February was a full-on teaching month.
And book writing month.
And pass the Calpol and tissues month.
I am soooo glad that I chose “cheerful” as my word for the year! It sure came in handy this month, reminding me to embrace the whimsical. For instance, it inspired to me go out, to look for northern lights, despite a sore throat. No, we couldn’t see the lights. But it was fun, and the throat would have hurt just the same if I had stayed at home!
As I hinted above, not much happened in the research front. Some literature analysis. Some project scoping. And… a project rejection.
On the writing front, I made some solid progress on the second edition of the Research Methods book. I collected new examples for every chapter, updated the content (lots of new things to say about collecting social media data and big data, for instance), and refreshed the writing. The first draft is now complete! Hooray. The next stage is to (metaphorically) pull out the big red pencil and start editing.
In addition, I wrote the summary of a project’s findings to share with a stakeholder and put together a presentation for another project. I also reviewed a couple of papers – does that count?
Teaching is definitely where most of my time and energy went this month. I am teaching a new module this term, and that requires a lot of extra work preparing new materials, developing class exercises, etc… Plus, of course, actually delivering the classes. I also reviewed a lot of ethical application forms and drafts, from the students that I am supervising. Oh, and spending countless time fighting with the online learning platform to set up assignment submission areas and marking rubrics (it’s not that it’s that hard to do – it’s just that I am not familiar with this particular platform).
It wasn’t a bad February. What about yours?
Ana Canhoto 