Happy 2020! Given the number of decade in review posts I’ve seen around, perhaps I should be doing that instead. As it happens, however, this was quite an eventful decade for me, and every time I think about reviewing it, I just want to go to sleep instead. So, I’ll stick with Fall 2019, which was also fairly eventful in different ways. As I mentioned last Spring, I have a review process for reviewing various areas of my life, and I also keep track of some of them numerically.
So, what happened in Fall 2019?
RESEARCH
Total Hours: 98
Percent of Work Time: 15.6% (sigh, in theory this is supposed to be 40%)
Activities Included:
- 3 Conferences
- Finalizing the intro on an edited collection (just one more chapter needed and we can submit!)
- Finalizing the proofs on a chapter in an edited collection for a 2019 volume (which as far as I know didn’t come out in 2019, leading me to the question if the 2019 volume comes out in 2020, is the publication date 2019 or 2020?
Thoughts moving forward:
This was not a great semester for research, which I honestly feel fine about because there was A LOT going on in the other areas of my life, and I’m on sabbatical this semester! However, it would be nice to get the percentage closer to what it’s actually supposed to be for my job.
TEACHING
Total Hours: 210
Percent of Work Time: 33.6% (this is also supposed to be 40%, so close)
Activities Included:
- Creating a new social media unit for 3rd semester Arabic, revamping the party unit, and teaching half of the 6 credit class)
- Designing (and teaching) the Capstone class for the Languages Major
- Teaching an independent study focused on transcribing research interview (for my research!)
Thoughts moving forward:
Teaching in English is very strange! Probably, this should be a whole post at some point because I feel like I got some insights into my own bilingualism, which was meta since that was also sort of the topic of the class, which I loved teaching! Also, despite the fact that this was a new course from scratch, it was still less work than the language class. In the Arabic class, I feel like we have a pretty good system for developing our curriculum, and it will be interesting to tweak it and work on moving away from the textbook in first year next Fall. However, since I will be on sabbatical this semester, my efforts will be focused on research.
SERVICE/ADMIN:
Total Hours: 317
Percent of Work Time: 50.7% (haha, this is supposed to be 20%)
Activities Included:
- Final wrapup for our STARTALK Summer Program, including the Fall Conference
- Applying for the STARTALK Grant for 2020 (wish us luck!)
- Writing two posts for the AATA blog
- Giving a presentation on productivity and time management to grad students in our department
- Editing the Critical Multilingualism Studies Journal
- Reviewing two journal articles and abstracts for a conference
- Served on three committees
- Participated in group focused on racial and social justice in general education
- Reading capstone papers for International Studies
- Applying for funding to set up a faculty-led study abroad program (successful!)
- Attending some women in leadership trainings
- This blog
- Planning
- Email, letter writing, and who knows what else!
Thoughts moving forward:
As I mentioned last semester, I still feel like this category takes up too much of my time, but includes things that are important to me. I’m curious to see what happens on sabbatical, and think I should perhaps start tracking within this category more carefully.
DANCE
Total Hours: 196
Activities Included:
- Teaching classes once per week in person, once on Skype, plus a monthly intensive class
- Admin activities (payments, emailing, arranging demos, posting on social media, etc.)
- Attending three competitions with my students (7-9 hour drives away)
- Running one competition (3 hours away)
- Judging one competition (flying to the East Coast)
- Running a demo and bake sale fundraiser at a local Celtic Festival
- Running on online professional development event for SW Highland teachers
- Fundraising for our local May Games, which were in desperate straits, including writing a grant (this was a lot at the last minute and frankly quite stressful, so wish us luck!)
- Participating in meetings and fundraisers for the U.S. National Championships, which our SW region is hosting in May
Thoughts moving forward:
As hobbies go, I have to admit I have a pretty high commitment to this one, and that is unlikely to change because Scottish Highland Dancing is just that wonderful. I do wish I could figure out ways to ease the time pressure though, as I usually feel behind on these activities!
HOME ADMIN
Total Hours: 301
Activities Included:
- MOVING to a new house
- Organizing the new house
- Working on family schedules and routines
- Cleaning, bill paying, photo books, budgets, all that stuff (but not family relationship time)
Thoughts moving forward:
Well, hopefully not moving will fix this area! Although our new house has more house projects to be done. I’m also working on tweaking our routines for the new semester as our schedules change.
SLEEP
Total Hours: 1016 (about 6.5 per night)
Thoughts moving forward:
I use my Fitbit to track my sleep, and when my old Fitibit finally bit the dust in late August, I got a new one, which has more detailed sleep tracking, and shows me sleeping more hours. Thanks to my children, I can spend 9 hours in bed and get 6 hours of sleep, which I’ve basically accepted and now I go to bed when they do. Fixing this situation has been on my husband’s and my list for nearly 7 years (since our eldest was born), so maybe 2020 is the year? Now you can see why thinking about a decade in review just makes me want to sleep because it’s been almost that long . . .
OTHER
As I mentioned, there are some types of time that I don’t track, like exercise, reading, hanging out with family, travel, etc. (maybe I should!). However, notably events in this category this Fall included my brother’s wedding and a friend’s funeral.
So, that’s my Fall in review! Stay tuned for a future post on my Spring plans, which should be especially interesting as I’m on sabbatical this semester.
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