Weekly Update: 2/4 - 2/10

enjoying our teeny tiny bit of snow

reflection

Blue skies outside right now and I can’t help but think of Pete the Cat… “The birds are singing. The sky is bright. The sun is shining. I’m feeling alright.” Not sure about birds chirping but I am feeling alright about this past week. Yes, there were long days but once I was done with work, I was done. I didn’t come back to it after Ellie went to bed or on the weekend or in the early hours of the morning. I need clear boundaries around the scope of my workday, I do not enjoy going back and forth between work life and personal life. Having a flexible job is a wonderful thing and I find that the lines between work/personal life can blur really quickly. For me and for this job, that’s not a sustainable way to operate. A few things that helped me keep the ever expanding workload in check this week were a) having a detailed list of all the things I needed to get done and an understanding of how long they would take me to complete, b) saying no to meetings - I had 3 meetings I declined (all between 2 and 2.5 hours long) because I just didn’t see a way to go to all of them and not have to work on the weekend or at night, c) being clear with other people about when I can get something done - instead of just saying, “I haven’t had a chance to look at that yet”, I said, “I haven’t had a chance to look at it and I won’t be able to get to it until 2/25 at the earliest”, and d) constantly reminding myself that there is no possible way to get everything done.

In other news, Ellie has settled back into a predictable routine for the moment and we are once again feeling rested (for the most part)! As work starts to also get a bit more predictable, I’m setting my sights on getting back into a working out/meditating routine. We had a little bit of snow this weekend that we attempted to do some sledding on but it didn’t work. We did manage to make a mini snow person (named Frosty of course)!

research

I did manage to check in with a research partner this week but other than that, most of my time went to teaching/service. Next week I’ll be slowly getting back into carving out daily time to move a few papers/projects forward.

teaching

Course prep (condensed research course): My goal for the week was to finalize class 3 content for teaching on Friday (e.g., updating slides, figuring out activities, laying out the agenda, etc.) Goal met? Yep. With teaching on Friday I had a hard deadline I had to meet.

Course prep (online research course): My goals for the week were to create/finalize/upload week 7 videos, do a final review of week 6 content before it went live, finalize week 6 & 7 content (because I didn’t finalize week 6 last week), post an update in the class announcements section, respond to discussion posts, review/provide feedback for weekly activities, post participation grades, and review mid-term feedback. Goal met? Oh my. Actively managing this class, while at the same time updating it, is exhausting. Videos made, finalized/reviewed week 6 content (but not week 7), update posted, discussion posts responded to, feedback provided for activity, grades posted. Browsed mid-term feedback from the class but did not review it in depth. Good thing I like this class given how much time I’m spending on it.

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 for both of these classes. Goal met? Nope…

service + admin

3rd year review: My goal for the week was to submit my materials. Goal met? YES! Now I can move on to the next thing…

Planning: My goal for the week was to plan for the upcoming week. Goal met? Not yet.

Equity committee: My goals for the week were to do some digging around a course eval project we’re exploring and prep for our meeting this week. Goal met? Yes. I actually ended up not going to the meeting; however, I did do some digging and sent off an email related to what I found (which was what I was going to verbally share during the meeting anyway).

meetings

Meetings: ✗community council meeting (declined) ✓group advising sessions (x3) ✓online office hours, ✓instructor meeting ✗program meeting (declined) ✗equity committee (declined) ✓9-5 teaching (ended early given the impending snow and their long driving distances) ✓search committee de-brief (hadn’t planned on going but with class ending early I was able to go), ✗olympic lifting (snow) ✗preschool open house (snow)

personal

Workouts: Nothing this week other than a walk to the park. To be honest it feels like a huge effort to simply end my work day after 8 hours. Adding in all the things that I’m “supposed” to do feels like more than I have the capacity for.

Toddler on the Tenure Track: Goal: Get 2 posts up on the blog. Goal met? Yes. I am continuing to really enjoy writing this blog (and have an endless stream of ideas) and unlike working out, I can easily pull out my phone on the train and do some writing. Feels like the barriers to writing are much easier to overcome than those I’m running up against for working out.

Meditation: Goal: 5 minutes every other day Goal met? Nope. Started off strong with 2 10 minute meditations on Monday and Tuesday. Skipped Wednesday and then never started up again on Thursday.

Budget: ✓Update budget… and got a new budget post up for January.