End-of-Year Check

Dear Real Academics,

We are back! We hope all of you have found some amount of time to rest and reflect and find peace during this time of year. Thank you for your continued readership support. And welcome to the newcomers this year! Your continued support and sharing of this resource with others is so important, and we thank you.



This week I am sharing a picture of Dr. Garza and myself at the Hoover Dam. The Hoover Dam lies between Nevada and Arizona and was built during the Great Depression (i.e., the 1930's) in the United States. If you are ever in Las Vegas, we highly recommend you take the official "Dam Tour" and learn more about it. (And, yes, the tour guides will endlessly play on the word "dam" throughout the tour...dam tour, dam tourists, dam t-shirts...you get the idea).  The dam may not look as big as modern dams in other parts of the world, but for the time it was built and in the way in which it was built, the Hoover Dam is simultaneously a business, governmental, labor, and engineering marvel.

What strikes me about this structure is that it was built during a literal time of depression. Out of such a dark time, something quite marvelous managed to be built. 

How are you at the end of this year, if you are honest? In general, we sense extreme weariness and depression for many permeating the air at the end of 2021.

With that said we challenge you to take out a pen and paper (or open a new Word document), set your timer to 10 minutes, and do the following exercise:

(1) Look back and WRITE: What did you accomplish last year? It need not be big (but it can be)? Make an accomplishment list and celebrate! Click here to read more about accomplishment lists.

(2) Look now and WRITE: Be honest. Where are you? How are you? If  I have learned anything through my tangental study of psychology, it is that people do not improve without admitting where they currently are.

(3) Look forward and WRITE: Where do you want to be at the end of next year? What hopes, ideas, projects, and dreams would you like to accomplish? Dream big! The Hoover Dam was a big, impossible dream. But some people, despite the depression era, decided to write out a plan and then start doing whatever necessary to begin accomplishing the goal.

Notice I said "WRITE" in all of the points above. Writing things down is powerful, especially for goal setting. You may have just "thought" through these points, but I challenge you to actually write down your answers. Then, save them where you can take them out at the end of next year. If you do even a fraction of what you write for point 3 (but you must do points 1 and 2 first!), I promise, you will marvel at where you were and where you've come.

Until next time, happy writing!

Tiberio and Maggie
www.therealacademics.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Need a Boost of Encouragement? The Accomplishment List

Image
Dear Real Academics, As faculty (at the time of this writing), I am on a 9 month-contract.  But, every summer for the past 7 years in my tenure-track position seems to be a non-stop list of things to do including attending dissertation defenses, reviewing manuscripts, reviewing conference proposals, going to research meetings, analyzing data, writing and submitting conference proposals, writing and submitting manuscripts and grants, setting up classes for the next semester, setting up meetings for the next semester,  answering student advising emails,  managing upcoming faculty searches, and more. So, you can imagine how annoyed I get when I hear people assume that I am so lucky to be an "educator" because I get summers off. I wish!  Around the end of July this year, I was near burn-out.  Around the first week of August , I was looking ahead to the gazillion of emails streaming into my in-box to get things set up for the start of the semester (not to mention the...
Read more

The Power of Logging

Image
Dear Real Academics, There's a pattern among productivity strategists: If you want results, track your progress. Whether I'm watching a video or reading about financial planning, nutritional well-being, exercise programs, writing productivity, or self management in general, all programs that WORK have some element of what I default to calling "logging". I default to this term because of my experience with logging with writing (more on that below). Logging is tracking your progress.  I know, I know...it sounds dull and mundane and boring and hard to remember to do. It may even sound rigid, but here's the news: It is powerful. Why? This is a good question. For this post, I will not get into any facts or figures or empirical data to prove to you that tracking your progress is powerful when it comes to making progress.  But, reflect on your own experience. When have you made real progress on any goal you had that required change/effort/difficulty? What did it look lik...
Read more

Writing Models

Image
Dear Real Academics, Did you know there's such a thing as a writing model? And, here, I don't mean a person holding up the palm of their hand under a piece of paper to display it. Here I mean an example of writing similar to the one you need to or want to (or both!) compose. When I was in graduate school, I knew I needed to write a dissertation in order to graduate. Early in my program, I had never written a dissertation, much less read one. So, I looked for dissertation models in my program and studied them -- not for the content but for the structure. I asked myself: How long are dissertations? (they vary tremendously depending on methodology, I discovered!). How are dissertations organized? (there are traditional chapters, but there are formats that include a collection of related journal articles). How does each dissertation section begin and end? (I learned they are fairly repetitive in the beginning and end of each section because they are so long and want to remind the ...
Read more