progress in gaining life balance

I posted a week ago about picking life priorities, in an attempt to gain more work/life balance. I'm proud to report that I've made some progress in achieving one of my priorities: spending more down-time with my spouse.

I talked to three other young families at Tiny U, and we're going to share daycare so that we can have a date-night with our SOs once a week. Each family will take turns hosting all of the kids (there are 7) at their house every 4th week, and the other 3 weeks can just drop their kids off at someone else's house for a couple of hours. (And then all three of the free couples will head to the only decent restaurant in town. Maybe we should just carpool.)

can you pick only 3 life priorities?

Although I swore never to read Mommy blogs again, I ran across a link to this one, entitled "The Myth of Everything" and a comment on the first, "Rejecting the Supermom Ideal".

The blog posts rehash some old ground, but I think we can all agree with their basic point: It's not possible for one person to do it all. We can't expect ourselves to do cutting-edge research, be full-time parents, teach 20 credits, keep our houses clean, run field projects, provide only home-grown and preservative-free food for our families, knit our own clothes from organic yak hair (preferably self-picked), etc., etc.

Fine, so we can't do it all. The "Myth of Everything" post suggests that we pick three priorities, and only engage in activities if they fit those priorities. (Does anyone else find it odd that the blogger doesn't name her priorities? I suppose it's very personal, but..) The "Rejecting the Supermom Ideal" post gives an example of three priorities. In her case: family, health, and writing.

I like the idea, but find the logistics difficult. Very vague priorities ("family") could mean almost anything. Activities related to "family" include everything from cleaning the house (so your family has a comfortable, safe space to live) to cooking healthy meals, to spending fun time with your kids. With priorities that vague, they would never serve to guide my decisions.

These kinds of priorities probably work better for someone who is not working, also, or whose work is freelance, or who works 40 hours a week and doesn't bring any work home. No matter what I feel about, say, teaching, my class prep and grading take up a huge amount of my time. To pretend it won't be a priority in terms of the time I spend (rather than in terms of my interests) would be to deny reality.

Still, I find the "three priorities" concept a useful thought exercise, but I want to add a twist. First, I'll list my top three priorities. Then, I'll list the top three things that take up too much of my time and discuss how I can minimize their impact on my life. Here goes:

Priority #1: Have some fun with my kids. This means arts and crafts, running around at the park, board games, cooking together, spending time that is enjoyable to all of us. We spend a lot of time together, but too much of it occurs while I'm keeping one eye on the kids and one on my computer. Too many of their requests for my time and attention are met with "Can you play with your brother/sister? I'm trying to get something done here."

Priority #2: More publications and external grants. Tiny U, like any liberal arts college, sucks most of my time into teaching and service. I need to prioritize that which will advance my career, whether here or at another institution.

Priority #3: More down-time, at least some of which is spent with my spouse. All work and no play... well, you know. I've struggled with depression for the last few years, and I think a lot of the problem comes from being too over-committed, and not having enough time to do what I want. When I do have time to do things for myself, I often feel guilty because of all the work piling up. Down-time, and my adult relationship, must be a higher priority.

Now, on to my plans to minimize the activities/needs that take up way too much of my time:

Time-Suck #1: Cleaning house. This includes laundry, dishes, and other tasks that much be performed daily or we're living in squalor. This does not include things I consider optional, like washing the windows or weeding the garden, which frankly can be ignored for years without greatly impacting my quality of life. My plan here is to minimize the amount of crap we have around the house. Our wardrobes, toy collection, kitsch, kitchen utensils, etc., should all exist in manageable amounts. My husband and I also dream of down-sizing our house (and cleanable space). Avoiding this time suck also, ironically, includes making clean-up a daily priority, rather than letting things fester until the weekends. We're also trying to more evenly spread the tasks, and insist that the kids help, even if it's just a little.

Time-Suck #2: Grading. Class prep can take a lot of time, but I generally enjoy it, and most of my classes are prepped already. What really sucks in my time is grading. One way I can minimize my grading is by continuing a trend I've already started, which is to create intro classes that have a strong on-line component, where all the on-line activities are computer graded. The other thing I can do, which I've really resisted up to this point, is to drop certain requirements. For example, every year I teach a 60-person Intro to Biological Anthropology class. In previous years, I've required two 5-page papers from each student. This year, I'm going to switch to only one. I don't have TAs who can grade those papers, and I find that grading 600 pages of undergraduate writing takes more time than it is worth, especially if I'm also grading the essays on their exams, their lab write-ups, weekly quizzes, etc.

