Category Archives: personal

May 4, 2013 · 10:07 pm

Bingeing on Books

I wrapped up my winter’s term marking just as the last of the ice melted off of the lake. While getting back into my academic writing that’s been shelved most of the past month and pulling together the reams of documentation necessary for my annual report, I’ve been reading lots. Bingeing, almost. Fiction, that is. Genre-style.

Over at Novel Readings, Rohan Maitzen has an intriguing post on binge reading. In her case, she’s doing it for a project, to review the novels of Dick Francis. When I saw mention of this on her Twitter update earlier in the week, I was intrigued. Not only because I was a big fan of Dick Francis’s work back in the day (when I was a teen, I binged on about twelve or fifteen books of his in quick succession, borrowing a stack at a go from our city library). I quickly recognized the formula (wiry, game ex-jockey who goes through some horrifying torture on his way to solving a racing-related mystery) and reveled in the easy read that predictability provided.

Today we read more about binge-watching television shows but binge-reading has its uses. Concentrated non-academic reading clears my mind of the detritus of a term of teaching. I’m not obsessing about the successes and failures of my students (or the recurrent problem some demonstrated in differentiating between hanged and hung in a discussion of early modern punishments). By reading a raft of mysteries, romances, fantasies and other completely non-work-related non-fiction, I’m attuned to words in a very different way than I was in the midst of marking. I’m thinking about what makes a story compelling and where it disappoints. I’m aware of how word choice can make or break a scene, all in a way that’s fun and energizing. I’m reminded about what I love in reading and ready to get back into writing, even my own much more sedate academic history.

Reading for teaching is diagnostic: you’re trying to find problems or help prescribe solutions. Reading for research is surgical: you’re in there to get some specific nuggets of information to fuel your own scholarship. Reading for entertainment is restorative: you’re in there to relax or explore or think in different ways. A balanced reading life includes all of these aspects. Sadly, when term’s crazy, I tend towards only the first two forms but this entertainment binge has me back in balance and just in time. Another deadline’s looming!

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February 10, 2013 · 2:49 pm

Taking Time

Long time no blog – it’s another teaching term, I’m writing on three separate projects (not quite at the same time, but I jump from one into another). And there’s real life with some moments of profound sorrow, as when we said goodbye to Ozzie, our Staffordshire Bull Terrier, early in the new year. But the hardest thing I’ve been doing is trying to close the door on work some of the time.

Like many academics, I’ve been guilty of letting work take over my life or, more precisely, to succumb to the idea that I need to work all the time. With the last book, there were weeks when editorial tasks ate up so much time that it simply pushed my other work into the remaining hours and, whoopsie, there goes actually living life. You know, the parts like spending time with your kids, taking care of your health, stopping to smell the roses?

It’s scary how easy it is to fall back into those bad habits where work takes over your life – grading piles of papers, writing others, tackling course prep.

So, while I avoid new year’s resolutions, I’ve taken the new term as a cue to remember to take time for myself and my family as well as to pursue more healthy work-habits during the week. This op-ed piece from the New York Times, Relax! You’ll Be More Productive makes a strong argument that rest is essential to true productivity. The author cites studies that show a good 10 hours of sleep (Wow!) helped basketball players to score 9% more free throws and three-point shots. The particulars of their 90-minute personal cycle I haven’t tested, but knowing when to step away for a bit is essential for my productivity, not only on the macro scale of taking a day off each week, but also in the daily grind

The idea is also at odds with the prevailing work ethic in most companies, where downtime is typically viewed as time wasted. More than one-third of employees, for example, eat lunch at their desks on a regular basis. More than 50 percent assume they’ll work during their vacations.

In most workplaces, rewards still accrue to those who push the hardest and most continuously over time. But that doesn’t mean they’re the most productive.

Most of us know now that burning the midnight oil or being continuously ‘on’ is no way to get things done. The idea that you naturally work in cycles of on/off is appealing. It’s also the mantra of one of my favourite personal/home-care blogs: Unfuck Your Habitat, which advocates cleaning and chores carried out in waves of work. The common rhythm there is 20 minutes on/10 minutes off or, in their parlance, a 20/10; alternatively, 45/15. When my available blocks of time in a day vary between half an hour and two, some of these cycling schemes work very well.

And blogging totally counts as a break from work, doesn’t it?

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January 3, 2013 · 2:22 pm

Dealing with Derailment

This morning I was all prepared to polish off the last course prep tasks for my winter classes when I got derailed. Pet health issues again: trying to figure out what was wrong, booking an appointment with the vet and dealing with the logistics of how to get there on a carless day with much snow? That ate up a big chunk of the morning.

Now it’s afternoon and I’ve just gotten back on track with compiling the last course materials. I couldn’t do it right away after dealing with all of the above. I was too flustered and high on adrenaline. Instead, I substituted a few low-stakes tasks into the rest of the morning. My range and kitchen counters sparkle, there’s laundry on the go and I’ve virtually filed away some teaching materials I won’t need in the new year.

