Mark Vega
They say that the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing but expecting to get different results.
Although I have never claimed to be sane, I am doing a few things differently this semester than I did last year:
- Agreeing to fewer service commitments.
- Finally admitting that my teaching and research interests are as much about the digital humanities as they are about eighteenth-century studies.
- Grading essays much faster by using a well-crafted rubric and fewer comments.
- Saying “no” to students much more often when they ask for extensions or exceptions.
- Living up to my commitment to regular sleep.
- Getting around to implementing my still-not-implemented commitment to physical exercise.
What changes are you making for the upcoming academic year? Let us know in the comments.
Whoa, talk about perfect timing! This piece from the Prof. Hacker blog (required reading for those considering careers in academia) appeared in my RSS feed this morning like one of those cryptic clues that appear in the Final Destination flicks right before the Rube Goldberg-esque death machinery springs into action.
I've done a shit-ton of research, of course, and have hundreds of pages of writing interspersed throughout my notes, preliminary writing, and early drafts of chapter sections. It was always easier, however, to teach and keep academically consequential in that respect rather than make headway on my dissertation and share my work with colleagues and dissertation committee. It's only lately that I've realized taking on all these ancillary activities, each worthy in their own right, was a form of procrastination, albeit one that has, at times, been incredibly rewarding.
In the last several months I've been trying to change my behavior in relation to taking on new responsibilities and new non-research and writing activities. I've been getting back into the dissertation and figuring out just what it precisely I'm arguing vis a vis the intersection of American foreign policy, the formal and commercial development of the American novel, and the imaginative geographies that shaped the so-called American Century (I'll save the particulars for a later posts).
Shifting to (primarily) a dissertation-only mode hasn't been easy. There are a million different productive activities I would be rather be doing sometimes and a billion less-than-productive activities. I love my topic, the novels I've read, the theoretical and historical reading I've done over the past several years, and parts of the writing I've done thus far but writing always pulls my mind in a different directions that aren't always related to my dissertation.
And, therefore, I streamline and hopefully turn that reluctance to write and articulate my ideas and finish around. You can, of course, ask me to do stuff but when I say "no" I'll point you to this very post and hope you'll understand.
