Hi everyone, and Happy Easter to all who celebrate! We had high winds and hail/very heavy rain squalls here. interspersed with bright sunshine, as the southern fringes of "Storm Dave" passed over, so the illustration is creative commons generic doodles because the garden was feeling sorry for itself!
Feel free to use this post for any check ins you want - and perhaps we should also discuss a future session, since we usually run one from May to August.
I set myself some goals last week, so I will check in!
ReplyDeleteSELF-CARE: all process goals, for three term time months:
a) intentional movement 20x3 or 15x4 2 x 20
b) some kind of making (art or craft) x2 no
c) something gently social x2 yes
d) read at least one chapter (of fiction) every day yes
e) ask the decluttering person (who should be coming next week...) to help me take a digital photo suitable for applying for passport renewal yes!
IMPROVING MY ENVIRONMENT:
a) 75% of weekly list of chores 90% (thanks mostly to decluttering session)
b) sketch and measurements for the shelving in living space no because we couldn't find a tape measure anywhere. I own at least two but of course they were both in "really safe easy to remember places" so utterly elusive
c) list for decluttering person (turning out all the kitchen cupboards is the main job on the list) yes, and we did nearly all of it
TEACHING AND ADMIN:
a) check over lists for after Spring Break (we have three teaching weeks left before the assessment period) no
b) read boring papers for stupid internal REF grading panel. GRRR. Do not like.yes, and attended said panel. None of the papers were very good either.
RESEARCH.
a) continue to progress modelling work - write up what we did so far, see what the naughty laptop came up with this time. no and yes - and it was naughty so now it is doing some tests to try and work out what is going on
b) Nag everyone about the revise and resubmit paper and share new deadline yes, and spent several productive hours with it
c) complete lots-of-pages grant review (sigh. necessary, but oh, a dispiriting prospect) yes, and it wasn't as bad as I expected
I didn't do any of next week's planning yet because I slept badly last week, and the Head of School decided to play an "April Fool's Prank" which completely failed and Stressed Me Out (he tried to come up with a "ridiculous" set of requirements for the new workload allocation, but they were actually quite plausible if you'd actually read the paperwork and been to the briefing meeting, so I (and others) were taken in, stressed, and did a fair bit of discussing and working over writing requests for clarification etc.). Thursday the car went in for the wiper repair (finally!) so I was at the garage for a while with that, and then played D&D, then Friday the decluttering happened and after all that I was very over stimulated so needed to wind down and didn't fall asleep until 4am... anyway. No goals for next week yet. Maybe tomorrow. But it is a Bank Holiday...
Yay for all the decluttering and other yeses! And I have no idea where my tape measure is either....
DeleteI cannot believe your Head of School had nothing better to do than to play an April Fool's prank. That's utterly unprofessional and insensitive (to the point of maybe being discriminatory?). I can imagine a lot of people not realising because of different cultural backgrounds, or being ND, or just being too busy/stressed to notice the date. I think you'd be well within your rights to make a complaint, though I can appreciate you might not have the energy or want the unpleasantness.
Ditto on the Head of School. There is really no April Fool's prank that would be okay from a HoS right now.
DeleteAnd yay on the decluttering. The kitchen is a minefield of things, even though I've already got rid of 3 corkscrews!
The Head of School thing is still annoying me! Academics are supposed to be smart... sigh!
DeleteI also set some goals last week, so will check in here--thank you for this interim post, JaneB!
ReplyDeleteHow I did:
--finish conference paper: NOT YET. I finished the PowerPoint and plan to finish the "script" today.
--call my cell provider about switching account to new i-Pad: YES. It took awhile for the call center person to work out what I needed, but once that happened, the whole process was much more seamless than I expected.
--all the usual languages, exercise, etc: YES, good work me!
--pack as lightly as possible for trip to UK: YES, it has been quite manageable. It helps that this week's weather is excellent where I am!
ALSO: you know all the weeks in the last year when I said I needed to find reviewers, and then didn't? I have finally found some reasonable candidates and made the requests, and also sent an e-mail admitting to some other people that I am in over my head and really should never have taken on this role. It is a considerable relief to have said this, though I regret being inconsiderate to a co-editor and to the head of the organization (although if either one had got after me in the past year, I might not have dropped this ball so resoundingly).
I agreed to this task in the first place b/c I thought perhaps I might want to take on some editing position in retirement, and this would be a way of getting some recent experience on my CV (I have edited single issues of conference proceedings in the past). But it's way too much like grading. I just can't get interested enough to actually deal with the work, when I have plenty of my own research to get on with. Good to know, I suppose, that this is not a suitable retirement job, even though on paper it seems reasonable.
Another ALSO that to me is highly amusing: I have accepted a request to review an essay submitted to Exemplaria. I would not have said that I'd be an obvious choice of reviewer for a theory-oriented journal! You just never know, I suppose. And it's interesting that I am happy to do the review, which is a task associated with editing. The difference is that as a reviewer, I can pick and choose essays (or on occasion, book manuscripts) that sound interesting to me; I don't have to deal with whatever comes over the threshold.
It's often quite good to review outside your comfort zone, and useful for the author - if their argument is intelligible to someone who isn't an expert, that's a good sign. I edited a journal for years and while I did enjoy a lot of the work, there was also a lot of chasing of reviewers and authors that was deeply frustrating.
DeleteProgress! I think I'd be a terrible editor, I don't have the patience for all the people who don't reply...
DeleteHappy Easter! We were further north for the weekend, so were also battered by Storm Dave overnight Saturday-Sunday, though not nearly as badly as I'd feared. In fact, we had a lot of sunshine between the showers, so I got to walk by the sea to my heart's content. Now having some glorious sunshine at home. Hope everyone has had all the chocolate they could wish for.
ReplyDeleteLast week:
1. Send in review article (just needs some final references and a read-through). - YES
2. Tidy up chapter - mostly adding examples & references (waiting on one inter-library loan to check one section). - NO (interlibrary loan has now come in, so that's this week's task)
3. Finish reading post-doc's article if time. - YES
4. Organise stuff for weekend away. - YES
5. Enjoy weekend away (early birthday celebration!). - YES!
Beach walks at Easter are wonderful! sounds like you had a productive week too!
DeleteI too set some goals for last week, so reporting in:
ReplyDeleteUpdate documents on course site YES
Make an offer for a new home. NO
Start packing books to go to the library NO
And also: went through almost all of the 4 drawer lateral file and through out lecture notes from every class I've ever taught -- I kept the syllabi, but the rest has gone to the recycling. My goal is to reduce the 4 drawer lateral file to two banker boxes of files. One more drawer to go through
As for the house, probably looking easter weekend was not a good idea, but I saw a place I loved, and it turned out that it was already in contract, and not available. (It was unethical not to have told us in advance.) So back to the drawing board, and there is a possibility, and maybe some other things will come up this week.
I will be stressed until I have a place to live. It's just A LOT.
Ugh, househunting - wishing you all the lucky circumstances and perfect opportunities you deserve
Delete