Goodbye April, hello May. Here’s an abbreviated version of the reflection I shared in this month’s newsletter about potentially pausing my tenure clock.
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Like last week, I was able to get work in on 4 different research projects (that are all at the paper writing stage) this week, even amidst meetings and teaching and emails. I’m waiting on a response to an R+R (for a special issue) that we resubmitted back in December (…I think?!… has it really been that long?!). I checked in earlier this month for an update and they said to send another message at the end of the month if I hadn’t heard. April 30th came and went and still no notification. With lots of other things going on last week, I didn’t want to email, have them respond about another R+R and start the countdown clock on that (and not be able to spend any time on it)… so I’ll check in next week and see what they say.
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Holy groceries!!! We spent under $600 on groceries this month!!! It does come with a caveat… I was traveling for ~5 days, so there was only 1 adult to feed for 5 days of the month. However, we hosted a few meals at our house, cooked a meal for a friend with a new baby, and re-upped on some freezer meals… so we didn’t skimp on food purchases.
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In my previous “day in the life” posts I’ve focused on workdays. For this month’s post I thought I’d highlight a weekend day… a very mundane weekend day. We were quite the social butterflies the weekend before this one so we purposefully made sure that at least one of the days of the weekend was open for nothing in particular. I’ve also mentioned before that I do my best to not work on the weekends or evenings, and this weekend was no exception.
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I was able to do work on 4 different research projects (3 papers and 1 data collection project) this week, which feels like the most research related work I’ve done since the fall (has it really been that long?!). Honestly, I think it’s because my course prep feels under control and I’m not burning myself out with grading, so I have the mental energy to pick these projects back up. Plus, there aren’t any major advising related issues going on at the moment (knock on wood), which also helps.
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The biggest news of my week is that the results (for lack of a better word) of my third year review came back and were overwhelmingly positive! It feels good to be on the other side of that milestone. Moving forward, I’ll just keep on, keeping on! Despite feeling pretty confident after submitting my materials back in February, I saw the response letter in my inbox this week and my heart started racing. I was sitting on the train on my way to campus, debating on whether or not to read the letter right then and there, or wait until I got to the privacy of my office in case there were any surprises.
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I have so much respect for people who travel regularly for work. I left for a conference in San Antonio on Tuesday morning and came back on Saturday morning (should have been Friday evening) and I am so exhausted. Prior to the conference I thought… I’ll have all this time to myself to get work done and work on the blog and relax and explore and watch cable TV and read… HA!
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This week marked the official start to my third spring term. My first year on the tenure track I “eased” into the school year, meaning that during my first quarter I served as an advisor but was not in the classroom. My second quarter I added one class, and my third quarter I added another class so that I was teaching two courses and had a full advising load. This strategy worked well, particularly because when fall term started, Ellie was four months old. It gave me a little bit a of chance to catch my breath before jumping into classes.
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