Hi, Thought I'd just come here and make a space in case anyone wants to report in on any late achievement of last session's goals (it me) or set goals for the coming week. I WAS going to do some planning but Mr Shoutypants apparently needed my planner more!
Hello everyone!
We’ve reached the inevitable end of the session! It kind of flew by as many of them do… Thank you for joining us here and chatting, and for the empathy, encouragement, commiseration, and joy you’ve shares. Thanks for humouring me with the intentions, I enjoyed that! Thank you for sustaining this community, it is a lovely little corner of the interwebz and I love that you keep coming back!
Picture this week is of local peaches and strawberries, none of which are from anywhere near my garden… I am a terrible gardener who loves the idea of gardening… The total sum of the fruit/vegetable things that came out of the garden this year is as follows: one green pepper (my daughter it); very sparse crop of sour cherries (a big fat happy raccoon ate those, we caught her in the tree a few nights in a row, she just looked at us and I’m pretty sure flipped off the cats who were staring…); zero raspberries (not sure who ate those but maybe next year?); and four pods of sweet peas (I thought of eating them but then picked them too late so now they are seeds I guess?)… But, I did enjoy the process most of the time, so it was worth it. Maybe that is the lesson…
So, on to enjoying our proverbial harvest we planned at the beginning of the year with our goals and intentions!
Last week’s goals below:
DEH
-
get back into a routine (for exercise; morning stuff; evening winding down)
- finish the most recently requested set of revisions to W essay & send it
off
- one hour each reading for next project and working on M festschrift essay
- probably more editorial stuff b/c co-editor has gone AWOL again
- write to some friends
JaneB
SELF-CARE:
* 4x20 intentional movement, 3 x making, 2 x small things with people, reading
every day
* update the tasting menu and do at least one thing a day
* take the time to make nice attractive meals that are not just "the
usual" a couple of days
HOME AND ENVIRONMENT:
* 75% of chores
* make more progress on the Living Room Project
* do all the personal finance tasks on the summer list
TEACHING AND ADMIN:
* finalise comments on the timetable release (due this Friday so can't wait til
next week)
* one high speed email triage (some missing resits, ongoing student support
stuff)
* set up new teaching bullet journal/daily notebook (fun because it involves
nice things like washi tape and writing in all the headings in nice writing,
NOT working!)
RESEARCH: nothing
Together those things should take no more than 2 hours
Julie
1.
Catch up on emails - lot of teaching prep, urggh.
2. Start on revisions to one article.
3. Try to spend some time on Big Article: get back into writing mode.
4. Teaching prep: write short introductory paragraph for first-year module, set
up meeting for first week of September, chase difficult colleagues.
5. House/life admin: post-holiday laundry, financial stuff, thank you gift for
friends whose house we borrowed in Toronto, nephew's birthday present, take son
for MRI scan (not serious, physio is just trying to figure out why he has shin
pain).
6. Self-care/fun: get back to running, be outside in the garden as much as
possible, read, carry on the cross stitch I started on holiday.
heu mihi
Beach
goals!
Susan
1.
Look at manuscripts that might be helpful
2. Start thinking through plenary talk in November
3. Logistics for trip to archive next week
4. Book travel and hotels for research trip at end of month.
5. Enjoy time with friends and colleagues
6. Keep reading
Daisy
Work on dossier and make actual progress
New student chapters
Major grant task
Make a term schedule and plan for research and writing
SESSION GOALS
DEH
Intention: divide and conquer!
Complete 2 conference papers and 1 Festschrift essay,
Revise 2 syllabuses for fall classes
Stay in shape
Go on 3 trips with my husband
Take care of necessary house and personal maintenance
Deal with special-issue editing tasks
Urgently finish way overdue essay
Daisy
Intention: breathe
One
new first-author paper ready to submit
One student paper ready to submit
Get reasonable start on new project
Help student finish up thesis work
Regular exercise, and some kayaking
Trip with kid
ADDED GOAL do promotion dossier for full
JaneB
Intention: life and work kintsugi
SELF-CARE:
regular intentional movement, making, doing small things with other people and
reading for pleasure. I want to do all these things an appropriate number of
times a week. I also want to explore a wider range of kinds of making over the
summer, and I have an aim of having a more habitual practice in all these areas
by the time we start back with students.
HOME AND ENVIRONMENT: regular chore habits, plus working on the living room
(shelf-box-sofa project), working on clothing storage/management, and working
on my finances.
TEACHING
AND ADMIN: it is summer, but...
