A week of writing, reading and being
I have once again been thinking about whether to bin or re-launch the blog. Given that I have just spent a week away predominantly for writing and writing is definitely a habit that gets easier the more you do it, I am going to try and stick with it and see what happens! Just excuse the outdated stuff while I get organised.
I have had great success with writing retreats of various forms in the past. But they have always been either half a day or a day and it has been a very very long time since I have had the luxury of concentrated writing time. In order to ensure I can actually do the DBA, I negotiated a week per academic year in addition to my annual leave to take off specifically for working on the thesis. I did of course have all sorts of plans of being way further ahead when I booked the week. I had plans of mapping out empirical work and refining already drafted chapters… but I think it still worked out really well.
Before going I had done no real work on the thesis. I had submitted my final assignment which was the research proposal but I haven’t had my mark and feedback yet so I have not been able to complete the transfer to thesis paperwork or have supervisors assigned. In some ways I am therefore working a little blind. Before going, I had spent a little bit of time searching for relevant literature with a particular focus on the theoretical framework and I saved a whole load of journal articles and links and obviously some of the work had already been done for the proposal. That was the extent of my preparation. Just before leaving I picked up some key edited collections on legal education from my book shelves and crammed them in my bag.
You can see how the week went in a bit of silly fun reflection here. But in essence, I spent day 1 travelling there and settling in, days 2-4 working on stuff and day 5 packing up and heading home and being a bit grumpy and tired. The plan for the week had been to get the context chapter as written as possible and then spend time on the literature review with a focus on the theoretical framework sections. I wanted to work in roughly 45 minute bursts with alternating short and longer breaks. The shorter breaks were going to be little 10 minute yoga flows, a quick hot tub dip or just a cup of tea outside and the longer ones were to be longer hot tub or yoga breaks, walks, other exercise or just chatting with Kath. I was also intending to go for a run most mornings if not all.
True to recent form I did not manage to be awake enough to run first thing. It used to be pretty much the only time I could run and now I just can’t seem to get going. So running before anything else didn’t actually work. I did get out for 2 runs though and I am actually pretty happy with that given how much I have struggled with running recently. The rest worked pretty well. 45 minutes is a good time for a concentrated session and the breaks worked well. I didn’t set an alarm. It wasn’t that sort of week. My wake up times were dramatically different. So one day I didn’t start working until 9ish and another day I’d done yoga and has breakfast by 6.30. I also didn’t have a clear set finish time in mind. On day 1 and 4 we booked the pool for a swim at 7pm and on day 1 I did a little more after that and on day 4 I wanted to spend the last evening there with Kath so I didn’t log back on.
On reflection I think I actually did quite a lot. I finished a first draft of my context chapter – focused on policy contexts of legal education and social justice. It’s too long at the moment – I think some of what I included actually belongs in the literature review and other bits are too historical and probably not relevant for the thesis in the end. I feel like it is a solid first draft that can sit until I have a clearer idea of where the empirical work is taking me and can adjust for relevance and focus then. This chapter came to me fairly easily. It’s mostly stuff I am familiar with, have read lots about and which is so part of my day to day work that it really didn’t feel too difficult to get about 7000 words down quickly. Once I had that where I felt like I could leave it, I turned my attention to the literature review.
I quickly realised that I was not going to focus on the theoretical framework like I had planned. While I had all the literature there with me, saved on my computer, I hadn’t printed any of it and I just wasn’t up for reading on screen. So instead I spent a bit of time mapping the various sections of the literature review and trying to work out what would go in each section and what order they would work in. Then I turned my attention to the books I had brought with me. In total I read about 15 book chapters that I deemed relevant to the literature review headings. I used sticky tabs and a highlighter (yes, I highlight in my books and I understand the anxiety this will cause some of you – sorry) and then spent the afternoon and evening of Day 4 adding in key points and some nice quotes under the various headings and getting some of my immediate thoughts down. All in all I ended up with around 10000 words written – made up of a complete context chapter and a fairly well mapped our literature review with some initial thoughts.
