Non-academic pursuits during sabbatical, part 3: Playing outdoors

Continuing in the series on “what I’m doing on sabbatical other than work” (parts 1 and 2 here), in today’s post I’ll talk about the athletic stuff I’ve been up to this year.

Physical activity has always been vitally important to my well being. As I’ve discussed on the blog before, it’s a really important strategy for helping me manage my depression and anxiety. It also helps me focus and, many days, is the only time all day I can count on having all to myself. What’s different about physical activity during sabbatical is that I have more flexible time to devote to the activities I love, which allows me to explore them in ways I can’t often do.

I’ll focus on three activities here — two which I do already, and one which I started this year.

Running

Flat Amy the night before the 2016 Twin Cities Marathon.

Long time readers of this blog know that I love to run, especially long distances. I ran my first marathon in 2014 and immediately upon finishing said “I can’t wait to do this again!” I ran marathon #2 last October, which meant that I trained through the summer and the first few weeks of fall, when my schedule was light. While I found the training in 2014 to be manageable enough even with my summer schedule and fall teaching, it was really nice to have a pretty free schedule for this round of training, so that I could, say, do my long runs on weekday mornings and not have to spend a few hours away from my family on a Saturday or Sunday.

I’m currently training for marathon #3, which I’ll run in June. Again, it’s nice to have the freedom to do my long runs during the week, so that I can spend time with the family on the weekends. Training through the winter has been challenging — black ice! strong winds! cold temps! — but thanks to the relative lack of snow, I’ve managed to do most of my training outside and avoided the dreaded treadmill.

One of my favorite nearby trails.

One aspect of running that I’ve really indulged in, taking advantage of my flexible time, is trail running. I am lucky in that I have a number of great trails minutes from my house. Trail running in the fall is one of my absolute favorite things, and I made sure to do quite a bit of it this past fall (after the marathon, of course!).

My occasional running buddy. I introduced her to trail running this year.

My kiddos are starting to catch the running bug, too. My daughter and I have run two 5Ks together, and she’s on my case to run another one together this spring. (She’s between sports right now — basketball just ended and swimming doesn’t start up until April — and wants to run more with me in the interim.) My son asked us to sign him up for track this year, which shocked us since he usually fights us on any attempt at organized sports. It will be fun to see how this goes.

Cross-country skiing

My philosophy about winter is, if you’re going to live in a cold climate, get out there and enjoy it! (And bundle up!) So after living here for about 6 years, I learned to cross-country ski. I started off with classic but eventually switched to skate. Which is hard and frustrating but fun and beautiful all at the same time.

View from the trail.

Sometimes I convince my better half to play hooky with me.

Unfortunately, we’ve had a string of mild winters so there hasn’t been much snow worth skiing lately. Luckily one of the parks nearby makes their own snow, so this year my better half and I sprung for the “all parks” pass so that we could ski whenever we wanted. (I still didn’t get out as much as I’d hoped, but at least I got out there a few times.) One of these days I’ll get the hang of it enough so that I won’t feel like Drunk Frankenstein while skiing. Maybe.

Taekwondo

We signed our son up for taekwondo this fall. He’s not into playing team sports, but we wanted something that would give him some exercise and also help with his focus and self-control. I ended up taking him to class most of the time, and sitting there watching him. It looked like fun. In December, his studio let parents practice for free. (Genius, right?) So I thought, why not? I could sit here and watch, or participate. So I participated.

Newly-minted orange belts!

Well, their marketing ploy worked, and even though I swore up and down I didn’t have time to pick up another hobby, I jumped in. Now my son and I take classes 2-3 days a week together. We’ll earn our yellow belts in May and by mid-August will be camo belts. (And then we’ll start SPARRING in class! Woo hoo!) It’s been a fun and interesting challenge — as much mental as it is physical. I treasure the fact that this is time my son and I get to spend together. I like that I’m modeling behaviors for him like perseverance, dealing with failure, etc. And I like that I get to show young kids that moms/women can be powerful and strong, too!*

Taking part in these activities — particularly the outdoor ones — reminds me of the importance of “getting outside to play”, as I call it. While I’ve always found ways to fit physical activity into my busy schedule (pre-dawn runs, anyone?), it’s been a real treat having the choice to, say, run at mid-morning when the sun is up and it’s a bit warmer, or ski in the afternoon before picking up the kids, or explore new-to-me trails. I’m encouraged to find ways to continue to incorporate these activities into my life after I return from sabbatical next year.

