Time to face the music

Ugh. It's August, and what's more it's August 16, so I can't even pretend it's "the beginning of August" any more. It's time to prepare classes and get some things accomplished before class starts. I am clearly not the only one feeling this way.

I've gotten remarkably little done this summer. I've worked, desultorily, on a planned article, and it's being a pain to write. There needs to be a certain amount of narrative, as there is no reason whatsoever any potential reader should be familiar with these events... but working in analysis and actual arguments with the narrative is something of a problem.

I'm generating a bunch of ideas for classes and syllabi, and am slowly starting to pull them together into real, coherent class plans.

The rest of the summer to-do list has barely been touched.

So things are; I am trying to avoid the classic academic's spiral of guilt that I have not read enough-written enough-revised enough-anything enough and get on with the business of actually doing something.

Summer to-do list

I am at home and done with major travel for the summer, after taking some time for conference and social time. There are a couple more trips on the horizon, but only short ones. My cats should be grateful.

So the time has come to figure out what needs to be done this summer. Here's the list I've come up with, in no particular priority order:

Writing Stuff

• Look over book manuscript and helpful people's comments


• Figure out how to revise / whether to keep it as book or slice into articles


• Revise recent conference paper


• Work on article idea (pulled together from two different conference papers and recent research stuff)


• Correspond with various people regarding another project

Teaching Stuff

• Think about tweaking survey classes, especially assignments (fall one a priority)


• Think about tweaking upper-level course that's a repeat


• Make a plan for upper-level course that's new


• Order books for fall classes (should happen real soon now)

That's all leaving aside stuff to be done around the house and yard, of course, as well as anything else I do to stay sane this summer. It seems like more than enough to keep me off the streets and out of trouble.

Summer at last

Ahhhh... (that was a big sigh of relief)... I am finally done with this academic year. Commencement was last Saturday, and I only finished up with grading yesterday (due partially to IT problems that were not under my control--the less said about those, the better).

Now I need to figure out what to do with myself.

I feel as though I've been running at top speed since about mid-March, and certainly some of the things I need to do now are slow down, catch my breath, and catch up with all the various non-work-related things I have shoved to the side in the last two months.

In the short term, "what to do with myself" is pretty straightforward: I'll be leaving home toward the end of this week and go on a road trip. It is mostly vacation, but will also include a trip to the Berks conference, where I will give a paper that I'm trying to convince myself is not shoddy and slapdash.

After that, then what? There seem to be quite a few things I should be working on this summer, and I need to start just by sorting out what they are. I have thought about joining this writing group, but at the moment I feel very reluctant to commit to a particular one of the several things I could be / should be working on. Plus, I'll be out of town for the first couple weeks of this group. I'll see if I can sort something out in the next few days, I suppose.

Notes from the archives

I'm writing from an undisclosed location in the land of research. And I was just fondly remembering back before I got my (now not-so-new) job, when I actually used to talk about the subjects of my research on this blog. Ahhh. 

I've been looking at a register of episcopal letters to see what sorts of letters the bishops sent to nuns. Some observations I found interesting:

--Usually the bishops write in Latin, but when writing to nuns (and some lay men and women) they often use the vernacular instead. 

--In the case of one community, when the bishop writes to a particular nun in that house, he writes in Latin, but when writing to the nuns collectively, he writes in the vernacular.

Further, I think the register may actually be the originals of the letters. There are emendations in the text (words crossed out, others added in the margins) which suggests to me that a clean copy was made to send off afterward, rather than the register being a copy of a letter composed separately.

A few letters deal with disciplinary issues, which the bishop says are very scandalous. I find it interesting that those letters have a LOT of emendations. Dare I think this suggests some emotion on the author's part--agitation or anger at the scandalous behavior, perhaps? 

The content of the letters is interesting, too, but I need more time to ponder it.

The first year on the tenure track

So, I have finished my first year on the tenure track. I am taking stock a bit, and figuring out how it feels to have passed this milestone.

