A Change of (Research) Scenery

When it comes to routine, I am the best. I absolutely love getting into a daily groove and staying there for a long time. I also love going to the same restaurants on multiple occasions and watching my favorite movies and shows many times over. (Most recent case in point: I have watched the entire available-in-America catalog of The Great British Baking Show more times than I can count. I was on round five last time I checked and that was a while ago.)* There's something delightful about establishing a routine or revisiting something familiar. You know exactly what you'll get and you can look forward to enjoying it.

By best, I also mean worst. Not just because most people find this approach to life terribly dull for lacking in spontaneity. I see the value in changes and I do like to mix it up on occasion. (Mostly when a friend asks that we eat at not-the-same-restaurant-we-always-go-to.) I mean that sometimes routine can be detrimental to a research program. 

Fully immersing ourselves in a research project has plenty of advantages, as does regular/daily writing and setting a model of consistency for mentees. These practices can produce both more efficient and higher-quality work than repeatedly re-orienting to a project whenever opportunity arises. But even this can be taken too far. In my case, I get so engrossed that I don't leave my building for eight or nine hours at a time during winter and summer breaks. I get lots of work done, but my efficiency decreases after several days (or weeks) in a row of this approach. 

To combat my tendency to retread a very deep path, I've embraced two practices:

(1) The writing retreat, and 
(2) The collaborative research trip.

I've tweeted about the writing retreats I organize for our faculty writing group at my university (see below),** and others have written (very eloquently) about the benefits and how-tos of these events. There's something about a change of scenery for the purpose of writing that packs a punch. Faculty offices are associated with plenty of other kinds of work, and it's easy to get distracted or restless. Finding a peaceful location where the goal is to write gives us something extra to look forward to and the perfect justification for putting other work on hold.

Hoppy Tuesday! This makes up for road closures/coffee disasters that it took to get here. My work space for the next 2 days. #Acwri #ECRChat pic.twitter.com/a77qXq0Weu

— Dr. Dani Arigo (@DaniArigo) June 20, 2017

Running on the BFP.

In contrast, the collaborative research trip is new for me. By "collaborative research trip," I mean an extended stay at a university where you have collaborators and intensive collaborative work during that stay. In my case, I've continued to work closely with my postdoc fellowship lab, which is 2+ hours away in Philadelphia. I've been back to visit several times in the past three years, but never for more than a day or two at a time. This summer, the lab set me up with a small office for a week in order to have more face time for papers and grant applications. This is my fourth day on campus - I've made considerable progress on a manuscript I started last month and specific plans for two more manuscripts on related topics, plus tentative plans for grant applications. I've also been able to run in my old haunts, like the Ben Franklin Parkway and Boathouse Row. Quite a productive week so far!

Office space for Philly visit.

But this trip has been great for my research and for me beyond the concrete productivity. It's reconnected me to a type of research (i.e., large clinical trials) that I have yet to implement at my institution, and it's given me the opportunity to spend both work and personal time with people I don't see very often. I've also loved having time to myself to read, focus on marathon training, and avoid any sort of routine. I had already planned to visit again during my Spring 2018 sabbatical, and now I know that I'll visit as often as they'll let me!

This is your life moment of the week: Busting out of a routine helps to establish balance. Looking forward to getting back to my usual, but also to my next break from it :)

*I'm a member of my local public broadcasting affiliate, obviously, so I've even binge-watched all of season 4 many times.
**Please ignore the typo in this one - Twitter really needs an EDIT button!

Taking Back My Summer

Noteworthy progress. In my last post, I described my failure to protect summer vacation/personal time in favor of a long list of commitments. Although most of these commitments are productive and/or enjoyable, their combined requirements do not leave a great deal of time for much-needed relaxation and not working. I'm happy to report that the tide has turned somewhat, just before the next wave of the workload hits. How did this happen, and how can I maintain balance for the remainder of the summer?

Blogging (and otherwise disclosing) helps. Once I acknowledged that I had only myself to blame for my increasing (rather than decreasing) stress, I stepped back and looked at the calendar. I took stock of what I had accomplished to that point in the summer, and how much time was left to work on the rest. I felt relief from realizing that the balance looked much better than I expected. I also asked myself what really needs to be finished this summer, by when, and whether these goals are realistic; what will I lose if I fall behind on X? Finally, I looked ahead to the 2015-2016 academic year and accepted that I cannot take on any additional commitments until next summer. And I started saying no in advance.

Travel helps. My reality-testing process received the assistance of two recent road trips. One was a four-day, combined work/leisure trip. This split left me able to feel good about getting some work done with collaborators in addition to not working and catching up with graduate school friends. Importantly, I made the 2.5-hour commutes alone, so I had time to myself to think and space out as needed. I came back tired from a strange sleep schedule, but more relaxed than I have been in a while. 

Downtown Ludlow

The second trip was more hectic: PA --> VT --> MA --> PA in four days, celebrating a wedding and an engagement. The wedding was lovely and afforded several unique opportunities. I'm not a country girl, and getting away to rural VT was a new experience. Actual country stores that are not operated by Cracker Barrel? I just wish I'd had more time to explore; I was there for less than 24 hours and it rained most of the time. But I also got to reconnect with more graduate school friends, which always leaves me feeling grounded. Then on to MA. As I'm the matron of honor* for the engaged couple (wedding in August of 2016), and as I live several states away from the action, I made an effort to fulfill some role expectations during the trip. As far as I can tell, it worked out well for everyone!