Time-Suck #3: The Inter-tubez. OK, I admit, I have a problem. Twitter, Facebook, political blogs, cooking blogs, mommy blogs, anthropology blogs, random surfing...I have to get off-line more. There are a lot of good things about the internet. It helps me feel connected to the wider world, even from the middle of nowhere. It's also easy to surf while my husband and I spend our evenings sitting in silence in the dark dining room, while our kids sleep in the living room. (Long story short: we have no bedrooms due to on-going home improvement.) But time spent on-line can take away from true down-time - where I can do creative projects or talk to my husband - as well as research time. I've started limiting the blogs I can read, but I think the next step is to schedule more time away from the dark, silent dining room. My husband and I need a date night. (Not only does that help with Time-suck #3, but it helps with Priority #3! Double-score!) We need to create a space where we can spend our evenings while enjoying the benefits of light and sound. (This just requires bringing some comfortable chairs down to the kitchen.)

What are your priorities and time-sucks? How do you want to change your time budget?

gathering your (undergraduate research) minions

In a previous post, I talked about including undergraduates in your research. Mentoring and providing research opportunities is an important part of my job at a liberal arts college, and something the tenure committee will look at closely. On the other hand, supervising undergraduate assistants can suck a lot of your energy and time away from your own research, unless you manage it wisely. My last post was on the structure of undergraduate research as it integrates with your own. This post is on how to gather your undergraduate research team.

I find it hard to recruit good undergraduate research assistants. It's not that they aren't out there, it's just that I don't always know what characteristics will make the best RA. At first, I chose students who showed a great deal of enthusiasm in my classes, even if they hadn't been the top grade-earners. This turned out to be a mistake. They were pleasant and fun, but they didn't get top grades because they weren't consistent workers. They couldn't be trusted to show up on time, or to put that last bit of effort in to do the task right.

After that, I only chose students who were at the top of my classes. In general, this worked better, but I ended up with a student with unusual interpersonal skills (I assume she fits somewhere on the autism spectrum), which caused very severe communication problems for which I was not prepared. This also can lead to RAs who had overcommitted to other research or extracurricular activities and aren't willing to do as much for your research as you could hope.

My current approach has worked better. Last Spring, I announced the upcoming RA positions in all of my classes (and Dr. Mr. Palimpsest's archaeology class). I asked students to fill in a statement of interested that asked for their:
planned time of graduation
majors and minors
overall GPA and GPA in anthropology
classes taken in anthropology or archaeology
previous research experience
other jobs/commitments expected during the RA period
name of one reference

Most of the students who applied were already known to me, so I could judge their pleasantness, commitment to their work, eye for detail, etc., from personal experience. The information about how well they did in school in general, as well as how over-committed they plan to be, was extremely useful.

This semester, I have a cracking research team. Partly this is luck, but partly this reflects changes in the characteristics I value in an RA. YMMV, of course, but here's what I look for now:

pleasant personality, but not necessarily a social butterfly. I'm a complete introvert, but I have nothing against extroverts. I did learn the hard way, though, that enthusiasm for archaeology sometimes just reflects the student's extroversion, not their true commitment to the field. On the other hand, extremely quiet students may not just be "reserved", their quietness may mask an inability to effectively communicate with others.

attention to detail and pride in doing things right. These traits often separate the A students from the B students, but not all A students have them, and not all B students lack them. I can often see these traits in how well students write, and whether or not they go the "extra mile" in class assignments.

first- or second-year students. I find these students to be less over-committed, better able to balance the RA-ship and classes, and, ideally, willing to continue working with you for years to come.

becoming a "radical scholar" at a liberal arts college

Earlier this month, I wrote about Kate Clancy's call for women (especially parents) to become "radical scholars".

Here's what Clancy says about becoming radical:

But those of us who insist on playing with our toys in the academic sandbox need to be radicals. And I do think a lot of the ways we need to be radical involves how we perform our job: we need to set boundaries so that we aren’t always doing the service work no one wants, we need to make our passions our scholarly interests in the face of some who would invalidate it, we need to perform our confidence in front of people who might undermine us. We need to get tenure.

But I think it also means reflecting critically on what it takes to get tenure, and whether the way it’s done is the way it should be done. There are two problems with the current criteria for tenure: they don’t reflect modern, interdisciplinary scholarship, and they don’t include metrics to evaluate influence and perspective beyond peer-reviewed publications.

She goes on to discuss the importance of new methods of publishing and service to the field (like blogs), and developing new ways of counting interdisciplinary scholarship toward tenure.

