months, and possibly radioactive iodine treatment to follow that. The further-back background is that I was on the same path with early-stage breast cancer a year ago (scanning/testing and biopsies early in the Spring ’24 semester, surgery last April, and radiation last summer). I’m very grateful that these are both relatively manageable cancers with good prognoses (I’ve known more than a few people, including both parents, for whom that was not the case), that I’ve recovered well from the breast-cancer treatment and have had several clear scans since, and that I’m tolerating the hormone blockers I’m taking to lessen the chance of a recurrence well. The cancers also seem to be unrelated, which is good.
I’m also very grateful that I’m on study leave (and realizing, in retrospect, just how hard juggling treatment planning and recovery with teaching last year was). At the same time, I’m sad and frustrated that I don’t get to just concentrate on my study leave project and other activities I was planning for the time (which I also envisioned as a chance to rest and recover from the stresses of the last year), and periodically feeling pretty tired and discouraged by the whole business.
And I’m worried about some of the possible complications of the upcoming surgery, which include short- or long-term injuries/changes to my voice (which of course I need professionally; I’m also a long-time amateur choral singer, and would very much like to continue that activity) and injuries to the nerves which control movement in my arm, shoulder, and jaw/mouth area. All of those are rare, and, after some reading and a second meeting with my surgeon (for whatever combination of reasons, the first did not go well), I’m feeling more confident that he is taking all possible steps to avoid them, and that I’m aware of the steps I can take to cope with them if need be. Other unknowns include how well I’ll adjust to taking replacement thyroid hormones, how long it will take to adjust the dose, and how well my parathyroids will weather the surgery.
At the moment, I’m still expecting to teach in the fall, and will reach out to my chair, program director, and scheduling coordinator soon to see if we can make minor adjustments to my current schedule to minimize strain on my voice (e.g. replace back-to-back face to face classes with more widely-spaced or online ones; make sure any face to face classes are scheduled in classrooms with a microphone available). If I have more serious complications, I’ll need to talk to HR and figure out what’s possible in terms of medical leave (but unless whatever we arrange lasts the whole semester, I’d lose some of the freedom I currently enjoy to plan my own curriculum as long as I meet course goals, which would definitely make the semester harder, so there’s a tradeoff there. My preferred solution if I’m still experiencing significant complications/side effects would be to teach the full semester but teach fewer sections, but I don’t think my university’s approach to medical leave is particularly amenable to that, even though it would probably work out best for me, my students, and any colleagues filling in.)
Goals for last week:
Delete--Continue work on site as time allows
yes
--Continue some movement
yes
--Visit historical society and convey results to nephew (who has an interest in the part of our family history I’ll be investigating)
yes
--Enjoy conference & time away more generally; catch up with friends.
yes
Reflection:
All in all, pretty good. I also read a book for pleasure – one of Laurie King’s Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes mysteries – while traveling, and was reminded how much I enjoy that (which seems to have fallen by the wayside in favor of reading newspapers online, which I’m thinking is not the best choice). So I want to do more of that, and post-surgery recovery seems like a good time to implement that plan.
Goals for the coming (well, present and nearly done) week:
--Continue work on site, including getting transcription and user accounts set up; figure out csv export and import (which seem to require two separate procedures)
--Add additional documents to site (and/or divide existing ones into pages for transcription)
--Continue movement, especially strength training of arms/shoulders (since having those as strong as possible going into surgery presumably can’t hurt, though nerve damage is admittedly a somewhat separate issue)
--Do some work in the garden
--Plan/prioritize other household work
one more goal for this week:
Delete--Write paper proposal for fall conference (being optimistic here, but this is a once-every-three-years conference that focuses exactly on my specialty, so I really want to go. Also, it's in a close-by city reachable by train, and mid-fall, so chances of my being able to attend seem good)
I'm sorry you are dealing with health problems during what you expected to be an enjoyable study leave, though I see your point about the difficulties of managing treatment while teaching.
DeleteI've started re-reading P. D. James's Adam Dalgleish series; it has been a long time since I read them, and I'm surprised at how remote the early 60s seem now. Another recommendation is for the TV version of Hamish MacBeth. The episodes and even some characters are not very closely aligned with the books, but they are good fun with nice scenery.
So sorry about all your health problems, which sound scary and daunting. Hope you can be kind to yourself and there is support available.
DeleteSo sorry to hear about the health issues! They take up a lot of mental space even if all the treatments are tidy and take little time, and this won't even have the decency to do that. It's always hard to decide if having bad stuff happen during a period of research is better than during teaching - the flexibility helps, but it also feels like such a waste!)
DeleteThanks, all. It's a manageable situation, and I'm grateful for that, but still figure I get to grumble at least a bit about having to do my part in managing it.
DeleteAnd revisiting P.D. James sounds like a good idea, as does checking out some TV versions of mysteries, especially if it turns out that reading is difficult in some way or another (e.g. holding head at appropriate angle for long periods of time) after surgery. Should probably make sure I'm set up to consume audio books and podcasts for same reason (I'm usually more a reader than a listener, but do consume a lot of NPR programming in the course of a week).
DeleteSo sorry to hear about health problems, glad you are managing, but it is still hard and challenging. We're all cheering you on, albeit remotely!
Delete