In the final installment of this series, I’ll talk about travel: what I expected, and what actually happened. (Spoiler alert: even with flexible time, when you have young kids at home traveling is hard.)

*For most of the time I’ve been practicing, I’ve been the only mom in my class. But recently, two other moms have started coming to classes. I don’t know if seeing me practice influenced their decisions at all, but it’s nice to have more adult women in the class.

 

Advertisement

Non-academic pursuits during sabbatical, part 2: Reading

In Part 1 of this series on “what I’m doing on sabbatical other than work”, I talked about a couple of ways I’m volunteering in my kids’ pursuits. In this part, I’ll talk about some of the reading I’ve been doing. (In the next part, I’ll talk more about my physical pursuits.)

I have always loved to read, and when I have the opportunity, I’m a voracious reader. I read every night before bed, although many nights in the past few years I’ve only been able to read for 5-10 minutes before nodding off. One of my non-work sabbatical goals was to read more, particularly to whittle down the piles (virtual and physical) of books I’ve accumulated. Of course complicating matters is that I continue to acquire books, which means the pile never really shrinks. But this is a good problem to have.

Part of the ever-growing pile of books.

Over the past few years I’ve mostly read on my Kindle, but this year I find myself reading more physical books. My daughter’s swim practices are just down the street from the local public library, so sometimes my son and I head there while my daughter swims. I can never, ever leave empty-handed, even if I already have a too-large pile of books at home. Again, this is a good problem to have.

I don’t want to include an exhaustive list of what I’ve read, mainly because I can’t remember a lot of what I’ve read for fun off-hand, but I’ll highlight some of the more interesting things I’ve read this year, so far, and some of the things that are still in my pile.

Computer science/research stuff

My reading in this category has been dominated by catching up on my backlog of technical papers and skimming back issues of CACM and IX. I’m 2 issues away from being caught up with IX, considerably further behind with CACM.

I’ve also done a bunch of reading about conducting interview- and survey-based research. I’m currently working my way through Salsa Dancing into the Social Sciences, by Kristin Luker, which was recommended to me by a fellow POSSE participant. I’ve read through Learning from Strangers, by Robert S. Weiss,  and A Practical Introduction to In-Depth Interviewing, by Alan Morris, twice now and have found them tremendously useful.

Next on my list: The Internet of Women: Accelerating Culture Change by Nada Anid, Laruie Cantileno, Monique J. Morrow, and Rahilia Zafar; and Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, by Andrew Blum.

Teaching

I’m fascinated by the science of learning and using science to hone what I do in the classroom to help my students learn more effectively. I really enjoyed Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, by Peter C. Brown. I do daily quizzes/reading questions in my courses, but this book has given me a lot to think about in terms of perfecting what questions I ask students and how I ask these questions. It’s also helped me think about how I can help my students study more effectively. I’m currently reading Small Teaching, by James M. Lang, which along with science/theory of learning provides practical strategies for professors to implement in their classrooms. Lots of great ideas so far, and I’m only a few chapters in!

I also read and enjoyed The Discussion Book: 50 Great Ways to Get People Talking, by Stephen D. Brookfield and Stephen Preskill. Each chapter describes a different technique for fostering engagement. Not all of them are applicable to my situation, of course, but again, I gleaned lots of great ideas from this book.

Productivity

I was eager to read Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy, by Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber, because of all the buzz. But frankly, I found this book disappointing and depressing. And a bit obvious. Yeah, it would be really nice to have more time to think! My sabbatical proves that slowing down and reflecting leads to more creative, fulfilling work. But I didn’t think the “advice” was very practical. You know what would help? More recognition by our institutions that the level of work we are doing, particularly the hidden, unrecognized work like mentoring and service, is staggering and unsustainable. And then actually having our institutions put in the work of lightening our loads. I’m not going to hold my breath on this one, though.

More generally, I’ve been working my way through Gretchen Rubin’s books. I read The Happiness Project last year, just finished Happier at Home, and am now reading Better Than Before. I appreciate Rubin’s books because she is honest about what works and doesn’t work for her (and about the ways she may annoy those around her while on her happiness crusades).

I read Chris Bailey’s blog A Life of Productivity fairly regularly, so this year I read The Productivity Project, the book about his year researching and implementing different productivity techniques. Like Rubin, I appreciate Bailey’s honesty about what worked for him and what didn’t, and his critical look at conventional productivity wisdom (not to mention his willingness to try some really bizarro things for the project, like living in isolation for something like a week).

