Sometimes you have to get away.
This week, in honor of my trip to South Africa (PS—I’m in South Africa, y’all!), we turn to a different Knowles sister, who shot the video for her single “Losing You” in Cape Town. I’m posting the link below, but if you haven’t already seen it/heard the song, what are you even doing with your life?
One link this week: the Hemingway app which, contrary to the name, will not make your writing drunker/misogynistickier. I heard about this through Publication Coach, and I’ve previously featured Helen Sword’s Writer’s Diet, which serves a similar function in taking your writing “from flabby to fit.” Try it out with some of your prose this week, and see how it fares! Seems to me that this could be especially useful in trimming down a job letter or research proposal, since those have been on my mind as of late (i.e. the last eight months). And if you have a favorite web-based writing tool, post it in the comments!
And here are your weekly goals:
Meg: Goal #1: Research report is thisclose to being done. Send it off by 11am Monday.
Goal #2: Catch up on some work stuff I have neglected rest of Monday and Tuesday.
Goal #3: Devote at least from 8am to 1pm Wednesday and Friday on my stuff:
Subgoal A: continue data analysis for a paper that is due at the end of April.
Subgoal B: outline/figure out my angle for a book chapter that is due at the end of May.
Nicole: [re “chunks” of chapter two]: I am trying to get the first one, on State Absence, done today or tomorrow. I want to get the Gender one also out this time next week!!! I am behind on my outline, but it makes sense why, because this thing has so much freaking content (i.e. what are now these three chapters).
Also this coming week: after some volleying back and forth, I am going to get my R and R article back in my hands, update the page numbers on the memo, run it by someone, and hopefully get it back to the journal promptly!!
Dan: My major goal for this week is to enjoy the rest of my time in Cape Town! It’s been really wonderful so far. I do have a job app due Friday, so I’ll take care of that on the plane/on the train/once back in France, since I leave here late Thursday. Depending on how I feel, I may go to Paris on Saturday to film ACT UP Paris’ action for International Women’s Day, so I’m not going to set a work goal for then. Next week I’ll be back on the work horse in a big way, but until then, I’m taking it pretty easy.
Roberta: I will do my OWN, dissertation work four days a week rather than the three I’ve been averaging since joining this group. While 3 days a week is far better than the intermittent returns to the work over the previous 6 months, it isn’t good enough. I am trying to be realistic and realize that the daily goal isn’t working yet so I’m committing to 4 days this week with the determination to continue that after our Spring Break.
Mike: I would like to finish a thorough revision of a grant proposal, use the additional time to organize my notes for candidacy exams and hopefully finish up some loose ends within the readings. So my goal for this week is to complete said grant proposal. Today I’d like to look back over it and determine the areas of revision and plan accordingly. That should require two pomidoros.
Tuesday: 6 poms pn grant proposal and 4 poms on reading.
Wednesday: I’ll have some additional teaching duties that day so my load should be lighter on the reading, but I would like to get 4 poms on candidacy.
Thursday: 8 poms on grant revision. 4 on candidacy exams.
Friday: 4 poms on candidacy and hopefully only 4 or so poms on grant.
And, as promised, Solange:
Ye Olde Royle Blog 
Spring break is upon us shortly! Which means that my teaching duties will be less and my writing duties will be more. Leading up to that week (next week), I would like to finish a thorough revision of a grant proposal, use the additional time to organize my notes for candidacy exams and hopefully finish up some loose ends within the readings. So my goal for this week is to complete said grant proposal. Today I’d like to look back over it and determine the areas of revision and plan accordingly. That should require two pomidoros.
Tuesday: 6 poms pn grant proposal and 4 poms on reading.
Wednesday: I’ll have some additional teaching duties that day so my load should be lighter on the reading, but I would like to get 4 poms on candidacy.
Thursday: 8 poms on grant revision. 4 on candidacy exams.
Friday: 4 poms on candidacy and hopefully only 4 or so poms on grant.
Hopefully that will give me enough steam to come into the weekend having at least mostly finished my grant. On a different note – this will be my last grant to write for at least a year!! It’s been a wonderful learning process, but I am ready to get off the grant bandwagon for a little while!
Finally, I got my R and R back to the journal this past week. And chapter 2 is getting there. I have it printed with insane pencil changes throughout to implement today. So this will be out of my hands very soon (my sense of timing is obviously off), but tomorrow sounds great. This week my next huge goal is to try to finish the gender Chapter (3) which is a lot written out but not completed. That would be a great way to start spring break, considering I’m behind on my timeline of many more chapters! One step at a time…
Hi, I’m back on the wagon! I don’t have a lot to show for last week, but this week I am going to 1) make the first round of revisions on Chapter 1 in preparation for a workshop later this month 2) process a mountain of scans from NARA from the last few weeks.
I submitted my research report last week as scheduled. Life got in the way for my other planned goals, but I did make some progress. I have to travel for a family situation later this week, so I want to devote the 6 hours on the plane each way to “my stuff,” which means continued analysis of my probation and parole interview transcripts, making some sense of the data, consulting the recent lit on the topic, and starting to put together the framework for a dissertation chapter/future pub.
I am quite honestly still recovering from my trip to Cape Town, which was idyllic and wonderful, but not great for my work momentum. Nor is this the best week to attempt a return to normalcy, since we have exams and my schedule is all out of whack. Today was kind of a wash, as I traveled to Paris for an oral history that only got pushed back to tomorrow, meaning another trip to Paris and another day more or less shot. Nevertheless, I will try to salvage it! Wednesday is wide open, so that will be one big work day, Tuesday is full of exams and an appointment in Nantes (more travel!) and Friday is, again, half-taken up by exams. These aren’t huge time commitments for the most part, but they break my day up in awkward ways that make it necessary to find scraps of time to work here and there, rather than work in large, scheduled blocks of time, which tends to work much better for me. So my time goals will be: 4 poms Tuesday and Thursday, wherever I can get them. Wednesday, 8 poms from 3 to 8, Friday 4 poms from 6 to 8, and Saturday 4 poms from 6 to 8 (I want to also get out for a ride that day, hence the modest goal). I can’t even pretend like I’m not going to work on Sunday, since that has consistently been my most productive work day throughout the semester, so I’m not going to set a work goal, but just do whatever’s left from the week.