Go after your dreams
Sometimes your goals may be in competition with each other. For example, the goal of eating healthy may cost more money and maybe in direct competition with saving. Eventually, one goal will win over another. The result is that a goal drops by the wayside. So, what can you do to prevent this as both…
The path to success for a new professor or academic writer is a long one. It is often a hero’s journey. A hero undergoes a transformation by the end of his journey. But that transformation is not possible without reflection. At each segment of your journey, pause and reflect on your beliefs and actions. Spend…
I procrastinated on doing hateful work. I dreaded the one task I had to do for the entire day…read a postgraduate student’s upgrade document and fix it into a working manuscript to submit to a scientific journal. Luckily for me, I got started by first recognizing how big this single ‘task’ really was. This single…
I deliberately stopped writing for this blog and site a few months back. I was just not in the position to share a bit of myself with the wider world. Or rather, my mental bandwidth was not large enough to continue sharing. I was enrolled in a Certificate in University Teaching and Learning and was…
My manuscript review process On the 14 January 2019 I had one main task to do…read a manuscript and write a peer-review report on it. In my notes I listed the various specific sub-tasks I had to do for this work: Read the manuscript Draft broad ideas and comments on originality Re-read manuscript for details…
Professors have to work with a number of people – administrators, clerical staff, technicians, undergraduate students, postgraduate students, the public, special group communities, government agencies. Regardless of who you work with , there is only one rule: Do not hold up another person’s work. Do your part and ship. Shipping in a draft/rough prototype form is…
One hallmark of being recognized as an expert in your field is receiving invitations to peer-review the manuscripts of authors also in your area of specialization. I started denying myself those peer review opportunities in January 2019. With one caveat. That I can do one peer review only after I submit a manuscript for publication and…
A Saturday. For once I was not working on my teaching and research. Instead, I worked on my husband’s CV for a job application. I also made the time to fix the formatting of pictures and pages on this site. The best part of the day was getting to spend the evening with my husband’s…
How you’re feeling… Can you feel the tension in your neck, back, and legs? Is a headache throbbing in the background as you try to knock off the tasks on your to-do list? That’s your body telling you that you are stressed out. Do you feel panic rising in your chest when you realize your to…
Wrapping up the semester with theme days – Administrative days The end of our university semester is only finalized by the faculty’s examiners’ meeting and the accompanying reports. This may require a day or two to be spent on administrative tasks including report writing. Friday 11th January 2019 was such a day. All reports had…