Clancy's article is from the perspective of an R1 faculty member. But what about those of us at liberal arts colleges (LACs)? I don't know if women and mothers at LACs get tenure at lower rates than men and non-mothers, but we still face many of the same balance issues. How do we become radical scholars?

Here are a few ideas from my own experience:

1) Teaching counts for more in tenure decisions at a LAC, so include time-saving technology, child-focused research, and other mother-friendly activities in your teaching and sell them as pedagogical innovation. Seriously. I teach intro courses in cultural, biological, and archaeology. In those courses, I include a substantial on-line component, where students use their home computer to take exams, quizzes, do weekly assignments, on-line prelabs, participate in discussions, etc. In my tenure file, I call this "innovative use of technology" that "continues the opportunities for collaborative and interactive learning outside the classroom." But do you know the major reason I do it? Because most of those on-line activities are automatically graded by the computer, and the grades automatically added to the on-line grading system. When a question requires human attention, I can grade at my own convenience, on my own computer, without having to haul around stacks of paper, or deal with 75 different examples of illegible handwriting.

Another example: I'm obsessive about breast-feeding (Pumpkin is sleeping and nursing in my lap as I type). I've done a lot of research on it. I'm also interested in other aspects of pregnancy and reproduction. So, I've made that the topic of one week of my ecological anthropology class. It's not my field, but it's an interest of mine, and it allows me to apply research that's important for the care of my own children to my teaching.

2) Service may count more at a LAC than at an R1 school (depending on the LAC and the R1, of course). Here at Tiny U, community-service based class activities are considered particularly impressive in a tenure application. I'm focusing my community service activities around young children, so my mothering experience and interests will complement my professional service. This year, my North American Archaeology class will be putting together a presentation on archaeology and site stewardship, as well as local culture history, for the preschoolers and kindergarteners in town. Yup, I'm taking my "big kids" to my own Bunny's kindergarten class. I get double bonus points for volunteering in my child's classroom and doing professional community service!

3) Although LACs put more focus on teaching than R1s, at many colleges, research will also be rewarded. Here at Tiny U, a mediocre teaching record and a stellar research record will get you tenure, but a bad research record will not necessarily be balanced by even the highest teaching honors. At Tiny U, only a small percentage of the faculty do significant research, but we have little pots of money to encourage faculty to do more. I've never been turned down for any money I've applied for, including grants in the $5,000-20,000 range! If you're one of the few here who do research, you can have a significant advantage when it comes to available seed money.

Obviously, the reason so few of us do research is because our teaching and advising loads are so high. This is where it becomes important to say "no", and to refuse typically "mothering" roles that both administrators and students may wish you to fulfill. I don't listen to students' personal problems. I'm happy to serve as their academic adviser, but they need to come to me with coherent questions and plans, I won't spend an hour discussing their vague dreams for the future. I'm not their mother. I'm not rude when I refuse this role, I'm just professional and distant, and I refuse to take any conversational opening that invites more "sharing". Every once in a while, a student is unable to read the conversational cues that say "I'm not your personal counselor, I'm your professor, let's keep this professional", but in general, I find my more "hands-off" role easy to maintain. (I should mention that I'm neither young, pretty, short, nor particularly feminine in appearance, advantages that help maintain some distance and respect.)

4) Public outreach is a category of service that is also highly prized at some LACs. I often have great ideas for public outreach (I'll give a series of lectures on human evolution! I'll put together an archaeology day!). I've decided to avoid these as much as possible, unless I can "double-dip", for example, by having one of my classes put together the archaeology day as a community-service based component of their classroom experience.

That brings me to the topic of this blog. One of the original purposes of this blog was to create a forum where I could vent, which is one of the reasons I made it anonymous. (The other reason is that I am concerned my colleagues in anthropology would see this blog as wasted time that could be spent on teaching or publishing.) I have used this space to vent in the past, but I've since regretted making this blog anonymous. In general, I like my job and my colleagues, and I don't have that much to complain about that I can't openly acknowledge. I wonder, if I was more open about my identity, could I foster more dialog on the topics of zooarchaeology, teaching methods, and family/work balance which are the main focus of this blog? I never intended for this blog to influence the field, or impress anybody, but it would be nice to have more interaction with other archaeologists interested in the same topics. Obviously, the few people who comment on this blog already know who I am. I'm not really keeping my identity secret, especially from other zooarchaeologists, but I do regret that I didn't begin this blog openly. I feel it would be too difficult to change now.

