In case you haven’t been keeping track, as of June 1, 2019, I have been blogging for a full 6 months! 🎉🎉🎉 In these 6 months I have written 71 blog posts (including this one) totaling over 73,000 words. In honor of the 6 month mark, here are the 10 most visited posts from Toddler on the Tenure Track, plus a few insights on what I’ve learned since December 2018.
Read MoreTime for another day in the life post! This particular Monday was the inspiration behind my 2-minute Monday post from a few weeks ago.
Read MoreWith the long weekend and our birthday extravaganza on Sunday I’m a day late with my weekly update. As the end of the school year gets closer and closer my brain is feeling increasingly fried. Summer can’t come soon enough! Even writing these short little reflections is proving to be a mental feat. One of the things I worked on this week was writing the first draft of an introduction section for an article and I encountered all sorts of resistance to writing. It was subtle, so I didn’t even realize I was doing it at first, until I noticed that I kept searching for anything else to do besides write (it’s not often that I can convince myself I should be grading instead!).
Read MoreThe ability to juggle multiple projects with an infinite number of moving pieces is (I think) an essential skill for reducing the overwhelm that can come with academic life. In an ideal world, it would be lovely if this wasn’t a necessary skill for survival, but we live in the real world, with ever increasing workloads and expectations, where advanced project management skills are essential. Between research, teaching, service, and all the things that don’t fall within the bounds of these three pieces (…setting up your office?), there is always something to do. Project management should be a key component of all doctoral programs... instead of expecting everyone to learn through osmosis (which doesn’t always work out so well).
Read MoreWell, I started off the week with the best intentions, and then I caught Ellie’s cold and pretty much just managed to get things ready for my two classes. Although, as I was putting this post together I realized that I did some sort of workout every day except one this week, which is huge! So, I was able to keep momentum going with working out, despite getting sick (it was a head cold, so nothing too intense, just annoying).
Read MoreMondays are for... all of those little administrative details that I just don’t want to do (across research, teaching, and service), catching up on emails, and planning (which I always want to do!)! In my mind, I’d prefer to start my week with my “hardest” work - lots of writing and thinking big thoughts! However, in reality my weeks haven’t been playing out this way. Instead, I’ve been starting the week with all the little things I put off at the end of the previous week. They aren’t necessarily mentally taxing, but when they pile up they can take a significant amount of time. Plus, I usually experience a bit of an uphill climb to get back into work mode after the weekend. Easing into the workweek suits my general work (and life) style!
Read MoreContinuing my trend of finding a workable balance between research, teaching, and service this week… with a heavy emphasis on research and teaching, and less so on service. Had a fair amount of meetings, mainly scheduled for Monday/Tuesday, which seems to work well for my working rhythm. I had a workshop scheduled for Friday afternoon that was cancelled and it happened to be a day when Ellie skipped a nap, so I texted Mike and they met me downtown and we walked along the waterfront, just like old times. No profound work related thoughts this week (maybe I’m tired… and I’m also attempting to write this while Ellie is talking, stream of consciousness style, in the background, so it’s hard to separate my thoughts from her talking!)
Read MoreI did it! I got to the final entry of my super detailed multi-part post about the steps we took to move across the country with a baby and two cats. As I mentioned in my first post (steps 1 through 5), this process put the seeds of a blog in my mind, given that I looked around everywhere and couldn’t find anyone talking about moving in the amount of detail that I was interested in seeing. So… for anyone out there who might be trying to plan a cross country move with a baby and pets… here you go!
Read MoreLike last week, I was able to get work in on 4 different research projects (that are all at the paper writing stage) this week, even amidst meetings and teaching and emails. I’m waiting on a response to an R+R (for a special issue) that we resubmitted back in December (…I think?!… has it really been that long?!). I checked in earlier this month for an update and they said to send another message at the end of the month if I hadn’t heard. April 30th came and went and still no notification. With lots of other things going on last week, I didn’t want to email, have them respond about another R+R and start the countdown clock on that (and not be able to spend any time on it)… so I’ll check in next week and see what they say.
Read MoreHoly groceries!!! We spent under $600 on groceries this month!!! It does come with a caveat… I was traveling for ~5 days, so there was only 1 adult to feed for 5 days of the month. However, we hosted a few meals at our house, cooked a meal for a friend with a new baby, and re-upped on some freezer meals… so we didn’t skimp on food purchases.
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