Hi! It’s been quite awhile since my last post (eight whole months 🤯) and oh so much has happened since then! The short story is… we moved back across the country, I am officially no longer a tenure track professor, and I’m now full time stay at home parenting while Mike works. If you want a few more details, here’s what we’ve been up to since February…
Read MoreIt’s been awhile since I’ve done a schedule related post. Here’s my last day in the life post from May of 2019 (oh how things have changed!).
Rather than do a day in the life post from a specific day, I thought I’d share what our current general schedule is looking like these days. I’m not sharing this schedule because it’s amazing and working really well for us, I’m sharing it because it feels kind of terrible!
Read MoreI did something pretty big really huge last week... I quit my job. I submitted my formal resignation to my dean and as of June 2022 I will no longer be an assistant professor. To be honest with you, it feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
Read MoreUp until Hannah was about 4 months old, she slept incredibly well. We could put her in the crib, or really anywhere, and she'd be out like a light. Given the (very minimal) amount I know about baby sleep, this makes sense... sleep early on tends to be easier to come by than sleep later on.
Read MoreHannah was born shortly before the end of spring term, which meant that I used a few weeks of short term disability until my contract ended for the school year in June.
Because I'm not on contract during the summer I didn’t need to use any leave from mid-June through mid-September. These months, like usual, were all unpaid and our expenses were covered with funds that I'd put into savings during the school year.
Because of the timing, I was able to save the bulk of my leave (i.e., sick time) for fall term, returning to work in mid-December.
Read MoreBetween kindergarten illnesses, cross country travel for my dad's funeral service at Arlington National Cemetery, and a baby who isn't sleeping for longer than 3 hours in her crib (update: since I drafted this post we've gotten two 7.5 hour nights! Could be a fluke but I'll take it), I haven't felt much like writing a more in-depth blog post.
What I have been enjoying is playing around in Notion so I figured I'd write a brief update on the Notion workbook for plan(it)*.
Read MoreAfter Ellie was born I was so vigilant about signs of postpartum depression. I checked in with myself regularly. Feeling hopeless? Nope. Having frequent crying spells? Nope. Struggling to bond with the baby? Nope. Anything else that might be a sign of depression? Nope.
I made it through the first few months of postpartum life without any issues and thought okay, I’m in the clear, nothing to worry about… I can rest easy.
Read MoreAs someone who has been described as "the most organized person I've ever met" by multiple people on separate occasions, you might be surprised to hear that my inbox is a bit of a mess. I have 3 main email addresses. My personal email, my email that's associated with this blog, and my work email. Though I've gone through big purges in the past with my work email, I haven't ever attempted to tackle the 30,000+ emails that have built up in my other inboxes. You might be wondering how I got to 30,000+ emails (or maybe you're wondering how I don't have more!). Here's a little bit of a back story…
Read MoreIn my last post I shared my (mostly informal) goals from year five on the tenure track, along with whether or not I met them.
In this post I’m following up with advice I’d give to myself if I had to do year five all over again. If you want to check out my goals/advice for years 1 through 4, you can do that here…
Read MoreFor me (and so many others), the 2019-2020 school year was one big crisis after another. Although I checked off a lot of the boxes I was "supposed to," on most days I felt like I was just going through the motions. The 2020-2021 school year had a similar feel to it. The pandemic continued to wreak havoc on so many different aspects of life. Not to mention that pregnancy and my mom's continued health challenges made it really difficult to do any sort of professional planning/goal setting... so I didn't! 😅
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