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Sunday, 8 February 2026

2026 Session 1, Week 5

 


It continues to be grey and dismal here, only brief glimpses of winter sun. But the crocuses are starting to come through. In case anyone else needs a bit of colour, here is a photo of a hyacinth I bought myself a couple of weeks ago, photographed at its peak which is sadly now gone. But while it lasted, the scent was like a hug every time I walked upstairs.

This week's prompt is from Hattie Crisell again: what can language do? Her writers mostly discuss fiction e.g. making dialogue work, humour, but I think for all of us there is joy involved in getting the words right and knowing they are right. Crisell herself describes how one of the lessons she learned from her academic father was that clear writing is good manners. My (also academic) father told me exactly the same: if you want people to read what you write, it's a courtesy to make that easy. But there are many ways of making a message clear to the reader. What kinds of language do you use? Are you in a discipline where diagrams, graphs, tables, maps, maybe images do as much work as words? Do you use metaphors and analogies, or do you keep it direct?

Alternatively, what sort of language sets your teeth on edge? John Rentoul, a British journalist featured in In Writing has a long list of usages by journalists he thinks are lazy or ugly: 'upcoming' instead of 'forthcoming', 'ongoing' instead of 'continuing'. What student (or other people's) mistakes or clumsy phrases most annoy you?

Last week's goals:

Dame Eleanor
--1/2 hour writing/research on each of 3 days
--prep for 2 meetings
--prep for guest class
--prep for future class activity that has to be started way in advance
--track down missing ILL book or institute library search
--gym at least 3x, yoga at least 4x
--pick up cat meds
--remember to look at calendar/lists every day

Susan
1. Fill in gaps in syllabus
2. Letter for grad student that is due
3. Pile of minor admin stuff
4. Keep up with teaching stuff
5. Send out emails re conference; book spaces
6. Finish Room of Doom
7. Do three more journals
8. Start sorting books -- 1 bookcase
9. Keep up with exercise/ PT stuff
10. Do SOMETHING fun.

JaneB

SELF-CARE: all process goals, for three term time months:
a) intentional movement 20x3 or 15x4
b) some kind of making (art or craft) x2 including a birthday card for my Dad
c) something gently social x2 - yay, a new D&D game starting this week! Hopefully!
d) read at least one chapter (of fiction) every day this week other than re-reading bits of Queen Demon
IMPROVING MY ENVIRONMENT: goals carried over!
a) 75% of weekly list of chores
b) make a sketch for the new idea for the shelving in living space
c) reschedule decluttering person session.
TEACHING AND ADMIN:
a) deliver week 2 of teaching, email all the students who haven't replied to requests to make appointments
b) prepare class materials for fourth week of teaching, with updating
RESEARCH
a) work on teaching related grant application
b) analyse results and start another set of models running
c) read and comment on full draft of paper from not-my-grad-student

Daisy

Finish student presentations and help them practice
Finish committee review meetings and all related paperwork
Gather up little bits of mind from puddles into which it has melted
Do something healthy
Enjoy conference!!

Heu mihi

1. Finish program
2. At least one more LOR
3. Clean house for Dad's visit
4. Prepare newsletter
5. Send program highlights to chair
6. Italian & exercise

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2 comments:

  1. JaneB8 February 2026 at 20:44

    Hello! What a lovely hyacinth, I could smell it just from looking.

    Words. Hmmm. I do enjoy language, and as someone writing mostly for a STEM audience I mostly think of academic writing as a process of stripping away my personality and word-pleasures to leave the clearest communication. It became a lot easier to do once I started working with more international colleagues and really understood the challenges of trying to do all your work in a language not your own, I was able to reframe it as not censoring myself but making my work open to more people. My PhD supervisor also gave me an excellent framing for the kind of referee's comments that critique your language or where the referee doesn't understand your language (i.e. appears either critical or stupid), to see it as an opportunity to make my writing even more clear.

