Spring + Summer 2021 Updates
August 2021: Tummy time “fun”… fun for Ellie. Hannah, not so much.
I recently wrote an update on how my third trimester went and how the early postpartum period has been going. Since I provided a bunch of life updates in that post I won't rehash things here. To give you a 2 sentence summary of our lives in the past 6ish months... spring term was all about getting to the end of pregnancy and it was exhausting! Summer has been all about recovery and rest.
Below you'll find an update on the main projects I was working on during spring term (with a few summer things). Usually when I write these post I'm much more immersed in these projects so I may have missed some things. My memory is just a bit hazy 😆.
research
Paper 2: The goal was to get this in before baby arrived and unfortunately that didn't happen. Between my full course load, data collection, and changing our minds on some major pieces of the paper, this just kept stalling. When it got to a point where a revise and resubmit would likely have come back during my leave I decided it would have to wait until I was back at work.
Systematic review: My collaborator and I did a very brief presentation about this project to some stakeholders during the winter months which then prompted me to put together a very rough draft of the paper.
Focus group data collection: This is done! We selected participants and figured out all of the logistics, finishing up in late April which was about a month before baby arrived. I was exhausted during the focus groups but I made it through.
Survey data collection: We got a lot of interest in the focus groups, but only had space for 30 people. We ended up turning some of the focus group questions into an electronic survey. We decided to do this last minute so there was a scramble to get IRB approval, the survey out, and gift cards distributed before baby. This is another activity that I do not recommend adding right before your due date. Miraculously it did get done!
Grad school paper: There was a paper I started working on during my grad program with one of my mentors that we never ended up finishing before I graduated. It wasn't really in my area so I didn't pursue it. Another grad student picked it up recently and got it submitted! Bonus paper I didn't even know I had.
teaching
Seminar teaching: As I've mentioned before, this is a year long seminar that goes along with student’s internships. A lot of it is discussion based, so there’s not a ton of prep involved; however, I do find it to be a lot more mentally/emotionally draining then my other courses. During spring term we do a final site visit to their internships (all virtually). Because I was going on leave I tried to get most of these done (13 total) in April and early May. Between these visits and data collection my brain felt overloaded by all the logistical details. All I can say is I'm so glad I could do everything virtually. Don't think I could have driven around the greater metro area on a regular basis (in addition to everything else) at 35+ weeks pregnant.
Data analysis teaching: I taught an online stats course (like I do every spring). Though technically it’s one course, starting next year they’re splitting up the online courses into sections so I'll be getting credit for 2 courses instead of 1. In online we typically have double the number of students in our classes compared to campus classes. They previously gave me some additional credits to balance out this workload issue (though not a full course worth of credits), but this year there seemed to be some confusion around exactly how many credits were warranted. It did end up working out because they dropped a course from my teaching load for spring. Because baby was due before the end of the term I also had a TA who took over during week 8 of the term (for a 10 week term).
Course revisions: I've been working on course revisions for our human development/generalist practice courses with another colleague. I spent time building the courses in D2L this spring. I didn't finish before baby arrived. In fact, my water broke right in the middle of working on this project. In July I picked this back up to finish up what I started.
service + admin
Equity committee: I attended a few meetings for this but because these meetings are in the evenings I missed a number of them. With two other evening class sessions adding a third night time commitment was pushing me past my capacity. Plus I rearranged the schedule in one of my courses to accommodate for my leave which meant I had a conflict for a few of the meetings as well.
Parental leave: As my due date got closer I had lots of little questions for HR as I was filling out forms for leave. Overall, the process was pretty seamless. I submitted paperwork to my midwives and HR and everything went through on time without any hiccups.
Planning: Before I went on leave I continued to plan every Friday. It made things easier for my brain. Though my schedule was full it was pretty simple and a lot happened on auto pilot. Between grading, course prep, student meetings, and data collection I was able to keep each of these work blocks to their slotted time most weeks and had my schedule on repeat. Early postpartum I didn't need to do much planning because we weren't doing much other than doctors visits. If there was anything that needed to get done that was out of the ordinary we wrote out lists and put them on the fridge. I also set phone alarms to remind me. As I've started to add things back in (like writing this blog post and exercise) I've been using Notion and doing a quick planning session on Sundays.
tenure
Official tenure review: I was scheduled to submit my materials this summer/fall but I decided to pause my clock! You can read all about that decision here.
personal
Toddler on the Tenure Track: I managed to get posts up every other week in March. I had 1 post in April about lessons learned from being pregnant on the tenure track and then skipped May, June, and July except to announce baby's arrival. I've started to pick back up with things again in August and it feels good.
plan(it)*: I got my planning course ready to go before baby arrived and then officially opened it up at the end of June. I've also been having fun creating digital workbooks to add to the course beyond the Google doc that's in there.
Meditation: I continued doing Hypnobabies "meditations" until birth. I used them a bit in the very early stages of labor but not once things started to pick up. I didn't like having headphones or needing to focus on anything other than myself. I just wanted quiet and to turn inward. I’ve done a few guided meditations postpartum but haven't felt ready to get back into a consistent practice.
Health: Being pregnant for 9 months and giving birth to a baby certainly puts stress on your body. I had a VBAC, which was wonderful, though recovery has felt slow going (read about it here). I'm getting the support I need, mainly from a PT who specializes in postpartum issues. Exercise for me right now consists of walking, stretching, and using a lacrosse ball to release all the tight muscles around my spine (which there are a lot of). I am excited to get back to lifting again but definitely not ready for it just yet.
Budget: Still updating our budget every Saturday morning. Right now we're focused on saving for a trip back east for my dad's service. We still have student loan payments on the back burner because of the payment pause that was extended again until January. We did save up enough to payoff Mike's last high interest loan; however, we won't do that until December at the very end of the pause. We'd rather keep that money in a HYSA and earning a little bit of interest instead of paying it now. Then we'll just have my PSLF loans to tackle... not sure what we'll do with them at this point. We do have low interest student loans totaling about 13,000 but their interest rates are below 3% so we're only making minimum payments on these until they're done.
Those are the main things that have been going on in my world since March. I'll be back with another update once I'm back to work in December.