Oh holy hell. I have to sit down and write the final report for my grant and for my sabbatical leave. I thought about writing:
“I, The Traveling Ph.D., thought deep thoughts about public policy for about eight weeks. I then realized that I was working too hard, so I drank some beer, read some mysteries, and started — but did not complete — a latch hook project. Oh, and I slept. A lot, in fact. And I watched TV. Thought about putting in a garden, but didn’t clean my house. Tried to go to the beach, but ended up sitting through a bunch of baseball games. Well, two games. Drank more beer. Saw a lot of Tuesday matinees and ate a lot of free movie house popcorn. All in all, a good leave.”
Somehow, I don’t think anyone else would find that funny. Probably, I’d never get another sabbatical. So, I guess it’s a good thing that I actually kept a spreadsheet that tracked my research activities. And, now that I am looking at them, I am feeling pretty damned self-congratulatory:
I wrote and presented conference papers at two conferences, one in January, one in March.
I was elected President of our state organization during the March conference.
I did three weeks’ of field work in Louisiana.
I worked out the research methodology for this big ass project.
I “story-boarded” my book on my corkboard.
I deconstructed the first three chapters of my dissertation.
I developed a 40 page outline for the book.
I integrated the feedback from three peers into the outline.
I sorted my big blue bucket of stuff that I collected the last time I did field work.
I started sorting the ~1TB of data I have collected for this project (scary!)
I made eight tables (some still in progress) for the book.
I set up my coding spreadsheet for my newspaper data.
I set up my coding spreadsheet for mapping my policy subsystem — and have already coded 273 distinct contacts
I developed a 9-page timeline — but still have more to go.
I entered the notes for 68 books, government reports, journal articles and newspaper articles into my OneNote notebook.
I read 49 books, government reports and journal articles — plus I started a 50th book.
I started my PHC conference paper — which is also the initial draft of one of the first chapters of my book manuscript (22 pages done so far, including 34 footnotes!).
I joined a Grrls Write Club for summer “kick-in-the-butt” support.
This doesn’t count all the times I was asked to do something chair-related via email or the three times I was hauled onto campus to do even more stuff. It also doesn’t count the time I spent developing my summer course. Or the time I wasted interviewing for an internal position that I didn’t get.
So, yes, I did drank beer, go on vacation, sleep late, watch TV, go to to lots of movies, and play with my critters.
But, damn, I deserved it.