Our resort in Ludlow, VT

During this four-day excursion, I did not work. I checked email only sporadically. I responded only to urgent messages. Very unusual for me. But very healthy. And nothing went wrong without my replies. 

This is your life moment of the week. I returned to work today feeling less stressed than I have in a while, and I was able to complete tasks such as cleaning out my email inbox and writing this post. I also met with our Office of Sponsored Programs about a grant and upgraded another short trip I'm about to take. And I'll end the workday with an exercise class that makes me feel great. This is more like the summer I had planned.

*Matron? Really? Sounds so old....

Day 1

Life has changed a lot in the past week.... for the better. This is an attempt to commemorate the small events and interactions that can change a person's life.

For a long, long time I have gone about my business, feeling reasonably accomplished in a few isolated areas but always craving more. I have this thing about fulfillment. Maslow would call it striving for self-actualization, which I think is also accurate. The basic idea is that, like many individuals, I am at my best while pursuing a goal. I just don't always know that my goal is, and that leads to a good bit of floundering around and feeling out of place - even when I should feel comfortable. And it isn't just out of place at work; it can permeate recreation, relationships, and even my body. In truth, the past nine months have been a continuous out-of-place, floundering episode, despite my repeated attempts to get back on track. I have looked in the mirror countless times (or avoided looking) and asked "who the hell are you?! I want myself back!"

A little history....
Before moving to my current location in a very small city, I lived in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the Northest (and grew up next to a different one). Needless to say, the move was a big change. But it wasn't just adjusting to the lack of a subway system, very few concert venues, or being able to see the sky that threw me at first. It was the difference between the people in my old city and the people here. My old city has somewhat of a reputation for attracting and producing crabasses, and for good reason. You would think that this feature would make any sane human run for the hills, but being who I was back then, I fit right in and loved nearly every minute of it. Back then I was the type who honestly didn't care if you liked me personally, as long as you respected me (or feared me, whichever) and respected my work, loosely defined. I only had time for people who were worth my time, and who liked me for me.

This attitide equals two things: you don't sweat small stuff or unimportant people, allowing you to have a healthy amount of confidence, but you also don't monitor yourself very well. Not caring much what people think is very freeing, and you speak your mind whenever you please (i.e., all the time) because you're not concerned about the consequences. Sure you burn a few bridges, but you show people who you really are and they know not to mess with you. Not unusual for a large, angry city, but an anomaly for a smaller, quasi-professional community where what you say and do has short- and long-term consequences. It has taken me two years to come to grips with this concept, and even now I screw up and say something I probably shouldn't because it is what I was thinking at the time. Self-control, self-regulation, and metacognition: things you only practice when impression management is on your agenda. Coming into my current environment, I was a kid who wanted to just "be herself" all the time - hey, it worked for years! But in the professional world, no matter what you study or do, people care less about what you really think and more about your actions or their own (broadly defined) interests. A lesson I am still learning. For me, part of becoming a professional has been learning when to not let people know what I really think, because whether I like it or not, what they think of me professionally and personally matters, now and in the long run.

The toughest part of this change is balace. I went a bit overboard once I started "caring what people think of me," and I began to care about what everyone thinks of me. For all of those out there who suffer from this problem, I can now genuinely empathize. IT'S TERRIBLE! You run around worrying about what you're doing or saying to the point of being paralyzed, not knowing what to say or do and doubting yourself at every turn. It was the doubt, so foreign to me in my past life, that broke me down and led me down a twisted path until I was completely lost.

I've also had my fair share of personal woes, which I won't detail today. Suffice it to say that I've made some bad decisions, both as a b**ch and as a wanderer. I used to know what my priorities were regarding the placement of work and a life on the totum pole; now I'm not quite so sure. I vascilate between not letting a relationship get in the way of my career and knowing that a real connection with someone is the most important thing, but when there's someone else involved, that person is going to have an opinion and at least some control of the situation.... it never ends.

Being of a certain generation, one of my favorite albums is Switchfoot's The Beautiful Letdown. (For the record: I have had this album since it's original, small-time release and have loved this band since 2001 - not that it really matters, but I hate bandwagons <-- pun intended.) There are multiple meaningful jems on this album, including "Meant to Live" and "24," but the song that always struck me to the core was "This is Your Life." If you've never heard it, spend the 99 cents to download it on iTunes. Even if you're not into rock, this song has such a good message that it might not matter. The basic idea is that this, right now, is your life - not yesterday, not tomorrow, not 10 years from now - are you the person you want to be right now? If not, you might want to think about that.

So this is one more blog about someone who has realized that there is no reason to put off having what you really want, once you figure out what that is. Getting there is hard, and staying there is hard, and if you're reading this, then you're willing to engage in my journey. I thank you for that. Stay tuned for more about where I've been, where I'm at, and where I want to go.

"This is your life" moment of the week: I decided to run a marathon. More later.