Saturday, January 14, 2006

WEEK ONE of my teaching-free semester

I think things are starting out pretty well. I only had four work days this week (the public schools get a 4-day weekend for MLK Day, so Friday my daughter was home), but was able to make some decent progress. I worked on a paper that is almost finished, then handed it over to my co-author for more input (I'll get it back soon), worked on some things for a proposal that's due 2/24- including arranging some meetings and other things, and started editing my draft dossier and annual report (both due next Friday). The last item is such a time-consuming exercise- compiling all activities of the past year (annual report) and incorporating them into my draft dossier (I had to do one last year, so I'm just revising at this point). Next week will also be a 4-day work-week, but I should have time to finish that paper with my co-author, finish my report and dossier (the departmental promotion & tenure committee gets it first), and hopefully make some progress on the other paper I wanted to get out this month. Then I can focus on revising that proposal, completing some more research for the two conferences I'm attending in March. If I can keep up my momentum, I should be able to really catch up on things this semester. I'm really seeing how much of my time is usually taken up with teaching! I think time is going to fly- especially with those conferences coming up... March will be gone before I know it. Whew!

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