Last fall I was struggling a bit to feel differently about this job than the one-year positions I've had for the last few years. (I wrote a bit about that here and here.) At some point, when I wasn't really paying attention, I found that I had successfully transitioned. On some level, I have recognized that I have committed to this place. In fact, I have had to restrain myself from worrying too much about proposed curriculum and policy changes.

In a lot of ways, I am glad to have had experience working at other schools before starting on the tenure track here. In my very first (visiting) job out of grad school, I encountered faculty politics that were contentious and a little dysfunctional. That has given me a better idea of what to look for. I have spent much of the past year observing politics here, as well as the quirks of faculty governance, and I think I'm developing the ability to hear what lies behind apparently innocuous comments made in faculty meetings. My senior colleagues have, I think, been a good guide for me.

My classes generally had good enrollments, except for one which was cancelled. I'm writing that one off as a fluke, as my preregistrations for next year also look good. I think I was more relaxed about fitting in with college norms in the spring, so I hope I'm getting adjusted.

I didn't get a ton of writing done this year, but I did give two conference papers, so I think I'm doing all right on the research front.

Next year will bring a considerable change in my responsibilities, since I'll have advisees and committee work. But I think I feel ready, more or less, for this new work.

Almost summer

I am not counting time as part of "summer" until after commencement this Saturday.

But I find that I am somehow, amazingly, almost done. Classes are over. Most of the grading is accomplished. I am waiting on a few late assignments before I submit grades.

Here, therefore, some summer goals (just the academic ones, there are others regarding yard, social life, etc.):

1) Earn my summer stipend by ordering and reading materials and making plans for my fall course on the Crusades.
2) Look over my old conference papers and prepare an article to submit by the end of the summer.
3) Look at my book manuscript, figure out what revisions it needs, and begin work on them.
4) Make plans for a research trip in the fall.
5) Make plans for my other new courses next year, plus start putting materials together for my review. (My school does a 2nd-year review and another in the 4th year.)

Progress report

Though I have no service responsibilities yet, there's been a substantial increase in meetings in the last month. For one thing, we newbie profs had meetings in which we were introduced to the basics of governance and advising, since those will be new for us next year. Soon we'll have to indicate what committees we're interested in serving on, so I'm trying to figure that out: some of our committees sound like a ton of work, but also fairly interesting; one sounds like a lot of work which I would find immensely tedious; others may have lighter work loads, but also sound a bit dull.

For another, we had two hours of faculty meeting recently in which a seemingly innocuous proposal regarding a major had the potential to have huge repercussions for the college-wide curriculum, which had to be discussed in detail.

Finally, my department is very small and hardly ever has department meetings, but we need to have one soon to figure out how we are implementing some new requirements for majors. 

So overall, I am definitely getting introduced to the joys(?) of faculty governance and service.

In spite of that, I have made some progress on this semester's writing goals. 

#1: Interesting Opportunity application, is mostly done, awaiting feedback from a couple of colleagues.

#2: Started a draft of first conference paper; need to look over a few things I've read previously to help flesh this out.

#3: Have collected some stuff to read to inform this one.

So far, so good. It's nice to be able to carve out some time for writing. 

Writing goals this semester

I am hoping this semester will be a bit less crazed than last semester, and I'll be better able to write. I know I can only expect so much during my first year at a new job, but I think on the whole I have reasonable goals:

1) Write up application for Interesting Opportunity

2) Write conference paper #1, due early March

3) Write conference paper #2 for Kalamazoo

4) Work on book manuscript revisions

#4 there is more speculative and I probably won't have time to really dig into it until this summer. The rest really ought to be feasible even around teaching etc.

Is it possible I might one day do research again?

My new job is time-intensive, but yesterday I managed to get a little ahead on class prep, and today I had some time to think. I wrote up an abstract and made some lists:

goals for the year

materials to get from the library

ideas I might want to pursue in the future

I keep most of such notes on the computer, and I have a terrible time keeping track of such stuff. On the list of goals, in fact, is "for the love of God, reorganize the files so I can find things." My system of electronic file-keeping broke down once I moved beyond my dissertation materials, and whenever I try to find an idea or reference I wrote down, I end up searching in five different folders, opening and closing a dozen different files before I find what I'm looking for. 

