Weekly Update: 5/20 - 5/26

Someone turned three!

reflection

With the long weekend and our birthday extravaganza on Sunday I’m a day late with my weekly update. As the end of the school year gets closer and closer my brain is feeling increasingly fried. Summer can’t come soon enough! Even writing these short little reflections is proving to be a mental feat. One of the things I worked on this week was writing the first draft of an introduction section for an article and I encountered all sorts of resistance to writing. It was subtle, so I didn’t even realize I was doing it at first, until I noticed that I kept searching for anything else to do besides write (it’s not often that I can convince myself I should be grading instead!). Ultimately, I was coming up against one of my frequent existential crises about academia… what difference will this paper actually make? Who is actually going to read it? How will the world be a different place once it’s published (other than the additional line on my CV)? Maybe that’s why my brain is feeling fried… too many deep thoughts, ha! Anyway, I did manage to work through it and actually write a very rough draft of the introduction section. Something else that threw me off this week was having a jam packed schedule mid-week (on Wednesday) where I had a research networking lunch (2 hours), met with a job candidate, went to a student organized community building event for our school, had an advising meeting, and then ended the day with a stat consult for a doc student (plus attempting to squeeze in some grading and online course work). By the end of the day I was socially exhausted and felt like I needed the next 2 days to recover, making work challenging. Note to my future self, try not to cram things in during the middle of the week. Mondays seem to be okay because I’ve got the energy to bounce back faster, and Friday is fine because the weekend follows, but Wednesday is rough.

In non-work related news, Ellie turned three this weekend! We celebrated over breakfast burritos (and mimosas for the adults). I am loving that her birthday coincides with a three day weekend. It was nice to have all day Saturday to prep for the party. We spent Sunday morning/early afternoon celebrating Ellie and then headed over to our good friend’s house to celebrate their kid’s birthday too. It was a day of birthdays! According to Ellie, her favorite part was the cupcakes.

research

Paper 2: My goal for the week was to organize the key points I’d been pulling from the articles I finished reviewing last week into sections for the introduction. Goal met? Nope… putting this one on hold for a bit while I focus on getting 2 other papers out the door.

Paper 3: My goal for the week was to do some additional analyses and send results off to a co-author. Goal met? Yes.

Paper 5: My goals for the week were to review main points from the articles I saved two weeks ago and write a first draft of the intro. Goal met? Yes - despite some resistance (as mentioned above).

Idea: There’s a research idea (very loosely formed) that I’ve been thinking about for awhile. A last minute spot opened up at a weekly research feedback session that my school hosts. I decided to take the opening so I could talk through my idea with colleagues. My goals for the week were to create an outline for the feedback session and send off title/feedback requested info to the organizer. Goal met? Yes to the logistical stuff - sending off title/feedback info but no to the outline. I did start on this but didn’t get it fully done. I worked on it today (Monday), so it’ll show up in next week’s update.

teaching

Course prep (condensed stats course): My goals for the week were to create a grading plan for their article critique, grade any critiques that have been turned in early (5), and update in-class activity points. Goal met? Partly, I did the little stuff, but was only able to grade 1 of their assignments early.

Course prep (online human dev course): My goals for the week were to post an update from office hours, update the grade book with discussion posts grades, create week 10 videos (last week!), create/finalize week 10 content, print assignment 3, review/feedback for assignment 3, and double check week 9 content before it goes live. Goal met? Yes.

service + admin

Planning: My goals for the week were to plan for the current week and to have my weekly list ready to go on Friday with Monday’s tasks picked out. Goal met? Got things laid out for the week on Monday but did not do my list on Friday PM, too much going on.

Other general admin tasks: My goal for the week was to identify a few books to purchase with my remaining startup funds and send off a bio/photo to a group that I’m a part of. Goal met? Yes to the books, finally! And the bio/photo.

meetings, appointments, + events

X lunch and learn (nixed this in favor of getting stuff done)
✓office hours (x2)
✓check in with TA
✓online office hours
✓research networking lunch
✓student meetings (x2)
✓Ellie’s annual check up
✓research related webinar
✓paper 3 check-in
✓Ellie’s birthday (and my birth day)!

personal

Workouts: Three lifting sessions and three 20 minute yoga sessions.

Toddler on the Tenure Track: Goal: Get 2 posts up on the blog. Goal met? No. Since I’m getting this one up a day later than usual I technically only got one up from 5/20 - 5/26.

Meditation: One session! That’s an improvement from none!

Budget: ✓

Sleep: Here’s a quick update on my back to basics sleep goals that I started implementing on 5/1 (from this week).

8 hours of sleep: 1/7 nights [It was a little difficult to get into bed by 11pm this week. Add in middle of the night wake ups from Ellie and myself and getting a full 8 hours is proving to be a challenge.]

No alarm: 2.5/7 mornings [Giving myself a 3 half points for being semi-conscious in the morning and laying there until the alarm goes off at 7:15am… I’m awake, I just don’t feel like moving. And then 1 full point for actually getting up one morning without an alarm! Other mornings Ellie came in and woke us up.]

Limited screen time before bed: 6/7 [I’ve been shutting off screens between 9:45, 9:30, and 9:15 this week. Did fine every night except 1 where my phone was lying on the table and I completely forgot it was after 9:30pm. I had a knee jerk reaction and picked up my phone to flip through instagram and immediately remembered it was past my shut off time, oops!]