As a postdoc, I am in my third year of blissfully not teaching, but a major part of my job is lab manager. November is when I have to begin the process of renewing the lab's many, many research permits. I also have my usual year-round responsibilities of supervising research, being accountable for surprise inspections by Chemical Safety, Radiation Safety, etc., and handling the random requests that come into our lab for help. I am also quite sensitive to the difficulties of writing while teaching. Many of you have probably not been following my blog since its humble start over three years ago, but during the academic year of 2005-2006 (right after I completed my degree) I taught as an adjunct at four colleges in New York City just to get the bills paid while I engaged in a massive job search. I had a huge teaching load but spent even more time on the public transportation system. It was exhausting. Somehow I managed to get two publications out that year, though. (Ok, so one was a dissertation chapter and the other was a short communication, and I didn't get ANYTHING done in the spring semester when I taught five classes at three colleges, but still.)
The mysterious Dr. U commented yesterday:
Just wondering, whoever decided that InaDWriMo has to be November? Wouldn't it be better to have it timed so that it wouldn't coincide with the busiest and most stressful time in the semester?Well, to answer the first question, as I have noted elsewhere, InaDWriMo is one of many spin-offs of NaNoWriMo, which occurs every November.
I personally vote for moving it to May or June.
And secondly, yes, November is a bad time of the semester, but really, when ISN'T it a bad time? I know every field is different, but for me, May or June is the height of my field season and would be the absolute worst time to try to get a lot of writing done. (If somebody else wants to host one of these at a different time of year, well, by all means, have a blast!)
The point, as I see it, isn't to find a "perfect" time. The point is to make an effort and get some writing done despite having other things to do. As academics, we will always have to get the writing done. We all need to find ways to work some writing time into the day, even the busy days when there are assays to be run, essays to be graded, and useless meetings to be sat through. We won't always succeed, and shouldn't beat ourselves up when we don't, but we can't sit around waiting for that mythical good time to write.
7 comments:
I think you hit it home on this post, because I'd gotten similar comments about May/June on my last InaDWriMo update post. Every month has its own difficulties, but writing is a big part of the academic job description, so we've just got to figure out a way to do it consistently. But then again, we can't spend too much time and energy beating ourselves up about it when it doesn't happen every day.
november is far better than june if you've got kids who aren't in year round childcare.
Here, here. I quite agree. The trick is to figure out how to keep it going, no matter how slowly, no matter what else is going on in academia or life.
I also agree that most of the time most of us can't keep it up and shouldn't berate ourselves when we come up short.
I am a recent reader so I was not aware of your adjunct schedule in NYC. Having both lived and adjuncted there...my hat goes off to you.
I had to take my counter down in shame... there are too many urgent tasks cropping up for me to be able to spend ANY time on my non-urgent but still important chosen project...
The NaNoWriMo crowd use the same reasoning.
But y'know, for some of us, the teaching period finishes end of October and November IS the summer :)
Yeah, but November isn't even a whole 31 days, dadgumit!
(This is from somebody who did write this mornth, but who didn't keep track of how much...)
yah, every time of the year sucks, basically. while i will be re-assessing my goals in a bit, I am doing some good writing, slowly but surely, this week. prolly b/c i need to get a draft out to a colleague for review by the 30th, ie tomorrow night. yikes! so for me, this whole thing worked out perfectly. and hopefully i can keep up the wordmeter stuffs along the way, it is quite helpful when you see that bar moving! thanks dr bh for hosting! re: progress, i am happy to report i have actually made some this week!
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