* I need to rewrite my final year honours module to fit into a different
trimester (and fit around the honours project drama - modern students canNOT
seem to work on anything else around the few weeks before the project is due,
and I'm leaning into that because there's no point fighting it any more)
* I have a lot of minor tweaks to do to my other teaching (spread across four
modules)
* I WANT to work through the practicals from another colleagues modules - they
teach GIS mapping, and I want to be up to date on how they are teaching it so
that I can better support my students (and know what I can expect from them so
push them to deliver on it in assignments - most assignments should have a map
included, and this is one of the tools we can ask them to use).
* I'm on a "task and finish" group (i.e. co-producing a report for
Faculty) which might or might not involve a lot of work
* There will be extra work around trying to show we are taking the current
recruitment crisis seriously (so much drama and stress and other people not so
much dropping balls as yeeting them into orbit or dropping them into random
abysses), but I don't know what will be my part. I'll roll that in with getting
settled in to my new admin role
* I also want to get one of my MSc by Research students completely done (and
working on publishing her work) and the other much closer to submission than
they are now
RESEARCH:
As ever, balls in the air!
* contribute to governmental advice reports
* keep up contributions to Big Project (which is doing my head in because, too
many people and too little clarity and organisation)
* progress at least three writing projects from a list substantially
Julie
Intention: be more focused
1.
Research/writing
i) Finish 30,000 word chapter asap and get irritating editor off my back. (I
have kept to deadlines, he keeps deciding I need to add stuff.)
ii) Have a full draft of Big Article for people to read and comment on. This is
top priority.
iii) Make some progress on a grant application, but this is lowest priority.
2. Teaching & teaching-related
i) Preparation for new team-taught module next year.
ii) Sign off final corrections on a PhD.
iii) Meetings with students about final-year dissertations for next year.
3. Life admin/house
i) Finalise summer travel
ii) Get a standing desk & proper adjustable chair.
iii) New chair for reading corner in spare room.
iv) Persuade kids to declutter their rooms?
v) Clear more garage space?
4. Self-care/fun
i) Exercise: run at least 3 x week when at home, find weights and/or pilates
class
ii) Travel and meet ups with friends.
iii) Read, preferably in garden.
iv) Journal, also preferably in garden.
v) More creative stuff
Heu mihi
1.
Writing for fun: Get to a point with a (creative?) project where it will be
easy-ish to sustain going into the school year. In an ideal world, this would
mean about 40k of a messy draft, but I'm not fixing a number on it.
2. New research: Read some primary sources to find another topic for a case
study. (I have an idea for a very different kind of book that I might enjoy
working on.)
3. Existing research: Complete and submit festschrift, which includes writing
the introduction.
4. Home: Annual deep cleaning stuff (garage, windows), clean out computer
files, get patch of ceiling fixed, scrub or otherwise deal with the stupid
popcorn finish on the bathroom ceiling
5. Crafts: Finish knitting shawl, start sweater, anniversary book, new journal?
6. Italian: Make my way through a substantial part of this rather more
difficult (and very long) novel that I've started
7. Habits: Add some actual sitting, maintain exercise
8. TLQ: Check in on Mondays at least 75% of the time!
Susan
Intention: welcome new adventures
Teaching and admin:
1. Finish my time as graduate chair without leaving too many unfinished tasks
Research:
2. I am expecting to spend much of the summer dealing with copyedits of Big
collaboration (a collection of 30 essays on my historical period I am
coediting). We have been told that we'll start getting copyedits in early June.
3. Keep up with research on Rest of My Life project, especially preparing for
the keynote I'm giving at a major conference in November
Have a marvelous few weeks before term starts and we gather for the next iteration! Thank you to Dame Eleanor for offering to host, I got a sneak preview of the planned theme and I’m very much looking forward to the creative possibilities in there!
This is our last week for posting weekly goals, our last official check-in for this session is on August 16th when we will review goals for the summer… It certainly does not feel like we are quite there yet so I looked hard at the calendar to try and magic up a few more weeks of summer and I failed quite comprehensively. So yes, time to get those goals dusted off I guess?
My garden produced a nice late summer surprise the last few days. The orange snake lily that I had seen no sign of and thought had given up the ghost reappeared virtually overnight, among the fuzzy purple stalks of prairie blazing star… (The bees like those!).
On that theme, if you feel so inclined… What surprised you this summer?
Last week’s goals below…
DEH
- cut & shape M paper, finish PowerPoint
- pack, prep food, check in for flight, that sort of thing
- pay bills
- mail present to great-nephew
- enjoy the conference!
