What it’s like to have a toddler on the tenure track
Just a quick note before you head into the blog post. Are you an academic who is trying to figure out how to balance all the things? My planning course, plan(it)*, can help support you during the process. Check out the link for more info.
Back in February I got an email from Leigh of Teaching Academia. Teaching Academia is a wonderful resource that’s dedicated to helping people navigate and succeed in academia.
Leigh asked if I’d write a guest post about being on the tenure track with a kid and I (of course!) said yes!
Given a few other recent scheduling posts on the Teaching Academia blog (here and here), we decided my post would focus on a week in my life.
On my own blog I’ve done 2 day in the life posts (I and II), and I’m due for another one! This time around I’m detailing an entire week!
After we decided on the weekly schedule post, I tracked my time during a week in February during winter term (I was due for a time audit anyway). The screenshot above is what that week looked like.
Just as an FYI, I usually don’t keep my calendar looking quite so hectic, this was just for illustration purposes. Although, being able to see all these details in one place can be really helpful… so if you’ve never tracked every single thing you’re doing, I encourage you to give it a whirl!
Was this a typical week? Kind of? I don’t know!
Every week is different. I had my 9-5 class on Friday, which means there’s a full day dedicated to teaching. I also had a bunch of assignments to grade, so there’s a lot of that as well.
I generally don’t like to dedicate a full day to grading (unless it’s the end of the term), but that’s how it turned this week.
I didn’t work out at all this week, I meditated once, I did work on the blog in the evenings… our late bedtimes have meant that I don’t get up before Ellie anymore.
I would like to get myself back on an earlier schedule, shift blog work to the early morning and working out to the evenings, we’ll see!
Here’s an excerpt from the post…
I am one quarter away from finishing my third year as an assistant professor. In addition to figuring out how to do this whole professor thing, I’ve also navigated the highs and lows of new parenthood. When I started my position my daughter, Ellie, was three months old, and now she’s almost three years old. As Ellie has grown, our weekly schedule has continually evolved. Today, I’m sharing what a week in our lives currently looks like. I’ll start with background information, then go into what our current routines look like, and finally, I’ll share our schedule during a week in February 2019.
