Hello at the end of what has been an unseasonably warm weekend in the UK. It is scheduled to be cold again this coming week, but yesterday and today were glorious. I sat outside a café yesterday afternoon with a good friend, while our daughters sat by the river with ice cream.
Prompt for this weekend is thinking about friendship. I am absolutely drowning in marking and other stuff, and it is going to be a hard few days before I surface. But I spent all of yesterday with very good friends who were visiting from Scotland. The female half is one of my oldest friends from university and she and her partner have been rocks the last few years. Their kids and mine get on great. We don't manage to see each other that often, but it is always a huge boost when we do. And tonight the kids and I went for dinner with local friends, who again have made a point of being there for us the past few years. We have a regular monthly evening together.
As a result, I am feeling more up to facing the coming week than I was on Friday when I felt absolutely exhausted. Being part of this community is a boost as well, even if Susan is the only one I have (knowingly) met IRL. (Since I have yet to go to a US conference, I doubt I've met anyone else from TLQ, but who knows? Maybe one day).
So what friendships and communities keep you all going? Friends from childhood, uni days, more recently? IRL or online?
Last week's goals:
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
* 75% or more of the weekly minimal chores, tidy up the upstairs landing (one
day this WILL happen)
* make card & get presents for Ma's birthday (this is the many-events
period of the year)
3) TEACHING AND ADMIN
next week is Reading Week so no classes for my undergraduates - but the
following week is overly full for me with some new material, so I'd like to get
ahead. Also that way I might manage a day or two OFF (to catch up on house
stuff) next week since apparently my normal weekend isn't enough to do that
right now...
* prepare half of teaching for week after next & do ViLE stuff
* email all tutees who didn't make the meeting
* plan some methods training with new masters student
* check in with student with crisis
* write more applicant letters (I did all of MINE by the deadline but as ever
the reward for doing things is more things and now I need to help out with
other people's allocations)
* meet with now-senior grad student to follow up on their mid-year meeting
4) RESEARCH
* exciting new project idea meeting
* 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...
Contingent Cassandra
--Continue work on site: figure out csv import; add
additional documents (both full documents & individual pages for
transcription); work on making site more easily navigable, especially from key
landing pages
--Draft call for transcribers and other helpers and run draft and site by
organizational leaders who need to okay distribution of the call via the
organization’s communication channels
--Finish signup directions and guidelines for transcribers, communicate with
people who have volunteered to test the directions/site
--Write department chair, program director, and scheduling coordinator re:
possible adjustments to fall schedule
--Write colleague who has recently dealt with HR/university’s medical leave
system for advice
--Continue movement, especially strength training of arms/shoulders (perhaps
begin using some of the recommended post-op stretches as warmups?)
--Do additional work in the garden (weeding, seed-sowing, mulching,
bed-building)
--Make progress on choosing/ordering refrigerator (and possibly stove), moving
over-fridge cabinet, other fridge-replacement-related moving around of things,
and/or packing/mailing returns.
--Plan/prioritize other household work
Julie
1. Revisions to grant application.
2. More and more marking.
3. Read final chapter of thesis and meet with student.
4. Teaching prep: keep minimal.
5. Celebrate (hopefully) with other grad student after her viva.
6. Get organised for friends visiting this weekend.
7. Book train tickets, find replacement booking for Easter, apply for
daughter's provisional driving license (so not ready for this).
8. Self-care: read a novel, try to get outside as much as possible.
Susan
1. Finish the "And Also" response, add footnotes
2. Add the next revisions to my talk, practice it again
3. Try to get back to exercise: weights x 2, yoga x 1, 1 good walk
4. Figure out the next 3 talks (increasing panic, as one is at the endof the
month)
5. Read for pleasure
6. Keep up with earlier dinners / bedtime
7. Work on migrating church website to a new hosting platform
8. Make reservations for summer travel.
9. Enjoy the public lecture and it being done.
Daisy
ENDLESS student thesis stuff
Advertising posters and organizing for interdepartmental event
Many meetings about hiring
All the marking…
Make March plan for schedule and activities
Distinguished Dame Eleanor
- continue work on slides for at least one conference paper
- do some scholarly reading, take notes on whatever has stickies sticking out
- load some more stuff to ViLE site
- read Thing for a friend
- fill in one set of forms that involves money
- yoga x5, cardio x5, trainer session
- find & print some tax documents
- order more flowers for niece
- set goals for March
Heu mihi
Shovelling!
