Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · You’re coping until you aren’t I’ve written about burnout before. It is a real thing: severe exhaustion, physical and cognitive. It is serious. It often takes years to recover and may change you forever. I suspect the term is being used interchangeably with exhaustion that is somewhat less severe. […]
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Resting when you can’t stop working completely
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Resting when you can’t stop working completely I seem to be having a lot of conversations about rest lately. It came up in Office Hours in the Academic Writing Studio. It’s come up in more than one Guide for the Journey session. If you are tired, you need to […]
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Do you have to finish your grading before you can write?
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Do you have to finish the grading before you can write? It’s already difficult to keep writing while you are teaching and doing all the other things that need to be done in the main part of the academic year. You probably look forward to the end of teaching […]
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Managing the energy you use to make decisions
This post was originally written in February 2021 as a follow up to Planning Your Winter Semester and was shared in the Academic Writing Studio. It has been edited and divided into a series of shorter posts for ease of reading. The others are available at the end of this post. Jo VanEvery, Academic Career […]
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Prioritizing rest over the winter break
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Prioritizing Rest over the Winter Break I wrote this in December but it also applies at the end of 2nd semester when you are going into summer. Or, at other times of year when you have a break from teaching and you are feeling exhausted. On the first Friday […]
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Do you have too many active writing projects?
This post is part of a series on Optimizing Focus. Finding it hard to focus is normal. Self-flagellation does not work to improve your focus. Furthermore it takes time and energy that takes you away from your writing; it is another distraction. I firmly believe that you can approach your work compassionately rather than violently. […]
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Are you resisting routine?
During last Thursday’s Meeting, one participant commented that she’d noticed an interesting benefit of A Meeting With Your Writing. Like so many of us, J is prone to changing her schedule a lot. This means making decisions about whether to write now or to do some other thing on the big list of important stuff. A Meeting […]
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You can ignore the grading, reprise
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · You can ignore the grading, reprise This post refers to the break between the first and second semesters of an academic year, which in the Northern Hemisphere tends to incorporate the Christmas holidays. Often the exams and assignments that come in at the end of the semester need to […]
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If someone’s crying, something needs to change.
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · If someone’s crying, something needs to change Although initially written about teaching, this post applies to any area of your work or life where you feel the things in the first set of bullet points. No one said teaching would be easy but … You shouldn’t be exhausted. You shouldn’t […]
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