As a final note, I planned to write this post 10 days ago, but I was delayed by the same sorts of life events that make motherhood and academia hard to merge. Pumpkin had minor surgery, and my parents were here for a week to help. Between the surgery, a day at home for Pumpkin, and a volunteer responsibility at Bunny's school, I lost most of last week. This week, Bunny doesn't have school Thursday and Friday, and Pumpkin has been sick at home the last two days. If I'm lucky, he'll be well enough to go to daycare tomorrow, so I'll have one day this week to work. I had a Wenner-Gren grant proposal 80% done on the 7th, and I've barely touched it since. (Hmm, maybe I should be doing that instead of writing this blog.)

"a letter to my daughter"

I came across this nice blog post by a PhD-mom-trailing spouse, nicely illustrating some of the anger and depression and resentment and frustration that can come from academic two-body problems.

bringing our whole selves to our careers

In my last post, I directed you toward Kate Clancy's blog, and her post "Three things I learned at the Purdue Conference for Pre-Tenure Women: On being a radical scholar".

I was particularly struck by this:

Dr. Turner encouraged us to push against a job that forces us to “constantly abstract ourselves,” that we should bring our whole selves to the table because of what we offer but also because it makes us whole.

How many of us publicly admit the side of us that yearns for more childcare, but not also the side of us that yearns to turn off our computers and snuggle our kids for an afternoon? How many academics hide who they love, or what they love, for fear of not fitting in or not seeming serious?

...

So no more. I’m bringing everything that I am to my job. This isn’t just about loving my kid, or being an athlete, or writing a blog, though it’s a start to fully embrace these things. This is about wanting to push the boundaries of how anthropologists and doctors think about female reproductive physiology. This is about the intersection of feminism and evolutionary biology. And this means that I need to more explicitly make this passion my primary scholarly interest.

Two thoughts:

1) Even here, at Tiny U, where my research expectations are low, I hide the degree to which my family comes first. My colleagues don't realize how much time I spend with my kids, or that I want a larger family. Yes, you read that right: I have two kids, but I still want another one! This is such academic heresy that I'm afraid to tell most of my colleagues, especially as I near my tenure deadline. And yet, should this truly be something I hide? All I'm really saying is that I, like the average American woman, want more than two kids. We all know successful academic men with more than two kids, why should it be shameful for a woman to want three?

2) Unlike Clancy, issues of reproduction are not my primary scholarly interest. But that shouldn't stop me from integrating my career and my motherhood/wifehood/womanhood. I teach the biological anthropology classes at Tiny U - how often do I bring up issues of reproduction? When I teach intro to cultural, do I bring up issues of women's labor and gender roles as they relate to children? I have advocated for families when I serve on university committees, why not focus my mandatory service requirements on family issues?

More on this later, particularly on Clancy's contention that we should become "radical scholars".

balance pt. 11: summer

Many of my Tiny U colleagues complain bitterly that they are only paid for 9 months of the year, yet they are required to do research in the summer. This is not a complaint I share. In my mind, a summer to do research is a perk of an academic job. Plus, I may be one of the lowest-paid faculty members at one of the lowest-paying universities in the lowest-paying region of the country, but my salary is still pretty damn good, whether you consider it to represent 9 months or 12 months. Sure beats McDonalds.

That said, summer is a time when everyone needs to find some balance, parents in particular. Our wonderful daycare provider takes every Friday off during the summer. (All of her families are teachers, so she knows we can handle this.) She's very wise. The "family Friday" ensures a slower pace, and more together time, when it can be too easy to forget that you're on "vacation".

This summer, I'm in Old Graduate School Town, so I'm not using that daycare provider. I do have the kids in daycare all week, but I've made an absolute commitment to cut my workday short and pick the kids up in the mid-afternoon. I've cut back on all non-essential professional activities (like this blog). I refuse to think about class preparation. I've given myself some time for leisure and relaxation. It's helped that I have great friends here in Old Graduate School Town, and it's been wonderful to revisit all my old haunts and explore the area through my children's eyes. It also helps that I'm doing museum work this summer. Fieldwork is a whole 'nuther kettle of fish, and probably a good topic for its own post. (That post will be entitled: "fieldwork with kids: or how I learned to stop worrying and love white rooms with rubber walls.")

I won't lie. If I were here alone, I would probably get a lot more data collected. But I'd also be a lot more stressed out and unhappy. Sometimes, children give you the push you need to find balance in your life. Non-parents may have different needs, but we all have jobs that are vocations. We don't leave them behind at 5pm. They pervade our thoughts, invade our weekends and evenings, and permeate all aspects of our lives. Usually, that's because we love what we do.* But we all need to find some time to let go, slow down, and enjoy the summer.

What do you do to crate balance in the summer?

