Blog — Toddler on the Tenure Track

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: 12/31 - 1/6

Back to reality and hello to 2019! I was still on break on Monday and Tuesday of this week, so it was a short work week for me. While I love that academic life has built in “breaks,” it takes so much of my energy to get back into work mode that sometimes I wonder if it’d be easier to do a little bit of work each day during the break so that I’m not as drained during the first week back. This could also have something to do with Ellie’s sleep lately.

Weekly Update: 12/24 - 12/30

I graduated from my PhD program ~2.5 years ago and am still reveling in the fact that breaks actually mean I take some sort of break (even if it’s not for the entire break), instead of using breaks to play catch up or try to get “more” done. If there’s anything I’ve learned from grad school and also as an assistant professor it’s that working all the time does not lead to better results, personally or professionally (at least not for me!). All that to say, taking this week off from work has been wonderful!

Tenure and Life UpdatesJillDecember 30, 2018weekly update, working out, meditation, goals, reflection, winter break, breaks, budget, loansComment

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.

Weekly Update: 12/10 - 12/16

This week was one of those weeks where I greatly underestimated the time it would take to get something done. I had a revise and resubmit due on Thursday. When I planned for the week, I blocked off all of Tuesday with smaller chunks of time on Wed/Thurs (~1.5 hour) to finish up. In reality, I took all of Tuesday (and then some), ~3 hours on Wednesday, and all of Thursday (with some advising/emails mixed in). Which meant the things that I had originally planned to do on Wed/Thurs (mainly course prep) got pushed to the side, and my work days were longer than I’d like them to be.

Tenure and Life UpdatesJillDecember 16, 2018weekly update, R&R, course prep, working out, meditation, systematic review, goals, reflection, yayComment

Weekly Update: 12/3 - 12/9

Second installment of my weekly update, whoop whoop! Keeping things a little shorter on this one, no need to explain everything twice!

Tenure and Life UpdatesJillDecember 9, 2018weekly update, R&R, course prep, working out, meditation, systematic review, goals, reflectionComment

Weekly Update: 11/26 - 12/2

One of the things I plan to do on the regular is share what I’m working on each week, progress made, and challenges faced. I do this for myself, so why not add some additional accountability?

A Little Bit of Context

Before I delve into our how of academic life with a toddler, I think it’s important to give you some context about what life looks like for us (so you can decide whether or not our experiences are similar to your situation).

Academic Life, Tenure and Life UpdatesJillDecember 2, 2018behind the scenes, about toddler on the tenure trackComment