When I’m derailed, I’ve learned to accept that this task, whatever it is!, has taken over my life for a short term. I throw myself into doing what has to be done to deal with it, deal with the issue as far as I can at that point (which may, in the case of a semi-distant crisis only be an acknowledgement of the problem), calm down and, only once I’m calm, get myself back on track. Which is where I’ve been for the last hour and where I’m heading back to as soon as I hit post!

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December 24, 2012 · 11:59 am

Holiday Wishes

Happy Holidays 2012
2012 has been a pretty good year hereabouts. We’ve weathered our storms (some quite literal while others were more figurative). There’s a beautiful new book to treasure in Star Wars and History and many other projects underway. Pet health crises have been weathered.

Marks are in, cookies have been baked and family members will soon arrive for a holiday visit. What more could we want?

Here’s hoping that your year ends as happily as ours.

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December 7, 2012 · 11:43 am

A Dog’s Life

This past month has been an exciting time professionally. Helping to get the news out about Star Wars and History has been great fun. But real life has a way of intruding. In this case, it came in the form of our aging but much-loved Staffie, Ozzie, seen here sacked out on the family room couch with our cat, Sisu. Dog and cat snoozing

Ozzie has health problems, which we’ve finally nailed down with a diagnosis of Cushing’s disease. (Sadly, nothing to do with the awesome Peter Cushing who artfully terrorized us all as Grand Moff Tarkin.) Now that we know what’s wrong, we can begin the course of treatment, medication, which should improve his quality of life. The diagnosis also comes with the news that he’s likely to only be with us for another year and a half or two. We live with pets on borrowed time but we’re hoping to squeeze as much as we can out in the next few years. There will be more indulgent naps on the couch and snuggle time, have no doubt!

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September 7, 2012 · 6:01 pm

Observations on the Start of Another Term

  • I hate starting teaching in the middle of the week. I understand why we’re starting on a Wednesday. My OCD tendencies just don’t like it. Ditto for the last day of term, the first Wednesday in December, being taught as a Monday to compensate for the Monday we’ll miss on Canadian Thanksgiving. It’s logical. It just doesn’t feel right. It also means that my Wednesday morningsenior seminar will wrap up on November 30.
  • Speaking of the seminar, which I’ll do frequently this fall, we’re currently standing at 36 enrolled. I’m printing out fold-over name cards for each student to set on their desks in hopes that it will not only help me remember all of their names more readily, but also encourage them to use each others’ names in the lively discussions I hope will ensue.
  • Why is discussion so difficult to inspire and maintain? Ah, that’s the million dollar question of academia, isn’t it? If it was easy, everyone would do it. I love what Dr. Virago posted about encouraging discussion earlier this week: that feigning ignorance or error inspires students to attempt their own explanations. It’s not so much the “lying to student” part of not giving them the answer that’s important, it’s how avoiding giving them the answer helps them to generate answers on their own, sometimes even more than we’d be able to give them as the ‘sage on the stage’. Reminder to self: silence is golden, patience is a virtue and the Socratic method still is pretty awesome.
  • Tuesdays and Thursdays will be writing and editing days. I’ll also be devoting a chunk of Monday mornings to writing and editing. And, given the daunting number of projects I have on the go and due in the near future, most of the weekends. Of course, the challenge is to not let administrivia, errands and other issues fill up these blocks of time. Already there’s a service task which is in the process of blowing up in my face (not through any wrongdoing on anyone’s part, it’s just when this particular committee gets called upon, it means Work and lots of it). I’m pretty well-resigned to some of that writing and editing time getting eaten up by the service task from beyond the grave but I can hope that the only time we can tackle that problem is sometime on Friday afternoon instead, when I know I’m too tired to do a good job of writing and editing and focus, instead, on less demanding occupations such as filing, emails and blogging.

And that reminds me, it’s off to Dame Eleanor’s for the weekly writing group check-in!

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August 31, 2012 · 2:57 pm

The Importance of Being Kempt

Early modernist here so I can legitimately use the term “kempt” whereas those poor folks who don’t at least mentally reside for a good chunk of the year in premodern texts are stuck with only the inelegant “unkempt”. (Check out this fun explanation of the shift in the decline of kempt and the rise of unkempt.)

Bardiac posted about pre-semester rituals – hers include a hair cut which is top of my to-do list for Tuesday. Shaggy and Scooby I fail to get hair cuts during term time so if I don’t do this now, I’ll look a lot like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo within a month or two, minus the stubble, of course!

I don’t aspire to the fashionista heights of blogworthy professorial fashion but I do believe in the power of kempt. Whether you’re rocking the jeans and turtlenecks in the manner of the late Steve Jobs or something a bit more fashion-forward, it behooves a professor to have clothes that are clean and relatively tidy. I’ve culled the wardrobe this summer, ditching the threadbare jeans and shirts along with the items that just never worked (why did I think that pale tan was ever a good colour on me? It isn’t!). I added a few new tops and a skirt or two.