_____
*Yes, I am fully aware that an archaeologist's all-pervading love of dead things is less than attractive to normal members of society. But identifying the bones in one's Thanksgiving turkey is not a busman's holiday, it's a joy.

never again, again

At the end of this crazy semester, I find myself saying "Well, that was tough, but I'll never do that again."

I'm not sure what part of "that" I'm planning to avoid in the future. I've run out of grandparents, so there won't be more last-minute trips across country for a funeral (God willing!). And it's not like the opportunity to take on a massive teaching overload is something I could foresee. But this feeling of "never again" is all too familiar. I've been down this road before.

Last year, it was the pregnancy (during fieldwork and lab work and an intensive summer class), followed by the baby (back to work a week later, for the last few days of the semester), followed by another crazy semester (teaching 8 credits while trying to stay at home with a newborn as much as possible). A year ago, I thought "Well, that was tough, but I'll never do that again."

And I haven't, at least not in the same way. This year I didn't over-commit myself while pregnant and caring for a newborn. Instead, I over-committed myself while caring for a toddler, and decided to heap coals on the fire by changing the format for all of my classes, changing books in two of them, and making things needlessly harder.

So I'm learning a more general lesson here. Young children are a big job. Teaching is a big job (especially when your regular load is 20 credits). Research is a big job. Life is a big job. Don't take on too many big jobs.

Limit what can be reasonably limited, such as revamping classes or adding to the grading pile. Don't volunteer to make the new brochure for your kid's preschool (yep, guilty on that one!). Don't volunteer for a new committee, just because it sounds "interesting". Sleep sounds interesting, too. As does playing with your kids, or getting tenure.

"I'll never do that again" is not about the specific idiocy of a specific semester. It's about the general tendency to heap far more on a plate than it is possible to finish. Knock it off!

another family friendly victory

Tiny U is on a roll!!

I'd never heard the term "fill fund", but that's what we call money to replace faculty members who take leave. When a colleague takes maternity or paternity leave, or invokes family or medical leave of any sort, the university policy states that the department must find a way to fulfill their duties. In practice, this means a colleague taking on one or more extra courses, sometimes for most of the semester. Since we're a small university, and far from the madding crowd (read: middle of freakin' nowhere), we don't have graduate students or redundancy in our faculty. In most cases, there isn't anyone in the department who can take on another faculty member's classes with ease. For example, if Crazy Colleague were to be institutionalized, I'd have to take over her upper-division classes on ethnographic fieldwork and women in East Asian society. Uh, sure.

In the past, this has led to resentment, even under the best of circumstances. Nobody wants to teach 16 credits at one time (says the woman teaching 16 credits at one time). Since women who take maternity leave are often untenured, there is always the concern that their colleagues will still feel resentful when the tenure case comes up for a vote.

Enter our Dean, whose name will always be spoken with reverence in my household. She created the "fill fund", which will pay people to take over their colleague's classes. In some cases, we may even be able to pay a grad student from some other university to drive three hours to Tiny U and teach the course. This is a huge victory! Alas, our Dean is joining our sainted Department Chair, and leaving Tiny U for greener pastures.

I'm sending out more job applications.

One last note: this is another example of how family-friendly culture trumps family-unfriendly policy. The fill fund is entirely within the discretion of the Dean's budget. Without changing one letter of U policy, she made a huge improvement in our maternity/paternity/family/medical leave practice. Good on her!

if I knew then...

I've been thinking a lot about this comment on an earlier post:

Shortly after Bunny was born, you argued strongly that you could combine archaeology with parenthood--no one (perhaps women in particular) needed to give up one for the other. I think you meant it in contrast to the messages many of us got in graduate school. Obviously, both arguments (combine kids with your career! DON'T combine kids with your career!) strike me now as part true and part false. Is there anything you would say NOW to yourself then?

I think that it must be true that we can combine kids and career, because if it isn't true, we've drastically reduced the number of people willing to participate in this field. (Yes, I know this is not the same as saying "it must be true because look at all the wonderful examples of people successfully balancing family and career!")

On the other hand, I now believe that I was overly-optimistic in the early days of parenting. I would stand by my original argument that combining kids and career is possible, but add three important caveats:

Caveat #1: Any individual's ability to balance work and family will be dependent on factors outside their control.

When Bunny was born, Dr. Mr. Palimpsest and I assumed we would be able to find some kind of shared job. Yes, we knew it was hard to find tenure-track jobs, but we didn't realize how difficult it would be to convince a university to hire both of us for the price of one. If we were both working half-time, the last few years would have been much, much easier on everyone, and we would both have greater job satisfaction. We can't force Tiny U to let us share a position, though, and so far I haven't been able to get another job offer. Given how bad the market is right now, I may never get one.