It was an interesting week and I would definitely recommend that sort of away time for thinking and writing. I was surprised at how quickly I settled in. I definitely write better and am more focused in the morning and later in the evening. Quite frankly I should not be left unsupervised in the afternoon – I don’t function well at all. In the morning or last thing, the 45 minute sessions overran – not by much but I just wasn’t clock watching at all. In the afternoon I would lose concentration much more quickly and had to force myself to keep working. In fact by Day 4 I gave up any pretence of really trying and moved from the dining table to the sofa. In the morning I also kept the breaks between the 45 minutes very short, even 10 minute yoga felt almost too long (but was definitely good for a brain re-fresh) but in the afternoon I was more prone to lingering and ‘just another minute’.
Next time I do anything like this I will try and prep better and make sure I print anything I want to read, otherwise I just won’t. I will also make sure I have jobs like formatting, basic editing and sorting out references etc to do in the afternoon. That way I can do really useful work and feel good about it but not have to do the heavy thinking and writing when I’m more like the bear of very little brain than anything else. We got a lot of things right during the week, healthy but easy to prepare food as well as some treats like ginger nut biscuits to dunk in tea, taking our yoga mats and running gear, not setting alarms, not having major plans and spending less time doing, and more time just being. I think we got the balance right. Part of me wonders what would happen if we did a Friday to Friday or Monday to Monday and how much difference the extra days might make. What sort of rhythm would I settle into then? But I was tired on Friday. Productivity dropped and working on the thesis switched from being fun and exciting and something for me to something that felt like a chore, another thing that has to be done. So I think maybe the Monday to Friday cabin is actually just right for keeping the fun and excitement of the research as well as getting stuff done or a longer stint but with some deliberate half days or a full day off in the middle might also work.
Now for keeping the momentum going – watch this space.
The relentlessness of academic work in lockdown
In a draft post from the end of February that I have just discarded because it wasn’t going anywhere I wrote: ‘I have also had flu and have been ill or not quite right for 3 weeks now. That means that work has slowed down dramatically adding to the perpetual feeling of being behind with everything…’ Well very soon after that everything changed, campus closed and university life moved online. I was as behind as I always am but not really any more so. I was making progress even if that progress was slow.
In lockdown the perception of time, of productivity and of what is important shifted. In one sense it just put into sharp focus that so much of what we do as academics is utter nonsense. For the first part of lockdown I struggled doing anything. I wrote about some of that in the two previous posts. For me it wasn’t a time thing, I don’t have kids to home school for a start, and it wasn’t that I don’t have the right set-up at home to work effectively – we’d just re-done our study so we can both work in it at the same time and it is really quite lush. No, it was about headspace and focus. Things improved a little bit as time went on but I was still struggling to get anything done really.
Then I started going to really detailed to do lists. I broke up everything into much smaller sub-tasks and wrote each of those down as a thing to do. It meant ticking things off more often, seeing the list get shorter and then longer again and generally created a sense of things moving along. With that system alongside a weekly planner on which I recorded roughly the plan for the week with times of ‘meetings’ blocked out and the time around them allocated to overall tasks like REF output reading, marking or edit joint paper, I had a couple of weeks of getting shit done.
But at the start of the third week I was anxious as hell, exhausted before I had even started the Monday, running on caffeine and really struggling to concentrate. I went through Monday and Tuesday like that – a completely heightened state of alertness (and not in the idiotic government message sense) and hyperactivity that had me racing from one job to the next. It felt like a race to tick things off the list. I stopped writing things on the list but then I promptly forgot them adding to stress levels as I wondered what I’d forgotten or got reminders down the line. I got to the end of that week feeling absolutely knackered.
So yes, I had spent 3 weeks getting shit done and was probably more on top of work than I have been in years but I felt wired, and not in a good way. Last week then I tried to start more slowly, to be more considered and to take more breaks and reflect more. Some of the work I got done was nice work. There’s a paper nearly finished, a new project nearly ready to go and they have been fun to think about. It is nice to have the marking done, some institutional level paperwork pretty much ready to submit by the deadline… so why did the working at home over those 3 weeks feel so relentless?
