Dear Reader,
As I write this, Reading Week is approaching, and the decision of how to spend those precious few days dawns on us all. Do we take a much needed break to feel refreshed when February 24th rolls around? Do we grind out as much work as possible to free up time in weeks 8 – 12? Or do we try to strike a balance?
Reading Week looks different for me every year. During my undergrad, Reading Week was a chance to get ahead. I would try to do all the coursework for week 7 so that I could use week 7 to begin developing course papers. Then, I would schedule meetings with professors and TAs for week 8 to discuss the topics I generated during week 7.
Now that I have several jobs, am a full-time grad student, and engage in a variety of volunteer activities, “getting ahead” is not necessarily as feasible. Free time becomes an opportunity to work on a publication in progress or to read some additional material for a course. And planning it all is no simple feat. If you’re like me and you’re still in coursework, you might want to check out SASS’ Assignment Planner. This is a useful tool to help with time management and procrastination. It breaks larger assignments into manageable tasks and suggests “due dates” for each step. I personally love due dates, but I tend to be overly ambitious when setting my own. And then when I don’t meet them, I give myself a hard time for not achieving my standard. Dangerous, I know. This tool keeps me from going overboard. If you’re looking to add more structure to your planning, SASS also recommends The University of Minnesota’s Dissertation Calculator. Although I’m not starting my dissertation over Reading Week, I’m glad to know there’s this handy tool to use in the future.
As I’ve been contemplating how to scaffold my work across Reading Week, I realized that a break is the last thing on my mind, yet again! (And I just noticed that I haven’t called it “Reading Break” once throughout this blog…)
To give myself some perspective, I reached out to some other graduate students to see how they plan to use Reading Week. The results were far more varied than I anticipated. Marking. Grant applications. Bargaining for the PSAC 901 Union. Preparing for conferences. Reading for research. Starting course papers. Preparing a guest lecture.
But it’s not all work. As the other grad students reminded me, there has to be time for the non-academic stuff too. Reading for fun. Playing video games. Watching movies. Crafting. Going to the gym. Personally, I’m kicking off Reading Week with Christmas dinner! My family was unable to gather on December 25th, so we’re going to try for February 15th.
In terms of “striking a balance,” some people mentioned a 50/50 work/life schedule over Reading Week. For one person, this meant half days, and for another, no work after 5pm. They mentioned that if they’re “feeling free,” they’ll end their workday at 3pm! The last person I spoke to plans to take one weekend off work entirely. Unsurprisingly, no one is planning to take a 10-day vacation. If that works with your schedule, by all means, let yourself have that time!
Ultimately, there’s no “right way” to spend Reading Week. After talking to friends and colleagues, though, there’s definitely “wrong ways” to spend Reading Week, such as drowning in work and using the “free time” to get through as much research as possible, as I was considering doing. I think it’s time for me to go back to my schedule to revise. Wish me luck in finding that balance!
Until next time,
April