The U.S. has systemic inequalities and large gaps in childcare services, maternity and paternity leave laws, etc., etc. So much of a parent's ability to integrate children into their career will be dependent on where the parent happens to get a job, whether or not the parent has family nearby to offer support, and other factors that an academic has little control over. Yet, these factors are critical for familial well-being. Would we be happier/more balanced/less overwhelmed if we lived near family, or had jobs with a lower teaching load, or had two full incomes, or lived in a community with more resources for children? Heck, after all the illnesses my family have suffered this winter, would we be much happier if we lived in a warmer climate?

Caveat #2: Compromise is inevitable

Parenting - as with all of my varied and rich life experiences - makes me a better teacher and researcher. My career and education - as with all of my varied and rich life experiences - make me a better mother. But, at least for me, under my current circumstances, I can't do both at the same time without spending less time and energy on each than I would like. I cancel classes because my kids are sick. I fall behind on grading. I don't have as much interest and energy to devote to my students. Most importantly, given my high teaching load, research and writing takes lots of evening and weekend hours, and I'm not willing to take all of those away from my kids (or ask my husband to take care of them.)

As a mother, I hate the idea of my babies being cared for by others from 8-5 every week day. When Bunny was a baby, Dr. Mr. Palimpsest stayed home with her, so even though I didn't get to spend as much time with her as I liked, she was getting all the benefits of a stay-at-home parent. With Pumpkin, though, that wasn't an option. I've tried to keep him out of daycare as much as possible, but I can't keep my job and still have him at home for any length of time.

Dr. Mr. Palimpsest said in his comment on the earlier post that "the day home with the baby is a luxury you might not be able to afford." He's right - a full-time academic job is still a full-time job, period. But the day at home with baby doesn't seem like a "luxury" to me. It's a necessity. He needs me! He needs to be the focus of one person's whole attention, so that he gets food when he wants it, and he can go down early for a nap on days when he's particularly sleepy. He needs someone who always has his best interests at heart, and isn't balancing the needs of three other infants. He needs a mother more often than 7-8am and 5-7pm on weekdays.

Yes, I know, if what I just said is true, then no mother should work full-time outside the home unless they have a partner willing to stay with their children. I can't say that's true, but for me, at least, I'm not sure it's untrue, either, because...

Caveat #3: Your priorities and goals may change unexpectedly when you become a parent.

Before I had kids, I never thought I'd feel guilty about working. My mother worked outside the home, so my brother and I both went to daycare. I never thought my mother should feel guilty. I never felt my health or development were compromised by her job. I knew that she felt guilty, but didn't understand why. Now that I'm a mother, I'm torn up by the fact that I can't be there for my kids. I feel like I'd be a much better mother if I wasn't working such long hours - not only because I'd have more time with them, but because I'd be more patient, less frustrated, less overwhelmed, more joyful, during the hours that I spend with them.

If you'd asked me before I had kids, I would have said that it was next to impossible that I would ever consider leaving a career in order to spend time raising my children. Once I became a parent, though, both my priorities and goals changed greatly. My kids are more important than my career, and my most critical goals relate to the development of my children. Note that I'm not saying that it isn't possible to combine a career and kids. But, at least given our current circumstances, I feel a much higher level of personal conflict than I would have expected before Bunny was born.

balance, pt. 11: holidays

Confession time: I hate the holidays. Actually, I like the food (and the baking and cooking). I love the music. I enjoy modest, mostly religious, decorations. In an ideal world (i.e., one where everybody was capable of making nice for a couple of days), I would even enjoy all the togetherness with family and friends. But this isn't an ideal world.

Two years ago, after the second-worst Christmas of my adult life*, my husband and I wrote, printed, and signed our own "Contract on Christmas." We put it on the top of our decorations box so we see it every year at this time. The Contract is our attempt to restore sanity to the holiday. Here are a few of the highlights:

Article 1: Travel
1.1 There shall be no travel over the holiday season, unless said travel is to someplace warmer and/or more interesting than our home, and is undertaken for the purpose of fun or research. No travel to visit family is allowed.

Article 2: Decorations
2.1 Decorations shall consist of one 4-ft plastic tree, pre-hung with garlands and lights, one nativity set, and one advent wreath.
2.2 The sole exception to article 2.1 shall be items made by the children of this household, which may be hung or displayed for that season.

