Reflections on life and work from Aotearoa New Zealand
Kia ora everyone. Just a quick post to update you on my institutional move to Massey University, and my physical relocation to Palmerston North, New Zealand. You can see a bit of my cycle commute in the image! This is a permanent move. For the first five years, I will be research only as part... Continue Reading →
This year has been an explosion of travel for me, at this point still domestic. I kind of knew it would be hard to go back to, but was sort of excited about it. Now I'm kind of over it. When should we travel, and when is it important? That answer is different for everyone.... Continue Reading →
In my PhD workshops, there are also plenty of students who can do the deep work, but struggle to get all the other tasks done that ensure they can complete their PhD. This includes organising meetings, organising interviews or data collection, calling people on the phone, getting progress reports completed, organising childcare and assisting their... Continue Reading →
Recently I gave a workshop about getting your PhD on track -- or back on track, for those who have had some delays and detours due to COVID-19 and the usual crises and distractions that accompany PhDs. It seemed clear to me that I could not get anyone's PhD back on track in a mere... Continue Reading →
Yesterday I was giving a short talk to a group of early career researchers doing a two day workshop. I have good memories of doing the same workshop when I first began at my current workplace. I remember folks coming in and speaking to us and how actually, a couple of ideas I got from... Continue Reading →
We all have family rituals, whether we realise that is what they are or not. In a larger family these rituals start to take on a life of their own, becoming a sort of adhesive that binds the family together. They might take a little bit of effort to set up, but if the fit is right, I reckon they become the things kids grow up and remember as part of themselves, helping them feel they belong. They communicate a sense of collective belonging that is one of the key ingredients to intrinsic wellbeing.
Reblogging from 2015: Every time I publish an article based on my personal PhD experiences with fieldwork, I tell myself it will be the last. So far, I have four. Just last year, I was part of an awesome team and put out this one: Farrelly, T., Stewart-Withers, R., & Dombroski, K. (2014). ‘BEING THERE’:... Continue Reading →
Lately I have been feeling very disillusioned with the academic life. I mean, I've always intellectually known that our reach is often short, our work ignored and overlooked, and our lifestyles completely overrun by our work. But recently, I have been feeling it more, and feeling more dissatisfied about it. Then a few things happened... Continue Reading →
Recently in my Twitter circle, I've been part of a few conversations about academic workloads, work-life balance, and managing the pressure of early career researcher decision-making. It forced me to recall a post from January 2017, where I committed to putting some limits on the 'voluntary' parts of our job. But as you may recall... Continue Reading →
I recently read Elizabeth Emen's 2019 book The Art of Life Admin. Well, perhaps inhaled is a better verb to describe what I did with it. I got it out of the public library on OverDrive and read it while travelling with my four kids and husband during the Easter school holidays. This travel to... Continue Reading →
In the last few years I have been choosing some focus words for each year, rather than a New Year's Resolution. In 2018, after reflecting on the words and things I learned in 2017, I decided on the word 'less', 'dwell' and 'write'. Of all the years I've been doing this, it feels like this... Continue Reading →
How do we become scholars that produce quality thinking and research, and stay sane in an academic environment where bringing in salary recovery dollars and churning out publication 'fluff' sometimes seems more important than deep and rigorous research and writing? Many New Zealand academics would have faced their CVs with some angst this year as... Continue Reading →
In a previous post reviewing Cal Newport's book Deep Work I promised I would write a post sharing more collective strategies for enabling deep work, in particular for people with heavy care-loads. I suggested that sometimes the consequences are different for women trying to draw a line around their deep work time, and I imagine... Continue Reading →
Prepare, deeper, joy. For 2017, these were my touchstone words, reminding me of the things I was to ponder and experiment with this year. Choosing a word for the year is something a little bit more open to the unknown, a little less goal-driven and anxiety producing than deciding how much weight to lose or... Continue Reading →
I am just so ridiculously pleased to finally have this article out. I first presented the material that became this article in July 2011 in Sydney, Australia. I have been on two writing retreats where I've worked at least in part on this article. I have rewritten it countless times into three or four different... Continue Reading →
It seems to be thing. Couples who fall in love with each other, commit to a shared life together, then at some point discover their idea of home is -- well, if not incompatible then with a pretty darn small overlap. I don't mean here in terms of tidiness and mess (although, sure, that is... Continue Reading →
I'm guessing about the #9, actually. I'm pretty sure I've completely rewritten this paper more than nine times, it's just nine for this title. But for what it's worth, I'm sharing my daily progress because it's just so painful to still be working on this paper, and to be SO LATE to the editor (sorry,... Continue Reading →
I am about three chapters in to Maria Puig de la Bellacasa's book Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds. In the same way that Richard Rohr seems to express my thoughts before I even am conscious of having them in the area of spiritual practice and belief, Puig de la Bellacasa seems to... Continue Reading →
Every year, I choose three words and write them on a post-it note above my desk. They help me guide my decision-making for the year in a more intentional way. In 2016 one of my words was Complete. I actually chose that word based on my desire to finish a whole lot of work related... Continue Reading →
Every year, I try and do some work on being more intentional about the things I say yes to.
My previous post 'slow scholarship starts with slow reading' prompted some questions around slow reading. What do I really mean by slow reading, and how do we do it? It is, I acknowledge, much more than not being distracted. Although I blog, am an avid user of evernote, use Goodreads, and keep all my references... Continue Reading →
I wonder if you know the feeling: You have a few hours, or a day, to get some writing done -- to get it finished, in fact! You have been longing for this for weeks, perhaps months. You sit in front of your computer, open your document and immediately find it hard to connect with... Continue Reading →
Publishing an academic book is a bit different from publishing a novel, I'm told. All I can do is tell you the process I went through, and offer suggestions on how to make this smoother. I have written three book proposals for three different publishers, submitted two of them, and been accepted by one. Each... Continue Reading →
I recently posted about writing emails to lecturers in New Zealand universities. I made some suggestions for appropriate email etiquette in NZ based on deconstructing a few representative emails and my own personal preferences. The flipside of the story is of course lecturers who email students in anger, frustration, annoyance and with little sensitivity to... Continue Reading →
My tongue-in-cheek clickbait title is meant to illustrate via awkward engagement how inappropriate the norms of social media are to academia. Nowhere is this more obvious than when students try to email me. Here's a recent example* I reproduce in full: Hi I missed my second lab and I think the Cencus data for completely assignment... Continue Reading →
So it has been quite a long time since I blogged -- mostly because the second half of 2015 was taken up with intense teaching and a return to fulltime work. Ironically, a lot of my research work is about how the home and domestic spaces are sites of enacting postcapitalist politics for different kinds... Continue Reading →
I am a frock cyclist. If I have to get changed to use my bike, I am unlikely to bother. I am actually more likely to cycle when I am dressed up, because I can wear heels and not have to walk far to the door of my office! Also, the cool breeze created by... Continue Reading →
When it comes to applying for jobs as a mother, there seems to be two approaches to explaining any gaps in your CV. The first approach is to maintain that 'My personal life is none of their business' and just not really deal with gaps at all, not mention your children or marital status or... Continue Reading →
Early career researchers are often applying for a limited number of jobs in a really competitive market. In New Zealand, this is compounded by the fact that universities are partly funded by what is called Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF), a system where every few years, all our 'outputs' are entered and ranked and labelled... Continue Reading →
Last year I bought a semester parking ticket because, even though I bike or walk in each day, my husband parks near my building and brings the baby up for a feed every day. This year, I was thinking about how much this cost us and how it was not really feasible for my husband... Continue Reading →
Throwntogetherness 