Just for fun

I’ll just mention a couple of fun reads to close this post out…

I adore Jenny Lawson, a.k.a. The Bloggess, and if you’re not reading her blog you should definitely add it to your feed. She blogs and writes candidly about mental illness, chronic illness, and owning your weirdness. Let’s Pretend this Never Happened is laugh-out-loud-until-you’re-crying hilarious, and this year I read her second book Furiously Happy, which is no less hilarious. (She has a brand new book out, too!)

I like reading historical/adventure books, and I just finished reading The Tunnels: Escape Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill, by Greg Mitchell. It was interesting to read this book at this time in our own history, with attempted muzzling of the press and talk of building a wall; as well as to hear the stories of those who risked their lives to help their fellow citizens to freedom.

What have you been reading lately that you’d recommend? Have you read any of the books here?

Non-academic pursuits during sabbatical, part 1: Volunteering

Most of my blog writing this year has been about the academic parts of my sabbatical. Part of the beauty of sabbatical, though, is the time to pursue other things in the spirit of rejuvenation. I realize I haven’t talked much about this aspect of my sabbatical, so in the next few posts I’m going to write about what else I’m doing with my sabbatical time. Part 1 (this part) focuses on volunteering. Parts 2 and 3 will focus on reading and physical pursuits, respectively. And in Part 4, I’ll talk about travel, which disappointingly has been more about work than about fun….but more on that later.

So….volunteering.

Longtime readers of this blog, and those who know me IRL, know that it’s part of my nature to pitch in and help out. Which means I often end up overcommitting myself…but hey, I’m working on it and getting better about setting boundaries!

I think it’s especially important to volunteer in my kids’ school and activities. Selfishly, it helps me keep tabs on what’s going on in my kids’ lives, what the social scene is like, etc. (This was really, really valuable when my daughter was the target of Mean Girl behavior a couple of years ago.) More importantly, it signals to my kids that their pursuits, and their education, is important to me, and it allows me to give back to my local communities and serve as a role model to other kids.

This year I’m volunteering each week in my son’s kindergarten classroom. I spend 45 minutes every Monday morning reading one-on-one with kids. The kids’ reading skills range from those who still struggle with the very simplest of words, to my son who is reading at least at a second grade level, if not higher. Most fall somewhere in the middle, and at this point recognize quite a few “sight words” and are using multiple strategies to deduce words they don’t know (sounding out, using context/pictures, etc).

I’ve been volunteering for a few months now, and many of the kids I’ve read with have progressed quite a bit. Many of them get very excited when they figure out a new word for the first time, and we share high-fives with those successes. Some of them have very strong opinions on the books and are picky about which book they select. One little girl (am I allowed to say she is my favorite?) has opinions about every book we read, and is unintentionally hilarious about sharing them. She is not happy with the books at her current level. She complains that they are too repetitive (they are), and one week in protest she provided running commentary on the book, summarizing the plot, rather than actually reading the words. (I thought about redirecting her, but her commentary WAS better than the book, and because summarizing/synthesizing is a valuable reading skill too!) This week she pointed out that she wished the book we were reading, which swapped out the harder words with pictures, included the word under the picture so that she could learn what the word looked like. (I found a piece of paper and wrote out the word — “squirrel” — and we talked about the word’s structure and patterns she saw in other similar words.) It’s a fun kind of challenge: figuring out when to let a kid struggle with a word and when to step in and help out; coming up with appropriate questions to see how much they understand what they just read; and keeping the wiggly ones focused on the task at hand. And of course my son thinks I’m a rock star for coming to his class each week.

I haven’t had many opportunities to volunteer in my daughter’s classroom, but I did get to go on the class field trip — snow tubing at a nearby ski hill. I am, however, still co-leading her Girl Scout troop. There are a bunch of new faces in the troop this year, and some long-time members decided not to continue, so it’s almost like leading a new troop. In addition to the normal Scout-y things like camping, leadership, and community service, we’ve spent some time casually talking about peer groups, “popular” kids, and self-esteem. One of my goals as a Girl Scout leader is to help the girls acquire and practice the skills they’ll need to successfully navigate the social aspects of middle school and high school while being true to themselves, and I feel like this year is a crucial year for setting the foundations for that.

Of course, volunteering is not something I only do when on sabbatical, but having the time and space to concentrate on volunteering is one of the aspects I enjoy about sabbatical. As I start to think about returning from sabbatical next year, I hope to find ways to continue to engage with my kids’ education and activities, even as my schedule fills up.