It’s the start of a new semester, so time for a new semester plan! In the Fall, I shared my Fall semester plan and one thing I like to do at the end of the semester is review how that went (as it is never exactly to plan!). So, here is the plan at the beginning of the semester:
And here is the plan at the end of the semester:
As you can see, a variety of things got added in, and not everything that I planned got accomplished. However, I tend to view this not a failure of the plan, but as a flexible adjustment. When I make my Spring plan, I can focus on whether the projects I didn’t complete need to be carried over (because they take longer than I allotted or got replaced with something new) or just deleted (painful, but sometimes necessary).
So, here is my Spring 2019 plan:
This semester, my main goal is to make it to the end of the semester without being exhausted (hence REST as my focus word). Last semester was a particularly challenging one due to a variety of anticipated and unanticipated things that took more mental and emotional energy than I expected (on top of the physical exhaustion of having young children that don’t sleep through the night). While the pattern of pushing to exhaustion and then resting on the semester breaks seems to be the dominant one in academia, and there are people who really thrive on this type of sprinting, deadline-based approach, I have decided that it is not for me, and I’m working on figuring out a more paced approach. One reason this doesn’t work for me is that my “breaks” tend to be filled with catching up on life admin activities I neglect during the semester or hanging out with my kids and family. The first can be mentally exhausting and the second physically exhausting, if a nice mental release.
So, the question is, how to make a semester plan that has a pacing strategy? I have to admit, this is unclear as the beginning of the semester is already jam-packed, is unclear, but I hope to report back with things that worked and didn’t work in May. As I mentioned in my Fall post, I make my semester plan by putting in the relevant dates and deadlines that are already scheduled, and then adding habits, goals, projects, and tasks. This semester, as part of my pacing goal, I brainstormed everything I wanted to do separately, and then tried to select only a few to actually make it onto the plan. You’ll also see I have nothing planned in May—this is the buffer time for things that take longer than anticipated or that I don’t know about yet. I’m also trying a new variation on my weekly planning, where I organize my days by energy consumed and generated rather than category, that I’ll report back on in a later post.
Do you pace your semesters? Or are you more of the sprinting type? Let me know if you have ideas for pacing!
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