Article 4: Mass
4.1 All theists in the family shall attend mass, which shall be the highlight of the Christmas season. Christmas is primarily a religious holiday, and therefore the true story of Christmas, the birth of Christ, and the true story of St. Nicholas, will be told to each child in preparation for Christmas.

Article 5: Presents
5.1 Each member of the family over five shall give each other member of the immediate family one and only one modest, thoughtful gift.

Article 6: Food
6.1 Our family shall cooperate to create a nice meal with whatever Christmas goodies are desired. We shall eat this meal while remaining scrupulously polite to each other.

Some of these sound rather draconian and dour, but they aren't, really. Bunny and I have made some Christmas projects together, including an ice wreath (with evergreen and cranberry) to hang on the front porch, and Christmas cards. She loves to plug in the tree. We're only buying the kids one present each (toys, no socks or clothes or practical stuff. Those aren't presents!) But, their grandparents, aunts, and uncles have showered them with presents. We have a huge stack of boxes in our entryway, three times the size of our daughter. Bunny and I baked all weekend to make Christmas treats. I have my Grooveshark Christmas music playing all day long (as long as Dr. Mr. Palimpsest isn't in the house!) In other words, we have Christmas frickin' cheer, OK? We're just trying to maintain a little balance, and a focus on the important things in life.


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* The worst Christmas in my adult life is affectionately known as "The Christmas from Hell" among my family members, and it is the reason why I have refused to visit the family of my birth over Christmas for the last ten years.

balance, pt. 10: self care

I have more energy when I exercise. I'm more clear-headed and productive when I eat right. I'm in a far better mood when I get enough sleep. Yet, exercise falls to the bottom of the priority list, I all too easily give in to the lure of pizza and ice cream, and I often stay up late for a little "me-time".

I've read all the self-help books, so I know that I can't care for others if I don't care for myself, that I have to put my own oxygen mask on first, blah, blah, blah. Here's the problem: caring for myself is just another chore that I don't enjoy and don't have time for. And while I know I have to do it, I'd like people to stop making me feel guilty for not enjoying it.

Exercise? I've heard of strange beings who enjoy burning lungs and straining muscles. Me, not so much. I've never experienced an endorphin high; I think it might be a myth created by fit people to shame the rest of us. Yes, I like the results of exercising, and I feel great afterward, but I don't enjoy the process.

Eating well? Sure, healthy food can taste great. Sure, healthy food can be easier to prepare than junk food. But, honestly, if spinach salad and lean chicken really tasted all that good, wouldn't the world be full of much thinner people, myself included? I do pretty well with menu planning, but it takes more time to cook a real meal than to just throw something together. And, yes, I eat when I'm stressed. I already feel guilty about that, I don't need added pressure from the health-conscious telling me that good people like collard greens and tofu so much that they prefer them to fatty foods or *sniff* refined sugar.

As for getting to bed early: after a long day of work, and wrestling the kids to bed, going to bed early feels like punishment for the crime of being responsible and productive. The late evenings are for watching the Red Menace (aka Netflix), or reading junk fiction, or writing for fun, or just talking with my husband like two adults. I love my kids, and I love my job, but I want some time to do other things! (see my post on mental crosstraining.)

I schedule time for the "self-care" basics, just like any other chore or responsibility. But I hate the way we get emotionally hammered coming and going on this topic. If we don't exercise and eat right, then we feel guilty because we're not taking care of ourselves, whether that means letting ourselves go physically, or just not being productive enough/a happy enough parent or spouse, etc. But, because these activities are considered things we do "for ourselves", we feel guilty that we're spending so much time on self care and not caring for our families, spending more hours on our jobs, etc. Even though Dr. Mr. Palimpsest wants me to go to the gym (for my own health's sake), I feel guilty asking him to babysit while I go and "indulge" myself in exercise. (And yes, he and I both know that's crazy.)

I don't have a solution for this, but it has helped me immeasurably to just face the fact that these activities are not fun. I don't do them because I enjoy them, I do them because I have to. And I shouldn't feel guilty that I don't like them.

balance, pt. 9: discipline

(Caveat: I'm not a specialist on this topic. In fact, so far I'm a total failure. But this is my opinion on what I should be doing!)

I am increasingly convinced that discipline is a key to life balance. No, not self-discipline - although that's good too - disciplining your children.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about training them to a whistle, like in the early scenes of The Sound of Music. I'm talking about teaching your children to be polite and obedient, for their own safety and for your sanity.