I think I have a pretty manageable agenda for the year, and we'll see how things go.

Now back to paper grading and class prep.

That's the problem with doing no writing since May

I would kind of like to submit an abstract to Kalamazoo this year. I even have a couple of sessions picked out as possibilities. The problem is that I am fresh out of ideas at the moment. Or at least, fresh out of ideas that I'm confident I can write a paper about by May. And somehow I can't imagine I'll have much time to brainstorm, since I'll be teaching every day starting tomorrow...

Abstracted

I've finished the formatting changes on the article, but I need to write the abstract. I hate writing abstracts. The finished article is over 11,000 words exclusive of footnotes. It's kind of difficult to boil that down to 200 words. Bleh. I'm writing a draft version now and I'll let it marinate for a day or two, then rewrite it.

Well, perhaps not quite nothing

The article I've been revising for ages was accepted. *throws confetti*

One of the things which has always struck me as distinctive about the academic life is how achievements are delayed. One works and works over a piece of writing, sends it off, and doesn't hear much until weeks or months later. By that time, ideally, one has moved on to other projects, and isn't in the same mental space any more. It seems to me to make it difficult to celebrate achievements and milestones, because the moment of doing the work and the moment of hearing its reception are so far separated.

I'm calling it done

There comes a time to just declare a piece of work done.

Sure, I could revise and edit and revise and edit and revise and edit some more. At this point I'm not sure how much that would actually improve the piece.

I have a couple more references to check. Why is that I still forget to write down the page ranges of articles? I know I'm going to need them in the references.

I also need to write the letter that goes with the article responding to the reviewers.

Neither of those things should be too time-consuming, so I should get it out sometime next week.

Approaching the finish line?

My students turn in papers tonight, so grading starts tomorrow. And I'm not going to Kalamazoo, unlike seemingly most of the other medievalist bloggers out there. In the meantime, I can continue plugging away on these revisions.

Today I finally had a bit of a breakthrough: I've substantially reorganized the introduction. I want to make extra-clear that I am not really making a general argument about liturgy, or even about Cistercian liturgy, in this essay, but rather just making an argument about how the liturgy works at this particular community.

I have a few other passages to fix--some additional references to work in. At that point I might be ready to send it back. I'll need to read over the whole thing again (sigh) to be sure.

Inching along

Ah, that last post looks so optimistic. I have made progress on revising the article, though--just in rather small segments. I have a list of things that need to be done to the thing, and I manage to knock off one or two of them each time I sit to work on it (not more than once or twice a week, though). So it is inching along. I am so tired of it that I have to talk myself into working on it, even though I would dearly love to send it back. It was sent back to me last fall, so it feels as though I've been working on the revisions for way too long. Now that I think about it, I did write and submit another paper during that time, plus did a job search and a chunk of editing work. Of course, this journal editor doesn't know that, and what if s/he thinks I'm a slacker? (Such is the paranoia of journal submission.)

Oh well, if they don't take it, I'll just have to submit it elsewhere. So be it.

A little research, at long last

Between teaching and job market stuff, I haven't had much opportunity to write since January. I have this long-lingering revise-and-resubmit which is turning into something of an albatross, poor thing. I was going to work on it last Friday (my non-teaching day of the week), but my computer chose that day to malfunction, preventing me from accessing the relevant files. 

Today I finally took a look at it: first the list of tasks I still need to do to finish the revisions, and second the article itself. Since I've let it sit so long, I really needed to reread it. I made some minor edits as I went along, and noted a couple of other places that need fixing. I think the article now beats around the bush too long before getting to the main idea, and some of the transitional paragraphs are kind of clunky. So, progress, hurray. I hope now that I've looked at the piece I can get back to it quickly.

Spring break progress report

More than midway through now--how am I doing?

Writing:
1) Finish revisions on long-suffering article so I can resubmit it: not at all. Bad academic.

