Here’s what I worked on during the month of March. If you missed February’s update, I’m moving my reflections to the monthly newsletter, which you can sign up for here!
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Taking a break from the moving posts to give you an update on our March budget. Our biggest win for the month is that we paid off another one of Mike’s loans!!! 🎉🎉🎉 Only $81,795 more dollars to go 😂… better than $100K+ back in December 2018… so we’re making progress.
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Spring break was meh. My online class opened up on the Friday of spring break, which meant everything needed to be ready to go by then. I’ve taught the class before so this shouldn’t have been a big deal; however, I’ve also decided to ditch the textbook this term and do a decent amount of content revision. So, while I wasn’t starting from scratch, I did need to go through all of the readings, replace anything from the old book that was relevant with an article or other online resource, and then also had to get my videos ready for the first week. Sure, all this was self-imposed, I didn’t have to do it, but I think it focuses the course a bit more (which helps me out in the long run).
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We took an impromptu trip to the beach (very unlike me… the impromptu part, not the beach part). I was joking with a friend the other week that I needed a beach trip. While she couldn’t provide me with a trip to the beach, she did offer up a night in her guest room, free of charge. We took her up on the offer and had a family sleepover (last week), which was lots of fun. We tried to have all the kids sleep in one room (two 2 year olds and one 4 year old)… didn’t work so well! Doing a little local getaway made me want to go to the beach even more!
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Sunshine and blue skies have returned! Not sure how long they’ll be around so we’ve all been trying to soak up as much as possible while it’s here. There have been many trips to the park and working outside. I worked from home 4 out of 5 days this week, mainly trying to get grading done for one of my classes before the final assignments start pouring in for the second class. Grades are due on Tuesday of spring break and while I’ve already accepted the fact that I’ll be spending spring break prepping for spring courses, I’d prefer to be done with winter grades before spring break actually starts. One class down, one to go!
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Started off the week not feeling so great. I had planned to be on campus on Monday but chose to stay home to try and get some rest, which meant cancelling office hours, rescheduling a research related meeting for later in the week, and not attending a workshop. While I didn’t actually take a sick day, I did try and get a nap in during the day… which didn’t work out so well. When I was trying to sleep Ellie was screaming, about what I’m not sure. All I know is that I got out of bed to see what was going on because it was kind of intense. I go into the living room and see her with her feet propped up on the couch, hands on the floor (in an elevated plank position) and screaming incoherently.
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This was a week where pretty much everything went the way I hoped… no major curve balls thrown my way, which felt really nice. After feeling like I couldn’t “catch up” from our January trip, it was nice to finally get to a place where the pace of work feels more manageable. So… the 5 day/4 night conference trip that we all took in January had about a month long impact on work/home life. Is that worth it? I’m not so sure. Granted, it would have looked a lot different had I not been teaching or teaching fewer classes or if both classes were 100% ready to go before the term started. Certainly helpful to think about for future conference travel and the ripple effect it has on stress levels returning home.
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