But the number one rule of being kempt? Forgoing those messy condiments during term-time lunches. No more soy sauce, ketchup or, heaven forbid!, mustard. Because there’s nothing more guaranteed to mess up your look than a mustard stain on your shirtfront.

How do you keep it together when in front of the classroom or out in the field?

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July 13, 2012 · 4:50 pm

In Praise of Vacations

If absence makes the heart grow fonder, then leaving work behind for a few days, even a few weeks, can help you love your work again.

I’ve been on vacation since the first of the month and much of that has been a real vacation away with family in a tropical paradise where I avoided connections to the internet as much as possible in order to keep my mind off of work. Since coming home last week, I’ve picked up a few pieces of work – tweaking a text I’ll give my seminar students to work with in September, starting to read through the two, late M.A. essays for which I’m on the committee, doing the final bits of proofreading on Star Wars and History.

I’ve been a wee bit grudging about most of this because, dude!, I’m still on vacation!, but almost everything I touched involved extremely pressing deadlines so I couldn’t put them aside for the full two weeks I’d officially ‘be off’. I suppose that I could have avoided my email inbox for the full fourteen days but the consequences would have been much more stressful come Monday that I’d prefer not to do so. Instead, I’m slowly ramping back up to full-out work mode.

To be honest, I’m looking forward to a lot of what’s ahead for the rest of the summer. I love my job and the last few years I’ve pursued some fascinating new paths in my career. I’m eager to start working on my teaching prep for the fall as I want to tweak two of the courses with some fabulous new elements (I’m planning mini-Prezi walkthroughs of key skill-building exercises for my first year class, for instance). I have an article draft to polish some more and a research plan to flesh out as well as another chapter to write from scratch as I edit the dozen others in the volume.

The nice part is that I’m coming back to these other projects feeling fresh, well-rested and armed with some new ideas that came to me during the vacation break. So I’ll be ready to dive back in on Monday, or once I finish the proofreading and essay-commenting as well as squeezing one last bit of vacation fun with my family here at home, that is!

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June 21, 2012 · 7:31 pm

Summertime, panic time

We’re officially into summer by both of my measures: the calendar and the girls’ high school schedule. Their last courses met today and while they both have exams early next week, that’s hardly anything. What stretches ahead of me, except for two weeks’ vacation I have clearly booked off, is two months of not enough time to get everything I need done before term starts up again in September. And I’m not even talking about the staggering list of things to do at home and with family (at least for the latter part, I’m talking mostly recreational pursuits including a long-awaited family vacation far, far away from here). No, it’s the professional deadlines that had me atwitter.

Tick-tock, tick-tock. Can you hear it? That’s the sound of deadlines looming!

When the girls were younger, the end of their school year was a painful moment, professionally speaking: even with a few weeks of summer camp and family visits, here or there, it’s a lot of time when they’re at loose ends and I’m still trying to work. Autistic youngest manages much better these days with a routine that includes regular trips to the local park and board games played with her family members.

Now that they’re both teens, summertime parenting is not nearly so stressful as it used to feel. I’m less an entertainment machine and chauffeur, particularly since Eldest got her driver’s license, and more the keeper of collective memories and deadlines. Thank goodness for my Google calendar with handy reminders that pop up not only on my netbook but also on my smart phone and the large-format

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June 4, 2012 · 5:05 pm

Summer Meme

Even though it feels like anything but with the last few days of grey and rainy, let’s welcome summer in with a meme borrowed from Sisyphus at Academic Cog”

1. What is your favorite part of summer?

Sleeping in – which only starts once the kids are out of school.

2. What’s your favorite quintessentially summer food? Least favorite?

Cold salads are my favourites whether they’re with potatoes, pasta, fruits or veggies galore. Oh, and gazpacho but it’s a chore to make myself. Worst food for the summer? Scorched stuff off of the barbecue. I like my food without blackened blisters on it!

3. Best beverage to beat the summer heat:

Frozen lemonade or, if that’s too solid. Lemonade.

4. Least favorite/most annoying thing related to summer?

Lawnmowers and long queues in the hot sun.

5. Pick one: the lake /the beach. Why?

Who needs to pick? We have a couple of beaches on the lakes hereabouts. To get to an ocean beach would be a huge effort so that makes me appreciate the lakeshore all the more, though one we’ll visit an ocean beach this summer.

6. Most amusing summer vacation trip you’ve ever taken?

I took the train one summer to visit my sister who was in grad school. I did the train “old school” with dainty heels, an oxford-cloth dress and a hat, of course. So much fun!

7. Most ridiculous/cringe-inducing/blush-provoking summer outfit you have seen? (Bonus points if you yourself were wearing it!)

It was the late 70s – I had a white, terry-cloth romper with a diagonal rainbow stripe across the bodice. *shudders*

8. Your absolute dream summer afternoon would be:

A quiet, bug-free seat on our shady back porch where I could read something for the sheer pleasure of it. Maybe next month!

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