tenure
jane | October 16, 2008How I would have liked to spend my day today:
8:30am-noon: Work on research
noon-1: Lunch with colleagues
1-3:30: Work on class prep/grading
3:30-4:30: Coffee w/ friends
4:30-5ish: Minor work tasks: email, update to-do lists, more grading
What my day actually looked like:
8:30-9: Respond to emails, put out fires
9-noon: Meetings
noon-1: Lunch with colleagues
1-2:45: More meetings
2:45-3:30: Grading, with several interruptions
3:30-4:30: Coffee with friends
4:30-5ish: Extension of the coffee/gossip session (um, can't I count this as networking? that's important, right?)
Somehow…
jane | September 16, 2008Well, so much for the year of being in balance, and so much for keeping my life in control. It's still relatively early in the school year, and I am already completely overwhelmed.
I've been up since 5am today. At one point today, I had 47 unread emails in my Inbox---and I check my email regularly. I spent maybe 10, 15 "quality" minutes with Baby Jane today, and 0 "quality" minutes with Mr. Jane.
Things were actually going along ok for a while. It's just over the past few days or week, maybe, that things have gotten out of control---like the Mack Truck of Too Much Work came barreling in…
jane | August 27, 2008The most popular question I've been asked lately, on campus, by colleagues: "Is this your tenure year?"
Technically and officially, no, it's not---the clock stopped for a year because of Baby Jane + my sabbatical. So I go up next year.
But in my mind, yes, this is my tenure year.
If you think about it, the year before you go up for tenure is really crunch time. Your teaching is scrutinized. You obsess about student evaluations. You work to get those last articles out for review and that grant proposal submitted, in the hopes that at least some of these will be in press/in print/funded…
jane | July 17, 2008Where is my summer?? I thought once July hit and the busyness of June subsided that I'd actually have time to, you know, maybe, relax a bit. Ha! This has been a particularly busy week. The good news is that after today, things do get easier and calmer.
(Of course, playing Guitar Hero for 3 hours last night certainly didn't help matters much either. Good for the soul, yes. Good for the work and sleep schedules, not so much.)
So what have I been up to this week that's keeping me so busy?
After a few weeks of not being able to get to the unreviewed article (ok, so maybe, just maybe, I was…
jane | June 12, 2008I have been waiting for my summer to begin. May was a nightmarish whirlwind of deadlines and heavy amounts of work and way too many obligations, that spilled over into June. (But on the bright side, I did get another article out, so yay me!) Things, I think, are finally calming down, and indeed I think summer for me is about to begin.
But the experience has been unsettling. I've had very little downtime, either personally or work-wise. I haven't had time to reflect on my summer plans, map out what I need to do this summer and this coming school year (as I prepare for the dreaded tenure…
jane | June 2, 2008The theme of this month's Scientiae carnival is "Added Weight: Taking up Space." This theme is very timely for me, since I've been thinking about this topic lately---a lot. And, readers of the old blog may remember that my "theme" for the year is FEARLESS. Well, you can't really be fearless if you're trying to be invisible, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to take stock of what I'm doing this year to be true to the theme and, thus, to take up space in the world.
1. I am more direct in the way I communicate with people, particularly colleagues, but students as well. If there'…
jane | May 22, 2008Things I should be working on vs. things I've actually been working on this morning:
Should be working on:
1. Finishing accepted journal article with looming deadline (eek!).
2. Finding a new home for the unreviewed journal article.
3. Tracking down weird bug in my research software that my research students found last week.
4. Sketching out research idea that came as a result of a meeting with a research student yesterday.
5. Developing a research/sanity plan for the summer.
Actually been working on:
1. Answering a flood of emails, all important.
2. Dealing with logistics around an upcoming…
jane | May 11, 2008In honor of Mother's Day, and in honor of the one-year anniversary of Baby Jane's appearance on Planet Earth, here, in no particular order, are the top five things I've learned from being a mom this past year. And, as a bonus, how each of these lessons can be applied to my career.
5. All plans are tentative.
Life is probably not going to work out exactly as I'd like, so be prepared, have an exit strategy/Plan B, and keep my CV updated, just in case.
4. There are some things I can control, like bedtimes and mealtimes. Most everything else, though, is out of my control, and once I accept…
jane | April 22, 2008It's been quiet around here lately, I realize. As you can tell from the last few posts, life has been busy and angsty and not a lot of fun lately. But a very large burden has been lifted (which I may blog about at some point, once I figure out how to do so without compromising my pseudonymity), and life is looking better and more manageable, so hopefully I'll get back into the swing of blogging Real Soon Now.
In the meantime, here's a random sampling of things that I've been pondering lately.
1. Mr. Jane, who has followed me all over creation and put my career first and has rarely…
jane | April 16, 2008Not too long ago, I had lunch with one of my mentors, a senior woman in a different department who has been just an incredible resource and sounding board for me over the years. Meeting with this woman always makes me feel better: she boosts my confidence when it needs boosting, and is really good at coming up with strategies to deal with the various things I've had to deal with over the years. And lunch on this particular day was no exception.
One of the many things that I've been beating myself up over lately is "difference". Namely, the difference between me and my departmental…
jane | March 19, 2008Longtime readers of this blog are familiar with the struggles I've had to finish and submit journal articles. In particular, there are two such articles that I've been working on forever that I just couldn't seem to wrap up, for one reason or another.
Well, ahem...check out the "Stuff I should probably be working on" in the sidebar.
That's right, I finally got one of the two monkeys off my back. Relief does not even begin to describe what I feel right now.
I fully expect this article to be rejected, or best case scenario require major revisions. I sent it to the top journal in my…