This term has set a personal record for me: 11 applications for things. Eleven. Let me tell you about them. Sabbatical (Are you a US citizen working a contingent academic job? Scroll down for an interesting opportunity that not a lot of people in my world seem to know about). I’m up for sabbatic leave …
Continue reading “Sabbatical Fellowships, or My Semester of Applying for Stuff”
This is written by an academic for academics, but maybe it’s useful for others. Tl;dr, here they are: Only have work email on your work computer and keep it in one place in your home. If you have other devices, keep it off them. Order your off hours. Have Zoom free workdays. Sometime in the …
Continue reading “Three Defence Strategies for Living at Work”
While searching for snarky sports commentary at bedtime two nights ago, I stumbled across an interesting Twitter thread on finishing a manuscript (because I was tagged in it). I am a big believer in the old Walter Benjamin line about how manuscripts aren’t finished, they are abandoned. But the key here is the verb abandon. …
I said that I would get the revised manuscript done by July 1st. July 1st is next week. That is not going happen. Let’s say August 1st. I am behind. The reasons are not interesting; everybody is behind and I’m less behind than lots of others. I don’t actually care that I’m behind other than …
The reviews for Diminished Faculties came back at the end of February. The reviewers were positive and had some good suggestions. I wrote my reply, Duke University Press’ board met, and yesterday I signed the contract. That’s some happy news. I found it actually helpful to publicly announce a deadline, as I did in the …
Continue reading “Work update: a new deadline and a note on endless apologies”
Bottom line: November is a terrible month for academics to make a push on writing. I recommend picking a different month. But it worked for me. I benefitted from publicly announcing a schedule and from the support of friends who knew what I was doing. Word counts ended up being useless to me: in most …
Continue reading “NaNoWriMo / #academicwriting month: a review”
About 30 minutes ago I finished a draft of the manuscript. It runs from beginning to end. There are still some notes to myself in the footnotes, but it’s readable. I sent it to my students as promised, and I also sent it in for review. Later this week I will start distributing it to …
