3rd year review — Blog — Toddler on the Tenure Track

Weekly Update: 1/28 - 2/3

This week was better than last, but still not ideal. I went to bed at ~1:30am on Thursday night in an effort to finish course prep so that I could have all of Friday (for the most part) to work on my 3rd year review that is due on Monday. While I got course prep done and was able to have the day for third year review work (which included working until ~9:30pm), staying up late, skipping dinner with the fam, and sitting hunched over a computer all day is really no way to live. As I look at the coming week and my ever growing to-do list I’m struck by the fact that there is really no possible way to get everything done (which I have to remind myself time and time again) and that academic life is just a perpetual cycle of triage.

Weekly Update: 1/21 - 1/27

January, January January. This is my third one on the tenure track and every year there’s been something that just makes it extra special. My first year it was my first term teaching (I had course buyouts in the fall) so I was figuring all that out. Along with teaching we started Ellie in daycare (for a week until deciding on the whole stay at home dad thing). Ellie and I both got really sick, she had her first ear infection and I ended up getting walking pneumonia. My second year our cats got fleas and we spent all of January (and Feb) getting rid of them, constant vacuuming and washing of any fabrics in the house. This year, we’re not sick (knock on wood) and there are no blood sucking parasites currently living in our house (that we know of), so it’s definitely an improvement, but I am putting in way too many hours in front of my computer and in meetings.

Weekly Update: 1/14 - 1/20

We’ve been traveling this past week so I’m a bit off of my typical schedule. I stayed up later than I wanted to, to get my last post up. I didn’t have another “late” night in me for this post too, so I settled for a few days “late”… I had a conference in San Francisco last week and since it’s only a ~2 hour flight from where we live (and we found cheap flights), Mike and Ellie decided to tag along. Although Ellie had lots of experience with hotels as an infant (during our trek out west), this was her first hotel experience as a toddler. All things considered, it went pretty well.

Weekly Update: 1/7 - 1/13

As the week comes to a close, Ellie’s sleep is finally starting to get back to it’s old predictable self. The past three mornings we’ve had consistent ~7/7:15 wake up calls, hooray! This week marked the official start of winter term (i.e., students were back on campus) and it was exhausting. Early starts to the day with late endings and no room to adjust my schedule to compensate on other days… making me feel scattered and tense and headache-y.

Weekly Update: 12/17 - 12/23

This week felt like a heavy lift (hence the picture). I worked from home all week, which was lovely, but it also felt like a race against the clock, trying to get ev-er-y thing done by the end of Friday so I could take the following week to relax. By Friday evening I was at a point where I felt like I could take the week off and actually relax (instead of taking time off and stressing about all the things left undone). It took some readjusting and lowering of my expectations, but I feel good about it.