I’m on sabbatical for the next term. Many academics take this opportunity to relocate to another university, often one in another country, for a change of scenery and an opportunity to recharge their batteries. This isn’t something that’s open to me given that I have two young children and a partner with a fulltime job that doesn’t provide the same opportunity for a paid sabbatical. As a result, I have a term without teaching and (most of my) admin duties. It seems challenging to make the most of this opportunity so that I look back on this time and feel that it was really different in some way from any other term. Given that a change is as good as a rest, how am I going to change things without changing things in my personal life too much?
In order to help me decide what to do I talked to some friends and colleagues and also posted the question on facebook. I got a bunch of interesting suggestions: https://www.facebook.com/Anna.L.Cox/posts/10151893679466189
So what did I settle on?
- Blogging (suggested by Charlene Jennett) – hence this post. I’m going to write something every week.
- I have some short trips planned to give some talks
- Maria Kutar suggested life-logging, which given my current interest in personal informatics tools, is also something i’m going to add to my list.
- Paul Marshal’s suggestion of juggling might morph into ‘juggling work-life balance in new ways’, probably not quite what he had in mind, but I’m going to try out a few things, including Steve Payne’s suggestion of time off from facebook and email!,
- Jo Iacovides suggested playing video games.
- And Lisa Tweedie and Ann Blandford suggested voluntary work
Best get busy then!