JaneB
SELF-CARE:
* 4x20 intentional movement, 3 x making, 2 x small things with people, reading
every day
* update the tasting menu and do at least one thing a day
* take the time to make nice attractive meals that are not just "the
usual" a couple of days
HOME AND ENVIRONMENT:
* 75% of chores
* make progress on the Living Room Project
* do all the personal finance tasks on the summer list
TEACHING AND ADMIN:
* check the timetable release (it comes out Monday and all changes/errors
spotted have to be provided by the Friday before I get back)
* do one high speed email triage (some missing resits, ongoing student support
stuff)
RESEARCH:
* set at least one model running
Together those things should take no more than 2 hours
Julie
Traveling!
heu
mihi
1. Write 4000 words (I'm trying to get back into this
project before it falls apart altogether)
2. Clean the bathroom ceiling, which gets mildewy every year--stupid popcorn
ceiling is SO HARD to clean!
3. Finish reading actual academic monograph that I've been trying to read all
summer (it's good, I don't know what my problem is)
4. Select and arrange photos for anniversary book
5. Read student's exam documents
Susan
1. Figure out two more research trips
2. Plan social events
3. Finish index work
4. Do last meeting of the committee which will not end
5. Find ways to exercise
Daisy
Work on dossier and make actual progress
New student chapters
Major admin task
Major grant task
Sort out new faculty arrivals and on-boarding
And it is August… The days are distinctly shorter than in June, the trees are a deeper green, the delicate pinks and whites of early flowers have been replaced by hardier flowers in shades of yellow, orange, and purple. The berry harvests at all the farm markets are bigger every day, and the late summer feels alternately like it is still stretching ahead, and simultaneously like it is evaporating like mist on a sunny morning… So, in the spirit of celebrating harvests and colour, two of my absolute favourite things about this time of year which are cheering me up considerably at the moment…
First, the wild blueberries are mostly ripe! These were from a work spot today. We sat in the berry patch and ate low bush blueberries for a good half-hour before doing any work at all… A moment of pure fun in a very busy day that started at 5am and I was seriously grumpy about doing at all. A lovely unexpected gift that will be remembered with a smile!
Second, the rudbeckias are flowering! These are my favourite late-summer flowers, and I want my whole garden full of these cheerful, unapologetically bright flowers. Working on that…
If you feel so inclined, share a moment that cheered up a rough day this week. And for the bonus, a plan for how to fit something like that into next week?
Good luck with the first week of August!
Goals below, with placeholders for our traveling friends!
DEH
-
plan out the rest of the summer, mainly work, but also fitting in the fun
summer things plus some Life Admin & Habitat Maintenance
- finish M paper & PowerPoint
- finish W revisions
- finish fracking frelling horrible editing
- swim 2-3 miles, cardio 2-3 times (maybe a bike ride?)
- see friends visiting from out of town
- write letters or e-mail various people, including sending postcards acquired
in France; also send present to youngest great-nephew & organize present
for great-niece
- don't panic! Divide and Conquer!
JaneB
SELF-CARE:
* 3x20 intentional movement, 2 x making, 1 x small things with people, reading
every day
* pacing myself (and knowing the following week is "off", if I work
part days on the two really hot days and then finish some things up on my
non-work Friday that will be fine).
* do a couple of things from the "tasting menu"
HOME AND ENVIRONMENT:
* 75% of chores
* spend half an hour or so researching the living room project
TEACHING AND ADMIN:
* Do at least one block of T prep, one meeting
* finish integrating bits from the meeting last week into first semester slides
for the first years.
* mark any resits/long extension tasks that are submitted on time
RESEARCH:
* complete revisions and resubmit the multi-author paper for the second time.
* work on modelling project 2-4 hours (want to get some long runs set up to go
in the background whilst I'm off)
* meeting about Former Visitor Paper
* Annoying paper with former PhD student and the very slow collaborators has
come back with comments, so go through that and at least list out what needs
doing.
* prepare for meeting the Monday I get back from leave
And try and tick off a few of the small items that still need doing but have
been getting copied from list to list since late May!
Julie
Traveling!
heu mihi
1.
Finish reading materials for promotion letter; draft letter (can do a lot of
this on the train)
2. Write at least three days, no pressure re. how much
3. Help son with his bedroom
4. Exercise three times, in addition to city trekking
5. Enjoy New York!
Susan (held over)
1.
Finish copy-edits for Big Collaboration
2. Do library stuff to plan research trips for summer
3. Contact a few friends about getting together
4. Pick up needlepoint project
5. Read for pleasure
6. Get back into deliberate exercise beyond walking
Daisy
Work on dossier and make actual progress
New
student chapters
Organize next field work trips, one this week, one next week
