Everyone else is planning New Year’s Goals? I have sabbatical goals …
- Learn how to live one of those “healthy lifestyles” everyone is always talking about. You know, the healthy diet and regular exercise ones?
- File control – Clean up all the files in my file cabinet and in all the folders on my computer (some are over 10 years old, believe it or not).
- Wean myself from my crack-like need to check my email (’nuff said). Let’s hope this doesn’t get replaced by some other crack-like habit (second-life, twitter, etc.)
- Go to India. Survive without getting sick. Take lots of beautiful pictures.
- Clean up some web stuff I’ve been meaning to get around to for a year.
- Figure out how to promote my tech blog (apparently math and technology really is a niche market and I may have reached my penetration of the market … or I just need to find more readers!).
- Do some scrapbooking, reading, dogwalking.
- Play Spore (finally).
- Write some papers I’ve been meaning to write for more than 12 months.
- Oh yeah, write the dissertation. I’ll move this up the list.
I said that last part in jest, of course. The whole purpose of applying for a sabbatical and taking one is that I need the time to write my dissertation. It’s 40 more credits of expensive classes down the tubes if I don’t finish the degree, and I can’t write it while I teach classes. So I have to have a long enough period away from teaching to actually sit down and immerse myself in this small task. It’s nice that, even though the college won’t pay for the credits to take the courses, they will provide this opportunity to take a sabbatical to finish off the dissertation at the end.
When the semester is done, I hope to have it be the last semester where I am just Mrs. Andersen. Next fall? Dr. Andersen. Hmm… that sounds nice. I wonder if I can make Joel call me Dr. Andersen?