How I did:
ReplyDelete1. Revisions to grant application. - SOME
2. More and more marking. - YES (many more to go)
3. Read final chapter of thesis and meet with student. - YES
4. Teaching prep: keep minimal. - SOME
5. Celebrate (hopefully) with other grad student after her viva. - YES (she passed with minor corrections, so very happy all round)
6. Get organised for friends visiting this weekend. - YES
7. Book train tickets, find replacement booking for Easter, apply for daughter's provisional driving license (so not ready for this). - SOME, YES (thankfully), NO
8. Self-care: read a novel, try to get outside as much as possible. - YES, YES (long walks in sunshine yesterday)
This week:
1. Finish the marking (due Thursday)
2. Somehow find time to work on grant application.
3. Final proper bit of teaching of term.
4. Finish booking train tickets, apply for daughter's provisional license, optician's appointment, plan for weekend in London (son in a cross-country race on Saturday).
The marking will be a marathon, so keeping goals to the minimum.
Sounds like you had a really cup-filling weekend! And congratulations on the graduate student's success and on finding an Easter alternative!
DeleteDo you have a third term of teaching, or is that actually nearly it altogether?
These days - mostly friends I haven't seen for years, or have never met. My D&D group, most of whom I've only known a couple of years, someone I "met" as a penpal from a dieting magazine decades again (we are both still very large people, and both still good friends), my former flatmate... and of course all the friends I can never meet from the pages of books, whether they're fictional or from a different time and place.
ReplyDeleteIt's been a week - a certain colleague has been completely failing to respond to my emails, I had to get the Head of School involved. And that person's share of grading got done four days late. I get that said colleague is under a lot of pressure, but that to me does not excuse not replying to emails/letting anyone know that you might not make a deadline/leaving other people to send out apologies to students without even being able to say when the marking WILL be done. I'm very very tired. I'm also having allergies in all directions (very warm early spring weekend has filled the air with allergens, and I Do Not Like Spring, it's my "SAD Season". And Shoutypants the cat is being a cat, and has decided he dislikes just about every kind of cat food I have in the house so is sucking off the jelly/gravy and leaving the "meat" cubes around the place, acting pathetic, shouting a lot, (then raiding his biscuit supply in the middle of the night and stuffing his little face, despite there being a bowl of it available, no, the bag has to be opened - so at least there's nothing wrong with his teeth?). This week should be relatively light - only one day on campus - but NEXT week is my heaviest teaching week, on campus three days, and I need to be prepared to solo teach what should be a joint session since a colleague is travelling back from a research trip on another continent and scheduled to land very early morning before our 10am class... yes, thanks colleague for not telling me that until you were already away! I CAN do it but I'm not feeling very appreciated or informed!
Ugh.
LAST 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 knitting and a card for my Mum's birthday, D&D twice, read a couple of chapters a night of a tolerable but not good multi-viewpoint story, 4 days of movement, no additional social
2) HOUSE-LIFE CARE
* 75% or more of the weekly minimal chores, tidy up the upstairs landing (one day this WILL happen) nearly, no
* make card & get presents for Ma's birthday (this is the many-events period of the year) yes - the package should be picked up tomorrow morning for delivery
3) TEACHING AND ADMIN
Deletenext week is Reading Week so no classes for my undergraduates - but the following week is overly full for me with some new material, so I'd like to get ahead. Also that way I might manage a day or two OFF (to catch up on house stuff) next week since apparently my normal weekend isn't enough to do that right now... looks like I won't manage actual days off as there are multiple student needs going on but I will try really hard to keep my hours short except for the day I have to be on campus for a training thing to do with the wretched Research Excellence Framework)
* prepare half of teaching for week after next & do ViLE stuff did all the substantial parts of the prep, minimal ViLE stuff
* email all tutees who didn't make the meeting yes
* plan some methods training with new masters student tried. Ran into some technical issues
* check in with student with crisis yes. Crisis continues. Student's adorable toffee coloured curly-eared spaniel puppy joined the meeting which was nice, and they not only agreed to do some paperwork for the university they actually did it and mailed it the same day, which makes a nice change
* write more applicant letters (I did all of MINE by the deadline but as ever the reward for doing things is more things and now I need to help out with other people's allocations) yeah. They feel really artificial and are making me mad, but I did another 20
* meet with now-senior grad student to follow up on their mid-year meeting yes, very successful meeting
4) RESEARCH
* exciting new project idea meeting yes, and it IS exciting - we agreed an "only ask nice people to join the project team" policy which is welcome!
* if possible, spend an hour on reading/writing for vague grant idea no
* if time, look at the Consultancy Paper that is back on my plate, sigh. I am so fed up with this paper... no. insufficient spoons
NEXT 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)
* a couple of small things off the list
3) TEACHING AND ADMIN
* prepare remainder of teaching for next week & do ViLE stuff
* write even more applicant letters
* meet with now-senior grad student to go through their technical terminology (their phonetic spelling is amusing at times but science also needs consistency...)
4) RESEARCH
* review article for journal
* 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...