Merry Christmas!
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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.
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Once I have my intention set for the year, I move on to goal setting, which gets a lot more specific. As I mentioned in the intention setting post, I typically do this exercise at the end of the summer or the very beginning of fall term, but this could easily be done at the end of the calendar year (or whenever you want!). If I’ve planned far enough in advance, I might devote a luxurious full day to dreaming up all the things I want to do in the coming year and what that might look like, a little personal retreat, if you will. I find that it’s a nice way to start the school year and gets me excited for what’s to come.
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Before I pick back up with the planning series, I thought I’d share a few quick tips that we use during our morning routine to make things go a little more smoothly!
If there’s anything I dislike more than rushing around in the morning, it’s rushing around with a toddler in the morning! Although there are only a handful of days when I absolutely need to be out the door by a certain time, we still inevitably find ourselves scrambling to do that one last thing before we head out. [Side note: If you haven’t read my other posts, Mike stays home with Ellie and we’re a one car family, so we have some flexibility in terms of time, but I do rely on Mike to drop me off at the train station.] Today I’m sharing some of the things that help us get out of the house in one piece in the morning.
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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.
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I think any conversation about planning should begin with setting an intention for the year. Just so we’re on the same page, here’s what I’m thinking when I use the word intention: “a determination to act in a certain way.” How do you want your year to go? How do you want it to feel? What do you want to focus on? What do you want it to do for you?
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If you haven’t had a chance to read (or skim!) my experiences on the academic job market while pregnant, you can find that post here. I did about 6 first round interviews when I was between 2 and 6 months pregnant. I then went on 1 campus interview when I was 7 months pregnant. I’ve put together a summary of my main takeaways from these experiences for those of you who are pregnant or thinking about becoming pregnant and also navigating the academic job market.
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Second installment of my weekly update, whoop whoop! Keeping things a little shorter on this one, no need to explain everything twice!
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Oh. My. Gosh. People love to give advice about the academic job market in general. Add in the fact that you’re also pregnant and the desire to impart wisdom goes through the roof! And of course if you don’t follow their advice there are dire consequences (i.e., you won’t get the job). That being said, I got a whole lot of advice, and to the best of my memory, only one of those people had been pregnant while searching.
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I started graduate school in 2011, right after Mike and I got married. We knew kids were in our future and we knew that grad school and our geographic location were temporary. We figured the next place would be for the long haul so it made sense to wait until after our next move to have a kid. The original plan was that I’d finish school in 4 years, but life happened and I tacked on an additional year.
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