Well I didn’t work more hours overall. And I didn’t stretch the working over a longer day. What I didn’t do was allow myself time to come round and get into work mode. I basically got out of bed, threw clothes on and started work. It felt useful to get a head start. I stopped to have lunch but only to quickly make lunch and then eat it. I had my drinks at my desk and didn’t stop between tasks. The tasks on my list seemed so little that stopping between them to acknowledge having completed them seemed silly. The result: the feeling of rushing even when not, the feeling of urgency even when there wasn’t any, a slight sense of panic at the length of the list in spite of it shrinking quickly through the day. The tiredness came from the hamster wheel of work that needed to be kept going and therefore felt relentless. A three hour meeting on the Friday of that 3rd week nearly broke me. I needed a brain time out.
Last week was better. I was more aware of the risks of the list. I still want the list because I am forgetting stuff and flit around too much forgetting what I am doing, the list helps with that. But I am back to mornings being more deliberately slow, drinks also functioning as breaks, lunch being about more than quickly making it and eating it to get back to work, and the list as something to help remember things not as something to be rushed through. So last week was better. And next week, well next week will be better again because yesterday Odin, killer of feet, joined our family and he is the perfect play break enforcer!
More Academic Lockdown Reflections
My last set of reflection on the lockdown are now well over a month ago. In some ways it 
feels a lot longer and in some ways it feels like I wrote it yesterday. As I said then, time is a funny thing. So how have you been these last few weeks? Nah, it’s ok, I don’t really know how to answer that question either. Here are some rather rambling thoughts though on what it’s been like, on what’s been hard, on what has been quite nice and on what has helped keep me as sane as I ever am as we make our way through a very bizarre Mental Health Awareness Week in the middle of a global pandemic.
Time is a totally weird concept. No seriously it is. I know we all have days or weeks that feel endless and hours that race by in a flash. As a really bad runner, believe me I know that 30 seconds can last forever. But this is different. It’s like time doesn’t mean anything anymore. In some ways it reminds of summer holidays as a kid. Remember? The ones that stretched all summer, where it never rained and you cycled off into new adventures with your friends every day and it was always going to be like that. Except this feels like a more sinister version of that. More like time standing eerily still before the dementors attack in the playground while at the same time everything continues at a ridiculous pace. It’s like being in parallel universes at the same time. One where time has slowed to almost standstill and the other where everything has been accelerated. There is no normal time anymore. Things fly by, hours, days, weeks just gone and yet, somehow, nothing.
I think the initial drive for connectedness has eased a little. I think people are now craving actual contact, are maybe realising that face time etc just actually don’t do it. I am still perfectly happy not being sociable. But then I am also lucky. I don’t live on my own and Kath and I have enough space to stay out of each others way – so the not living alone doesn’t become an issue. Also, my Mum lives down the road and we have had some (distanced of course) conversations as we dropped of shopping and I am used to not seeing Dad often and just chatting on the phone with the occasional skype to see each other. All of this is sort of still within my normal range of not talking to people! So it’s not the not seeing people etc that I find hard.
What I do find hard are video calls. The new tech obsession I mentioned in April also seems to have calmed down a little. I had a nasty experience with Zoom which means I will never ever use that platform again (even if they fix the security etc, trust is gone) and have settled into MS Teams which I find pretty intuitive, the other platforms are just there to confuse me every now and again and make sure I don’t get too comfortable. Video calls are hard work. I don’t know whether it is because I take so much from body language and other non-verbal communication normally or what but I have to concentrate so much more to follow conversations and I find it much much harder to read people. There were several bits and pieces written on this which I was too tired to fully engage with!