Teaching:
2) Write recommendation letter for student mentioned in last post: drafted
3) Grade small stack of papers: not actually due until Mar. 31
4) Write comments I promised to a few students ages ago: mostly done
5) Figure out how to rearrange the rest of my course schedule to make up for our snow days: done
6) Skim/peruse books that I'm considering for next year's courses: only a little

House:
7) Tidy up and dust: made some progress
8) Clean the bathroom and kitchen: partly done
9) Clean up my desk: nope


10) Hang out with the spouse (also on break): Yes! Hurray!
11) Visit nearby exhibit: on tomorrow's docket
12) Whatever else strikes my fancy: have done plenty of whatever!

The article is the major failing here. I'm just having trouble getting back into it, after shelving it to deal with the job search and being sick much of the winter.

Next week I have kind of an odd half-break; of my two teaching jobs, one resumes next Monday, and the other will still be on break next week. That should give me some extra time to finish up the revisions and the grading as needed.

Further research

To follow up from yesterday's search of liturgical texts in CANTUS, I took a look at Late Medieval Liturgical Offices. LMLO is potentially a great resource compliling complete offices for a wide variety of saints, all from the later part of the Middle Ages. It has some drawbacks, however. One is that it uses a somewhat complex system of ascii codes for the information. The text accompanying the data files argues that this is not hard to learn, but it does constitute something of a barrier to using the materials. Even more problematic, just now, is that it was published in 1994, and its data files come on...3.5" floppy disks. My computer is an aged beast, and still has a floppy drive, but I know most newer computers don't. I'll see if I can actually read the files this afternoon.

At any rate, I was interested to discover from LMLO that the office for Saint C I'm looking at also appears (or at least a very similar one appears) in a single 15th-century manuscript from Barcelona, not so far from the monastery I'm studying. So I would guess I'm looking at some regional office for the saint. My ms. evidence is earlier, though, so I still wonder whether the office originated at this monastery or elsewhere...

Curious

So I am revising this article on liturgy that I seem to have been working on forever. I am looking at the feasts of several saints to see how they are presented in the liturgy of a particular nunnery. At the suggestion of a reader, I plugged the texts for these saints into the CANTUS database. To camouflage the project a little, I'm going to call these saints A, B, and C.

Saint A was wildly popular in the Middle Ages, and the results show it. Exactly the same texts appear in over a dozen different manuscripts, from totally different parts of Europe. So the monastery I'm studying probably got their office for Saint A from some commonly available materials.

Saint B was also quite popular. The texts I entered only appear in a few manuscripts, though. Both of those manuscripts are from monasteries of the same order, so perhaps this office was one composed at, and circulated among, monasteries of this order.

Saint C was another popular saint. But the texts used at the monastery I am studying don't appear in the database at all. Not a one of them. I checked them all. Admittedly the database is not comprehensive, but it does include a large number of manuscripts, and I did get hits for the other feasts. I am especially intrigued by this, because the celebration of Saint C is unusually prominent at this monastery. Other monasteries of the order did not observe her in the same way. So the fact that the texts are more obscure is extra interesting.

Getting unblocked

I have so many things to do this month it has been a little paralyzing. I came back from the AHA (via train) last Monday and spent the afternoon totally zoned out. I took a nap, which I almost never do. Then I spent a couple of days catching up on correspondence and finishing my grades and such.

As I puttered away at one thing and another, I realized I was reluctant to get back to my research. I need to finish revisions on an article and resubmit it, and then I need to dig back into the book manuscript. And I felt blocked. I wasn't totally sure how to address the comments of one reader, who seemed most interested in some points I felt were tangential to my major argument. I hadn't worked on it since probably early December, what with all the mess of finals. Prep for the spring semester seemed more pressing. And so on.

But today I may have gotten unblocked. I allotted two hours to work on the article. I sat down and read through it, made notes on things to do, fixed up some footnotes, added some brief explanatory material, explored the sources suggested by the reader. I think things are coming together. It may not even take that much more work. I'd be delighted to send this off by the end of the month.

I also allotted two hours to work on course prep. That was good, too; I made some progress, and the two-hour time period kept the prep from sprawling over into the rest of the day. I hope I can keep this up for the rest of the week.