Blue skies outside right now and I can’t help but think of Pete the Cat… “The birds are singing. The sky is bright. The sun is shining. I’m feeling alright.” Not sure about birds chirping but I am feeling alright about this past week. Yes, there were long days but once I was done with work, I was done. I didn’t come back to it after Ellie went to bed or on the weekend or in the early hours of the morning.
Read MoreIf you want some background information about our budget, see my first budget post from December 2018.
I initially thought I was going to do some major revamping of the budget given our focus on paying down our student loans. However, when I took a look at the budget, I was happy with how things were set up. The only change is that instead of throwing extra money to savings, most of it (except for yearly bills and our small travel fund) will go to student loans. Also, the first time I posted our budget I rounded all of the %s and it drove me up the wall, so I’m introducing decimals this time around.
Read MoreThis will be a quick post as I’ve got ~10 minutes before I need to start getting ready for the day. I wanted to take a minute to acknowledge the long string of (seemingly) serendipitous connections that we’ve made since moving to Oregon.
Read MoreThis 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.
Read MoreIt’s time for another edition of “a day in the life” of a tenure track faculty with a young kid! If you follow me on instagram you may have seen my post in January with a quote from Ellie where she asked, “Mama, are you still sad?” Given the “fun” that day started off with, I decided to track my time. It was my first day back to work after taking one official week off for winter break (which is always rough), plus working from home the week before that. Mixed with a really early wake-up call from Ellie, we had a bit of a rough day. Here’s how it went…
Read MoreJanuary, 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.
Read MoreWe’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.
Read MoreI’m ending the planning series with a look at how I plan out each day. Here are all the links to the previous posts from this series: my yearly intention, yearly goals, quarter planning, to do list, and weekly planning. Usually each day of my work week is highly structured and I leave the weekends open (other than events that are scheduled for specific times). Since I’ve already done the work to schedule tasks for each day during my weekly planning session, I don’t actually have that much to do for daily planning besides reviewing my schedule and adjusting as needed (e.g., if something else comes up that needs to get done or I finish something quicker than expected).
Read MoreAs 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.
Read MoreSo far I’ve talked about my yearly intention, yearly goals, quarter planning, and to do list. These are all pretty high level endeavors. Weekly (and daily) planning are where the work actually happens. Ideally, I plan for the upcoming week on Friday at the end of the day. In reality, I’m often so exhausted by that time that I don’t have it in me. Occasionally I’ll do it on Sunday, but usually I don’t want work to intrude on weekend decompression. More often than not, I plan for the week on Monday morning. Here’s what my process currently looks like.
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