Weekly Update: 5/27 - 6/2

just a cat and his hat

reflection

Most weeks I try to reserve weekends and evenings (and holidays… like Monday) for non-work related activities. When the work week includes a holiday and a day long workshop, mixed with meetings and other events, it makes it hard to do much else. This week I had about 12 hours (not even 2 full work days) to get all of my non-meeting work done, which wasn’t enough time… so work crept into personal time. We’re also gearing up for a trip back east to see family (and for a conference), so I’m trying to get as much off my plate before that happens. In terms of balance, it wasn’t an ideal week, but I also need to keep in mind that in the coming weeks I’ll be visiting with family and pretty much just focusing on grading, wrapping up my courses, and answering emails, so it’ll eventually even itself out (I guess…). In terms of writing this week, I encountered far less resistance than last week. I think it had to do with the fact that I had about 40 minutes each day (Tues - Thurs) to actually write. Dividing that across 2 papers meant I was only working on them for 20 minutes a day at most, which felt 100% manageable. For me, this reinforces the fact that I don’t do well with long stretches of time to write or edit. For other things like conceptualizing/organizing my writing, as well as data analysis, I definitely like big chunks of time, but for the actual writing of words, my brain likes it to be quick! To add to the pre-travel end of term chaos, both Ellie and Mike are sick. I am crossing my fingers that I don’t get it… but it seems inevitable. Plus, Ellie has gotten up at least once every night this week… so sleep continues to be elusive. Everything hits at once!

research

Paper 3: My goal for the week was to write a draft of analyses/findings. Goal met? Not quite. I have bullet points but not an actual draft.

Paper 5: My goals for the week were to edit my draft of the intro, getting it ready to send off to a co-author. Goal met? Pretty much. It’s not quite ready to send off (my deadline is end of day, June 3). I did end up working on this over the weekend since I know I’m working on campus on Monday and it’ll be hard to get it finalized when I’m in my office.

Idea: My goals for the week were to prepare for the feedback session (e.g., finalizing my outline and printing) and email people to follow up about similar projects they are working on. Goal met? Yes. I used Monday (which was a holiday) to prep for Tuesday’s feedback session.

Grant writing workshop: My goal for the week was to double check location/time of retreat. Goal met? Yup.

teaching

Course prep (condensed stats course): My goals for the week were to create an updated grading plan for their article critiques, grade all remaining critiques (I only got through one the week before), and do some logistical stuff (e.g. printing, finding my feedback for previous assignments). Goal met? Yup. With the holiday and a full day workshop on Friday I was really only working with 3 days to grade (I wanted to get them done before they turned in their final assignments so I didn’t have a pile of different assignments to go through), which turned into 2 days due to meetings on Tuesday.

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 a course wrap up video, post feedback for assignment 3, check in with my TA about office hours, a few random administrative things, and double check week 10 content before it went live. Goal met? Yes.

Final grades (both courses): With the end of the term fast approaching, plus travel, plus a bunch of paper related deadlines, I’m trying not to get overwhelmed by grading, so I wanted to create a very clear timeline for when I’m going to grade and how many assignments I’ll grade each day. My goal for the week was to create a general plan for grading their final assignments. 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 because of the grant writing workshop.

Other general admin tasks: My goal for the week was to prep for a baby shower for a friend at work. Goal met? Yes.

meetings, appointments, + events

✓annual meeting with my dean
✓research meeting
✓PT
✓online office hours
✓baby shower
✓grant writing retreat
✗baby shower #2 (Ellie and Mike were sick so we opted out)

personal

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

Toddler on the Tenure Track: Goal: Get 2 posts up on the blog. Goal met? Yup.

Meditation: Three sessions (and planning to do one more later today)!

Budget: ✓

Sleep: I wrapped up my back to basics sleep goals on Friday. Here’s a quick update on the final 5 days. Planning to do a full post on this during the coming week.

8 hours of sleep: 0.5/5 nights [Gave myself a half point being in bed for a full eight hours one night, it just got interrupted with our wonderful toddler who seems to not need sleep. Every other night I was in bed between ~6 to 7 hours]

No alarm: 2/5 mornings [Two mornings my alarm went off before I was up, another morning Ellie came in and woke us up. The remaining two I woke up a few minutes before my alarm was scheduled to go off.]

Limited screen time before bed: 5/5 [This week I shut screens off between 9:15 and 9:00pm… this goal has been the easiest to implement, and one that I’m going to continue with, but not 2 hours before bed.]