Holiday Break Update!

Happy Winter Solstice!

We put up our tree over the last weekend. Every year I think that I'm going to decorate the tree with white lights. White lights are the way my mom and I always did our tree. But my husband's family only does colored lights. I am the victor in so many "discussions" in our marriage. There are some, though, that I lose every time....so here's our tree. I think that it looks awesome. I also think that it might make a good qualitative study to investigate how and why certain decisions get negotiated the way they do in marriages!

KitKit sitting in my desk chair. Since it would be cruel to move him, I read my novel on the couch instead of working.

I have a very large project that I am working on during the break. I try to work on it for a few hours every day in the morning. In the afternoon and evening, I act like I'm really on winter break. I'm making progress on my project, but I'm not where I wanted to be by now. As I've been thinking about the last quarter, and the things that increased my stress, I realized that this project looming over me really was a huge weight. Because it's still hanging around, I haven't felt as relaxed as I was hoping that I would during this break.

Throughout my life, I've heard some of the disparaging remarks about people who move from practice to academia. You know the ones I'm talking about. "Those who can do, do, those who can't teach." I've known enough nursing professors, and read enough nursing research to know that those sayings are all bunk. But, I didn't really believe that it would be harder to work in academia than to be a bedside or clinic nurse. It is harder. Much harder. This involves being auto-didactic, self-motivating and self-directing, able to remember that it is important to stop and go outside once in a while, able to take routine rejection, and also able to recognize when an idea just isn't ready for public presentation. It involves being competitive without alienating your colleagues. And it involves writing. So much writing. It is really, really hard to convey what I want through scholarly writing. All the profs say we'll get better, but right now all I've become is more critical of my own writing.

KitKit demonstrating his plans for the holiday break.

But, it is still winter break. So, while I'm still going to work, I'm not going to go nuts and waste an entire four weeks worrying myself into a state. Instead, I'm going to balance the work with resting and relaxing. Since next quarter we start statistics, I'm probably going to need it!