Monday, August 17, 2020

Happy Sabbatical!

 This is the first day of classes at my university, so today is the first actual day of my sabbatical. Happy sabbatical to me!

Though honestly I feel as though I've been on sabbatical since March, when we switched to online teaching due to the virus. And I'll admit I'm glad my sabbatical is for this semester. I hate, hate, hate teaching online. It's nearly impossible (at least for me) to engage the students, and the students themselves have a hard time learning anything effective that way. I mean, I know we're doing our best. But teaching happens face to face. At least for me.

So I am hoping that this pandemic will be over, or at least over enough, to resume f2f teaching in January.

Which may be a pipe dream, if what I'm seeing around the science-side of the internet plays out.

Anyway!

Here's what I've done with my sabbatical so far:

(1) Finished the sequel to Fault Lines, In the Deep, submitted it, had it accepted.

(2) Have begun editing of the MS (I'm pleased to report that this one won't need the extensive rewriting that the first one did. Yay me.)

(3) Written and submitted four short stories. Two rejected. Waiting to hear about the other two.

(4) Written and submitted two book reviews.

(5) Read, and am reading, one billion books. Right now I'm reading Because Internet, about linguistics on the internet. 

(6) Caught, and recovered from, what maybe have been Covid-19. I haven't yet gotten the antibody test, so

(7) Slept late nearly every day.

(8) Cooked a great deal. This is because of the pandemic, though, and probably not because I'm not teaching.


Very productive so far! What I plan to do next:

(1) Finish the first round of edits on In the Deep, and resubmit.

(2) Revise the two rejected short stories, and resubmit.

(3) Begin the third book in the Velocity series (now called Escape Velocity).

(4) Anticipate and greatly enjoy fall, if it ever arrives.

That should occupy the next few months nicely.

A dispatch from my sabbatical … | Department of Economics Blog


5 comments:

nicoleandmaggie said...

I wish I were on sabbatical! I'm teaching in-person and it is going to be so rough. I keep getting into fights with my department head about not having more students than can fit into the classroom and having remote students take one of the multiple online sections if their timezone allows.

delagar said...


Our university is doing some classes in-person, and from my colleagues FB comments, it's been rough so far.

Our admin is asking us to teach while wearing face masks. This makes good sense, but I think I'd find it nearly impossible.

So yeah, I'm very pleased to be on sabbatical this semester.

Janice Friend said...

Yay sabbatical! My spouse gets a year next year and oooooh boy.

delagar said...


It's just in time for me, even without the plague.

Jenny F. Scientist said...

Also, if you donate blood, the red cross is running free antibody tests. I checked what kind and it's a reasonably good one. (Mine was negative which is not surprising after 5 months.)