Sunday, August 31, 2008
Making Time for Research
As the new semester begins I find myself reassessing my time management. I know many "teacher-scholars" from large state institutions do the lion's share of research during the summer, due to high teaching and service loads, but do any of you have any tricks for streamlining class prep in order to free up more time for research and writing?
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I try to make research and classes dovetail to some extent by teaching texts I'm writing on/will write on. However, the only real trick I have is to force yourself to write by sending in abstracts to conferences for papers I want to write but haven't done anything on yet. A deadline works miracles. I've also heard of the quota system: EK's 1 page per day (just one page!). Or the old 2 hours per day. But classes seem to always intrude.
Ditto what Kent said. This semester I've organized my surrealism class into chapters hoping that one of my chapters may become an article or part of a book someday. I also have used conferences as a way to get writing going. I'm going to send off an abstract to Kentucky again, Kent. I also like quotas. I try to write in BDSs--brief daily sessions, sometimes as short as twenty minutes a day. I've been far from prolific since I've been here and I need to really get some stuff out this year.
I have found that the least frustrating way to balance these things is to resign myself to only teaching/prepping for most of the week. Then, I look for a longish block of time to write, optimally when there is little or no student and colleague traffic in the department. This means Thursday or Friday after classes and an occasional Saturday or Sunday if necessary (Labor Day weekend was a great time to be in the office typing away). This way, I feel like I am not rushed with my preps and I feel like I make some progress in research on a weekly basis.
Dave, I'm thinking about Kentucky too. Depends on whether I end up going to Rio with the Latin American Studies Association in June '09.
When is Kentucky? Can anyone send a link to the CFP?
Here's the Kentucky CFP:
http://web.as.uky.edu/kflc/CFP.htm
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