Every semester, I make a plan using my semester planning sheet. In previous posts I’ve discussed my semester planning routine, and you can also read about my Spring 2019 plan. Apparently I forgot to post about my Fall 2019 plan, but it did exist! In this post, I’m sharing my 2020 semester plan, which looks a little different than most because I am on sabbatical this semester, which means replacing my classroom teaching duties with research ones (theoretically it also minimizes my service duties, but that’s complicated). Dance and home duties of course go on as usual.
So, here is my semester plan for this semester.
In the month sections, I put large events, particularly those involving travel. As you can see, mine are mostly dance related (purple), but there are also some conferences (red). I also put birthdays and holidays here. The next section is habits I’m trying to work on. I used to try a new habit every month, but that never worked out too well. So, this semester I have three habits for the semester, and if I ever feel they are established (not so far in January!) I’ll add some new ones in. They essentially all involve taking short restful or productive breaks during the workday (morning, lunch, afternoon), but this is actually something quite difficult for me since I’m used to trying to cram as much stuff in as possible before I have to pick up kids.
After that, I have tasks, which are basically shorter projects (e.g. I could complete them in a week) that have deadlines. This includes conference presentations and running a dance competition. Next are goals, which are larger projects that often don’t have a specific deadline, but I think are important. In this case, since I’m on sabbatical, these mostly articles or grants to write and datasets to create, but I’ve also put a goal of setting up a website for our Arabic classes in May (a risky move, because it’s usually best to leave May as a buffer month). The last category is projects. As you can see, these are only listed in January because these are all ongoing projects (writing for two blogs, editing a journal, and a service group I’m part of). It’s also difficult to ever consider these projects complete, which is why I consider them separate from those in the “tasks” or “goals” group. Probably I should rename this category to something like “ongoing” and the tasks category to “projects” but since I already filled out the sheet, I’m leaving it as is for this semester.
I also have space on the left for a focus word and notes, but I haven’t been able to choose a focus word for this semester (nor has this been particularly successful in the past for me) and I don’t have any notes yet!
Do you have your own method for semester planning?
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