So do I have a routine? Ha! You know me better than that. I was sort of beginning to settle a little bit: I was getting up at a similar time every day, starting with yoga or at least with some quiet time outside with a cup of tea, I was getting out to run short loops and I was working in sort of effective short little bursts. And then we ended up with some foster kittens for a few days. Cute and lovely as they were that was our routine gone. No yoga, no running, high levels of worry and anxiety (they were quite poorly) and completely random and inefficient working. Once they were gone I tried again. I seem to have a bit of a routine now, it seem to mostly involve putting off going for a run (I need to stop that, there’s a marathon on the horizon) and wondering what I can eat next though.
Interestingly it was marking that helped me focus on work stuff – it didn’t help me focus on marking of course, although I did get through the first batch quite quickly, but somehow it gave me purpose that translated into other areas of work and I made some progress. I wonder if it was because marking gave me a real sense of normality. When marking comes in I generally hide until it’s done. I have always been of the ‘just get it done’ school and tend to start and then just keep going for as long as I still feel like I can give the work the attention it deserves. Sometimes that can last for a very long time and sometimes that means one or two scripts at a time but for some reason I am quite efficient between scripts. When I am mid marking admin jobs get done because I can just do them quickly between scripts. I think the boost of seeing the to do list shrink a little as I ticked off all the tiny little things I had added to it helped.
The other thing that has helped is thinking about #100DaysofWriting (Google it) and I
didn’t do anything with it or start it for quite a while. However, even thinking about it and wondering whether I could commit to writing most work days for 100 days or at least commit to working on a research/writing project helped me make some progress and enjoy it. It’s little things, we’re not talking articles appearing out of nothing etc but just getting a paper closer to being finished, clarifying a point in my mind, actually reading something for the ideas rather than because I have to evaluate it for one thing or another… the little joys of academic life. Having an idea.
I was surprised to find that actually talking to some very select people on the phone also helped me feel better about work stuff. I avoid the phone when I can but just having a quick chat with people sorted some things out quickly and saved a bunch of emails and talking through a joint paper really made me sharper about the ideas expressed within it and it is now actually not far off finished. Overall I’d say that the first period of lockdown stopped me in my tracks in terms of capacity to do work and think about things. I got nothing done and I was exhausted. I think I am now in phase 2. I am getting some things done but it takes much more energy and headspace to achieve those things than it ever did before – so I am still absolutely knackered and have little capacity for thinking about anything. I still have trouble holding onto thoughts for long enough to finish thinking them and inefficient reigns supreme. If I am looking at one document and then need to navigate away from that to say a spreadsheet to check something I will forget why I have navigated to the spreadsheet and also what document I was in so I’ll go back to email say and then an email will send me back to another spreadsheet or whatever and I can go round that cycle several times before eventually doing the thing… It’s very much a try to ‘do one thing at once with total focus’ time and so I am constantly writing myself a note of what I am doing. It’s actually quite funny. I’m also talking to myself which I think Kath finds more annoying than funny. Somehow all of this makes work feel relentless – and that’s something I want to think about a little more and maybe write about in another post.
Every now and again my thoughts flick to the future. Sometimes this is prompted by emails from the university asking for or providing information and sometimes it’s just that my brain quite likes thought experiments. There are moments where I am anxious about what’s to come, about what the Law School will look and feel like come September, how it will all work etc. Mostly though I am just watching and waiting. There is all sorts of planning going on but the reality is that none of us know what September and the start of a new academic year will bring. The problem with that is of course that good teaching, whatever form it comes in, takes time to prepare and time is something we don’t really have. I don’t feel too worried about this. I have a lot of teaching experience in different structures and settings and can probably adapt pretty well to whatever structures the university and law school eventually settle on. I feel for people new to this job and starting on their teaching journeys. How do you prepare for September teaching when you have no clear idea of structures, delivery modes or patterns? It’s hard, really hard.
In fact all of this is really hard, it’s weird, it’s unfamiliar, it’s unnerving and there are no answers… We might be getting used to some of this but that doesn’t mean that it is no longer difficult or that it gets in any way easier. In some cases it may well be getting harder. Let’s not forget about that. Let’s remember that just because many of us are finding more and better ways to cope with the lockdown, it doesn’t mean that we’re finding it easy or that we’re perfectly ok in this. Keep being kind!
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