Weekly Update: 1/14 - 1/20
What do you do when your toddler is asleep in the hotel room and it’s 8:30pm? sit in the hotel bathroom and drink cheap wine from Trader Joe’s…
reflection
We’ve been traveling this past week so I’m a bit off of my typical schedule. I stayed up later than anticipated to get my last post up and I didn’t have another “late” night in me for this post, so I settled for a few days “late”… I had a conference in San Francisco last week and since it’s only a ~2 hour flight from where we live (and we found cheap flights), Mike and Ellie decided to tag along. Although Ellie had lots of experience with hotels as an infant (during our trek out west), this was her first hotel experience as a toddler. All things considered, it went pretty well. Mike and I were nervous about bed time since Ellie is typically in bed before we’re ready to head in for the night. We ended up hanging out in the bathroom (hence the above pic) until we were ready for sleep. In reality, we were sitting in the dark in the bathroom because the bathroom doors were frosted glass, so the light from the bathroom spilled into the hotel room (kind of annoyed about that design detail, clearly the designer didn’t have a toddler)… we turned on the light for a few seconds to snap a pic and then turned it off again. Anyway… because of the conference this week I tried to cram a week’s worth of work into three days. The conference started on Thursday and I wanted to make sure that I got (at a minimum) all my weekly course prep done before heading out. It was exhausting… but I also know myself and know that I’d struggle to get anything work related done (beyond attending the conference), especially with Mike and Ellie joining. I knew I’d appreciate putting in more effort beforehand in order to just enjoy the conference and San Francisco while we were there. I don’t know about you, but whenever I go to conferences I always think I’ll have so much time to “catch up” on work, until I realize that attending sessions, networking, catching up with colleagues/friends, and simply figuring out things like where to eat, use up all of my mental energy. I’m exhausted and wish I had the weekend to recover, but I’ll be right back at it tomorrow. This month is proving to be a lesson in lowering my expectations and letting go of everything except the essentials.
research
Everything in the research realm has been on hold given conference travel. Granted the conference I attended was entirely about research, so I guess you could say that I did a lot in this area (I just didn’t move forward on any of my specific projects).
teaching
Course prep (condensed research course): My goals for the week were to review my agenda/slides from last year’s 2nd class and make notes on what to update, update the syllabus with revised page numbers for a few readings, review student activity worksheets from the first class, and enter in participation points. Goal met? Yes. I do like having 2 weeks in between each of these classes, it feels like I get a breather compared to my weekly online class where it’s go, go, go all the time. If I wasn’t traveling this week I probably would have done more to get ready for my next session… but, as I previously mentioned, I let go of everything that wasn’t essential.
Course prep (online research course): My goals for the week were to create/finalize/upload week 4 videos, do a final review of week 3 content before it went live, finalize week 4 content, post an update in the class announcements section, and review student activities from week 1. Goal met? Yes. This is where the bulk of my energy went this week.
Course prep (condensed stats class and online human dev class): My goal for the week was to do one piece of course prep for spring term. Goal met? Yes. I finished up the course calendar I started last week that includes assignment due dates, grading plans, travel, etc. to keep me organized… I even shared the calendar with my TA!
Advising: Emails… always emails.
service + admin
Applications: My goal for the week was to print out our application scoring rubrics and then score as many applicants as I could while at the conference. Goal met? Half... I printed out the rubrics and brought them with me, but I did not actually get around to reviewing applications. I forget how draining conferences are for my introverted self and by the time I was done for the day I couldn’t bring myself to provide a thoughtful review so I held off.
3rd year review: My goal for the week was to spend 30 minutes (minimum) updating my narrative. Goal met? Yes! I spent more like an hour on this, so woohoo! It’s due in early February… time to get serious about finishing this up.
Planning: My goal for the week was to plan for the upcoming week. Goal met? No, I thought I might do some planning on Sunday during some down time at the conference but that did not happen. I may need to re-think this recurring goal as I never seem to actually be able to do any planning on Friday afternoons.
meetings
Meetings: ✓colloquium ✓advising office hours (x2), ✓online office hours, ✓conference
personal
Workouts: Goal: 3 workouts Goal met: No, did 1 official workout. However, I did walk at least 5 miles while in San Francisco, so I was active!
Toddler on the Tenure Track: Goal: Get 2 posts up on the blog. Goal met? Yup.
Meditation: Goal: 5 minutes every other day Goal met? No. It’s not a consistent part of my routine at home so I’m not surprised I wasn’t able to maintain it while away.
Budget: ✓Update budget