Productive (adj)

My supervisor warned me recently about how small responsibilities can pile up. Her strategy is to take 3 straight days to work on a project (a paper, proposal, etc.) because by day 3, your focus is so concentrated that it's much more efficient than continuously returning to the same project for many days over a few weeks. But when things get busy, distractions eat away at your ability to focus. One of the worst, she said, was email: administrative, teaching, and miscellaneous emails pile up and erode productivity, meaning that she doesn't ever have 3 straight days to focus on one project. Things work a little differently for me. I like to move between projects, to tackle multiple things in a day. I enjoy the feeling of crossing things off my to-do list, and since email is the biggest part of my graduate assistantship, I like to read and respond to any that come my way ASAP so that they're not hanging over me (leaving small tasks undone for days, on the other hand, ...

Last week I gave a talk at the annual meeting of 4S, the Society for Social Studies of Science , in Copenhagen. It was a great excuse to visit a city I'd never been to before, and a nice change of scenery from an autumn devoted to reading for my comprehensive exam (and in York's STS program, is it ever comprehensive !) After giving myself permission to enjoy my trip and not feel guilty for not keeping up the reading pace, I ended up doing much more work than I expected; mainly writing notes on pdf files of papers in my Documentary Film list. I use GoodReader to read and annotate files on my iPad, which was much easier than lugging stacks of printed papers or books on a transatlantic flight. The difficulty is that I find the iPad sluggish when I try to type notes and work off the pdf file at the same time, so I just wrote in my moleskin notebook and typed them up later. The conference itself was vibrant and well-designed, much like Copenhagen. Based on the theme of "De...

This summer there are many balls in the air. I'm ostensibly on vacation in Maine, but there are some significant responsibilities to take care of before heading back to Canada in August. In decreasing order of importance, these are: 1) Wedding planning. People warn you about how many details need to be looked after, but I severely underestimated the amount of work it would be. And doing many things ourselves (especially of the craftier variety) reduces cost but increases time and effort. Even though we're holding a low-key, casual affair, the to-do list goes on and on. Fortunately, this kind of project is agreeable to work on, and Isaac and his family have been doing a tremendous amount. 2) Reading for comps. My exam has been scheduled for the beginning of December, and there are so many books to read! 150 in all, in 3 lists. I have a handful under my belt so far, but it never really feels as though I'm going fast enough. My problem might be that I'm a fast, retenti...

It's starting to be clear to me that I am no good at keeping this blog updated. My last post was from last November, and it wasn't a "real" post; instead it was advertising a conference I slightly helped to organize. It was a wonderful conference, mind you, but having recently heard all about the benefits of having online outlets for our thoughts and musings, academic and otherwise, for graduate students by the visiting postdoc at my department, Melinda Baldwin , I'm motivated to update more frequently. The last time I worked on my online presence, about 6 months ago, I maxed out my facebook privacy settings, started to tweet , and built an academia.edu page . The next step is probably to build my own academic website, and most universities offer their graduate students the resources to do just that. Some of my friends have blogs that integrate their professional lives (CV, publications, etc.) with some outside interests, and some run more research-nuggets type...

I'm part of the organizing team for Philopolis Guelph, a philosophy conference that engages with everyday topics and includes the whole community, not just the academics. Here is the call for activities! Daily life is full of interesting philosophical issues (How ethical are my eating practices? Why do I believe what I believe? What does it mean to be sexed or gendered?). However, academic philosophers these days could be doing a better job of engaging in dialogue with members of the broader public, including researchers in other academic fields, who are also interested in these questions. Philopolis is an event that aims to facilitate just such an exchange through panel discussions, workshops, and activities of many kinds. Philopolis welcomes and actively encourages the curious of mind from all backgrounds to take part, drawing on this diversity to enrich the whole. The event is generously supported by the University of Guelph, and offers free admission as well as light sna...

There have been some pretty exciting developments in the last few months, and my poor blogging skills mean you may not have heard about any of them. Get ready for a barrage of updates! February: I applied to York University's  Science & Technology Studies graduate program . It's an interdisciplinary field that looks at science and society through the humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies. This program seemed like a better fit for my project on wildlife films and the public perception of animal behaviour. March: I was accepted (yay!) and began preparing for the transition from U of T to York. We also got an exciting new desk, courtesy of IKEA. April: Isaac proposed and I sad yes! (I told you this would get exciting!) May: Loads of travel. I attended the 6th European Spring School in History of Science and Popularization on Visual Representations in Science, which meant a week on the sunny island of Menorca, Spain. Then I flew home to Montreal...

Happy New Year! Holiday baking update: the anti-procrastination baking worked really well. Having baked all kinds of things before the holidays, I was both able to give all kinds of decorated cookies to loved ones and I was better prepared to bake "on the fly" during the holidays when the cookies had long run out (unexpected benefit). It turns out that loads of techniques that you use in one kind of recipe transfer to improvisational baking, where you try to make the best of the ingredients you have on hand. My best "on the fly" baking experience was a Victoria spongecake in someone else's kitchen; the centre didn't quite bake for long enough and therefore collapsed a little when the cake was cooling but apart from that it was a success. I took almost 3 weeks away from Toronto for the break, and it was exactly what I needed after a December of frenzied writing. That's not to say that there wasn't a lot to do - paperwork, emails, planning and so on. A...