As usual, I find myself at the beginning of a semester trying to figure out how to balance my life a bit more better, and perhaps contradictorily, how I can structure my days better to be able to find time to recharge.
Because of my work with ADVANCE, I'm interested in understanding the work experiences of all women faculty in STEM, including and particularly women of color. To this end, when a colleague who is the director of the Black Cultural Center on campus recommended the book The Black Academic's Guide to Winning Tenure Without Losing Your Soul by Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey Laszloffy, I bought a copy immediately. This summer, I had time to read some of it.
The book is packed with good ideas for all academic folks, and may be particularly eye-opening to white folks who haven't questioned their own privilege lately. In particular, one idea that caught my attention was the idea of a Sunday meeting with one's self, where you focus on committing to the things you want to get done this week. This sounded like a great idea; after all, so much of my time during the week is spent in meetings for other people, so why not one with me?
I put it on my calendar, and set the alarm to go off every Sunday afternoon to remind me to do this. It starts at 8:30; I'd better get to it.
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Glad you enjoyed the book -- I am sitting down for my Sunday right this very moment so your blog gave me a bit of inspiration!
I'm having that same talk with myself. It seems the balance gets out of whack in the summer and then needs to be re-evaluated each fall.