Here at Carleton, we’ve been finished with Fall Term since right before Thanksgiving. While most of the rest of the academic world frantically writes, administers, and grades finals, we at least have a respite from the daily demands of teaching. The tradeoff, of course, is that right after Christmas we frantically scramble to get ready for the start of Winter Term, which starts right after New Years, while most of the rest of the academic world gets their respite.
Of course winter break is really only a small break, a break from the daily demands of teaching. Yet the myth persists, even among some who know me well (*cough cough* MIL *cough cough*), that I get to spend my 5-week break lounging on the couch watching Hoda and Kathie Lee, baking cookies, leisurely getting my Christmas shopping done, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course, and in fact I will struggle this year like most years to get all of the holiday stuff done in time for the holidays.
So what is it that I’m spending my 5 weeks doing?
- Wrapping up Fall Term. The first week+ of break is always spent finishing up the previous term. Lots and lots of grading, for sure, but I also like to take notes on what worked well in each class and what I want to change next time around.
- Prepping for Winter Term. I’m teaching one class next term (thank goodness), and I’ve taught it before, but that doesn’t mean I can just waltz into class the first day and start teaching. I need to prep my syllabus, plan out all the projects, figure out exam dates, get the first few weeks of readings and reading exercises posted (this is particularly important when you flip your classroom, as I do), determine my office hours, and in general plan out the flow of the class for the term. Plus, since I’m teaching outside the building, I at some point need to take a field trip over to my classroom/lab and make sure all the right software is installed and ready to go.
- Grant writing/research. This is the biggie. I still need to finish up some simulations that I didn’t get to last month, and then analyze the results. I need to look more closely at the data my students generated last summer and figure out if I can use it, or if I have to run more experiments. I need to revamp and revise the grant narrative, revise some supplementary documents, and add some new sections and language given some new language in the call for proposals. And did I mention I found a bunch of recent research that I have to skim through?
- Other research activities. As odd as this sounds, I need to start planning for the summer now. I need to figure out how many students I want to hire, determine what I want them to do, write up a job description, recruit, and find them funding. I also need to start thinking about what I want the high schoolers to do and start figuring out how to recruit an undergraduate RA for that program. Plus I have some data lying around (and a rejected journal article) that I need to write up/revise and send out (again) for peer review.
- Workshops. This week is the week of workshops. Earlier this week I went to one on a graduation requirement that many of our CS courses fulfill. Today and tomorrow I will be attending one on academic civic engagement in STEM. The former was tremendously helpful in helping me understand the requirement further and how the requirement is playing out on the ground, which will help me be a more effective chair as we set curricular designations for our courses. The latter is something I’m interested in for some of the courses I teach (as well as for Comps, our senior design projects). As useful as these are, though, they are time-consuming: all morning Monday and Tuesday, all afternoon today and all day tomorrow.
- Hiring/chair stuff. One thing I’ve learned in my brief tenure as chair is that there’s always something unsavory or time-consuming that comes up that you have to deal with. Break time is no exception. Plus our application deadline for our TT position is looming, which means I need to both start dealing with the search stuff (figuring out who reads which applications, answering questions, scheduling search committee meetings, etc) and start reading and ranking applications.
- And I almost forgot, ’tis the season for recommendation letters. Fortunately I’m only writing for a few students this year, but it’s still time-consuming—the drafting of the letter, but also the letter submissions, as each school has their own (different) process for doing things (their own rating scales, their own upload procedures, etc).
Reading this list makes me want to retreat to the couch with a plate of cookies!
There will be small breaks, of course—quick trips to visit family, days of fun with the kiddos when daycare is closed—and for those, the extra flexibility in my schedule really helps. But this, as with all my “breaks”, is definitely a working break, and demonstrates just how many hats I as a faculty member need to wear on a daily basis.
Back to work, then!
This is what a computer scientist looks like 