    Fiction, journalling and student handouts tend to be more in "my voice" and I get to play more with words. Language is so powerful. And of course the story-telling part of D&D also benefits from language, from coming up with consistent names for cretures and characters and places to describing settings and scenes in ways that bring everyone into the story.

    LAST WEEK:
    Slowly got a bit better. Stupid hormones (when will this last stage of perimenopause of erratic, longer. lighter cycles with teenage style hormones end? The lack of predictability is making me even more prone to forget hormones as the reason for "nothing is worth while and I hate it all" weeks...). The prospects are not good for my subject area, my institution or the profession more widely, but I've done a better job of keeping the gloom about that in a box. It remains the damp sort of cold here, which gets into your bones, but days are starting to get a bit longer.

    SELF-CARE: all process goals, for three term time months:
    a) intentional movement 20x3 or 15x4 three days, all longer than 20 minutes although one day was several short stretch/moving meditation things - it still counts
    b) some kind of making (art or craft) x2 including a birthday card for my Dad crocheted during a "Faculty Update Meeting" (the uni's management team talk at everyone on a call, compulsory cameras off for attendees - making time makes it less awful), and made a card today
    c) something gently social x2 - yay, a new D&D game starting this week! Hopefully!yes, two games of D&D
    d) read at least one chapter (of fiction) every day this week other than re-reading bits of Queen Demon yes (except today but I have time!). To answer a question from last week - I rarely stop at one chapter! And not reading into the wee hours remains a problem - I mostly read when I'm eating in the evening at the moment, rather than when I'm getting ready to go to sleep, I use podcasts as brain fodder for that part of the day as it's easier for me to get sleepy if I can take out my contact lenses and shut my eyes)
    IMPROVING MY ENVIRONMENT: goals carried over!
    a) 75% of weekly list of chores no - not none, but not enough
    b) make a sketch for the new idea for the shelving in living space no
    c) reschedule decluttering person session. we're exchanging availability to try & find something
    TEACHING AND ADMIN:
    a) deliver week 2 of teaching, email all the students who haven't replied to requests to make appointments yes, yes - and found some of them
    b) prepare class materials for fourth week of teaching, with updating yes

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JaneB8 February 2026 at 20:52

      RESEARCH
      a) work on teaching related grant application yes - we at least have a title!
      b) analyse results and start another set of models running yes, and the results showed that we made one silly mistake in all the models - a missing zero - AND that we had to throw one of the models out of the set because we'd assumed we had information we didn't actually have. So we fixed those and set the same models running again. Hopefully it will be third time lucky, these will work, and we can finally move on! The first model set always take the most time...
      c) read and comment on full draft of paper from not-my-grad-student yes, and it's now ready for her to prepare and submit to the journal! Yay!

      THE COMING WEEK:
      SELF-CARE: all process goals, for three term time months:
      a) intentional movement 20x3 or 15x4
      b) some kind of making (art or craft) x2
      c) something gently social x2
      d) read at least one chapter (of fiction) every day this week other than re-reading bits of Queen Demon (I can now mostly "read" the key scenes to myself without needing the book... so the initial flush of obsession should wear off this week :D)
      IMPROVING MY ENVIRONMENT: goals carried over!
      a) 75% of weekly list of chores
      b) make a sketch for the new idea for the shelving in living space
      c) reschedule decluttering person session.
      TEACHING AND ADMIN:
      a) deliver week 3 of teaching, chase up the last few students I need to meet with (or raise Welfare Concerns)
      b) prepare class materials for fifth week of teaching, with updating
      RESEARCH. This all feels very repetitive but I AM making small bits of progress each week, not just listing-and-ignoring!
      a) work on the larger outline grant application - we're at the "make the sections all fit the word count" and "tweak the wording in tiny ways endlessly" and "NOW the finance person tells us we need these three extra bits of information" stage. tedious!
      b) analyse results and start another set of models running
      c) read and comment on second draft of paper from Unexpected Collaborator

      Delete

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