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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Where Did the Day Go? (3)

7 a.m.: Get up, shower, dress.

7:30: I am in the coffee shop reading Clark Coolidge as part of my 9000 books of poetry project.

8:30-:11:15. I am in my office. I work on the article I am supposed to be working on. I see a student for about 10 minutes. I make a phone call and leave a message. I write an email to another scholar with a very specific question. I get an email from someone how invited me to submit an article, with some comments on the article. I answer him. A colleague comes in to consult about something. I go back to the article between these other tasks. Altogether a productive two hours of writing jammed in amidst an hour of other tasks.

11:15: I close my document for the day. I pay my electric bill and look at some recommendations I have to write. Eat lunch. I read a chapter of El cuarto de atrĂ¡s for tomorrow's class. The scholar I asked a question earlier in the morning responds by email. I read his response and thank him.

12:30: I read more Coolidge. Look again at the recommendations I have to write, making sure I have the addresses and deadlines handy.

1:30. Meeting with librarian about how to put all of my scholarship on line through KU's open access program.

2:20. Now I'm in my office. I email the librarian my cv so she can help me get my publications on line with open access. I blog a bit. Finish the Coolidge book and write a post about that. There are things I could be doing now, but it feels like my midafternoon lull.

3:00. I decide to read my students proposals (revisions). I go ahead and do that. There are two of them to read. Now it's 3:18.

3:19. Coffee break! I talk with the chair of the dept. about the lecture on Thursday, etc...

3:27. I'm back in the office. I send a few emails. Check in with the writer's group. Really, I don't have to do more work today. I can finish class prep in the morning and write those recommendations. A few more things come up in the email.

4:30-5:30. Therapy.

Back to my office to deal with some more email.

6:00. Phone call. Spouse is promoted to full professor! I go have dinner. Will I have energy afterwards to do something else academic? I'll have a drink with Barney at 7:30.

10:31: I'm back home now. I was with Barney at the bar until now, and we ran into Bob and Jessica too. I'll read James schuyler until bedtime.

11:00 p.m. I'm turning in now. Basically I figured out that the day is over at 3:30. If I can do more work after that, that's great, but my real work is from 8:30-12.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jonathan, I noticed you didn't work on your book during this day. How do you go about balancing out working on mid-sized projects like articles, while also having a larger project in process?

Thomas has offered some helpful advice on this organizational problem, and I'm wondering what you would say.

Jonathan said...

The article is part of the book. Not exactly a chapter of it, but a place where I can work out some of the ideas for it, so I don't see it as too much of a deviation. I'm trying to publish not too many articles based on the book, so it's a delicate balancing act. I like publishing both books and articles, but if I didn't have a book project I wouldn't have to worry about the overlap.

Clarissa said...

Congratulations to your wife! She proves that research is not "effectively gendered male" as some people like to suggest.