Teaching children to be obedient doesn't mean they turn into automatons. You're not an evil parent breaking the spirit of your child just because you expect to be listened to and cheerfully and promptly obeyed. Children can still ask "why?", and you should give them a reason for your request. Children should have the opportunity to discuss their objections and desires, and to change your mind if warranted. But once you've stated your reasons, and their serious arguments have been dealt with, you should not allow the whining and the delaying to continue. Think of it this way: your time and theirs is too valuable to be taken up in an endless whine of "But please, Mommy? Please, please, please?"

Discipline sucks in the short-term, because it involves a fight that can be avoided by just giving in. In the long-run, taking the time to install proper discipline will give you more and better time to spend with your child, running around outside, doing art projects, cooking together, reading books, talking about things that matter to your kid. And, frankly, when you say to your kid "Don't run across the street without holding my hand," they sure as hell should listen to you. If you haven't instilled in them a healthy respect for your commands, you aren't doing your job as a parent.

Obviously, kids don't always listen to us, no matter what we say or do. If I see you in the grocery store and your kid is acting like a brat, I'm not going to judge you. I've had enough melt-downs of my own in public (and so have the kids - ha!)

I'm not an expert on discipline, by any means. I'm only starting on that journey myself. Bunny turned four this past summer. She's been taught some basics of discipline from a very young age (obey Mommy on certain safety rules, and do age-appropriate tasks for herself). She's getting to an age where we can demand more, and start working on her attitude. I won't say her whining, crying, complaining days are behind her, but we're trying very hard to teach her prompt and cheerful compliance to important rules and requests. I'm sure it'll only take her another twenty years or so to master it.

balance, pt 8: cross-training

I used to feel guilty that archaeology was not my only pleasure. I think that's common. We're often made to feel bad if we didn't start excavating in the sand box at the age of six, or turn down after-school TV in favor of learning Egyptian hieroglyphics. A cousin of mine in electrical engineering makes a similar complaint. In graduate school, she said, there was a sense that the really serious students had spent their childhoods disassembling radios and building printers out of Legos, and everybody else was just a dilettante. (It probably didn't help that she attended MIT.)

I'd like to make a case for mental cross-training. I was going to say"hobbies", but I don't like the term because it sounds frivolous, selfish, and pointless. Activities outside of our academic focus are useful in getting our creative juices flowing and re-charging our interest in life and in research. I honestly believe that my cross-training activities help me be a better teacher and to get more academic work done.

OK, not all hobbies are created equal, but whether you're interested in flower arranging or model trains, if your hobby makes you think creatively, and introduces you to something new and different, then you're stretching your mind, and that can only make you a better archaeologist. Personally, I write fiction (and this blog!) and do some sewing, as well as small craft/art projects with my daughter. Yes, they take time away from my academic work, and no, a new skirt or a Halloween costume is probably not worth the time it takes to make it. But, I find myself more interested in everything, more motivated, and more creative when I take time to indulge in some mental cross-training.

balance, pt. 7: grading

When I first started teaching, I spent far too much of my time grading. I commonly teach about 100 students per semester, and if that doesn't seem like a lot, I'll point out that classes here are expected to be heavy on papers, essay exams, and activities, and we have no graduate student TAs to help us with the grading.

I like to get feedback to my students as soon as possible, and I want my feedback to be substantive and constructive. As a result, my first couple of years here I would frequently be snowed under by a pile of grading. Nothing else got done, of course, and frankly the results - as measured by the usefulness of my critiques to the students - were not worth the effort.

So, I tamed the grading beast. Here are a few pointers that worked for me and for my students. These are mostly no-brainers, but they took me a long time to figure out, so I thought I might as well share them. YMMV.

Grading rubrics. An oldie but goodie. When grading an essay, paper, or presentation, I pick the 4-8 most important aspects of the assignment, and I decide how many points each one should be worth. Then I create a column for each of those items in an Excel spreadsheet and put the grades in as I read each paper. Not only can I set it up so Excel automatically adds all the points together to create the final grade, but I can use mail merge to give each student a print-out of their grade break-down with comments.

For example, let's say I've assigned a paper on gorillas, and it is worth 50 points total. I may decide that spelling and punctuation are worth 5 points, grammar and style are 5 points, coverage of basic gorilla biology is 10 points, description of gorilla social organization is 10 points, coverage of gorilla diet is 10 points, and coverage of gorilla conservation is another 10. Obviously, these topics should correspond to the directions for the assignment that I gave to my students. I put together an Excel spreadsheet with each one of those categories as a separate column. As I read John Doe's paper, I put a number in each of those columns, and in the last column I write general comments. Mail merge can then create a Word file that can be printed and stapled to the papers to be returned to the students. More frequently, I copy and paste the relevant paragraph to the end of the student's electronically submitted paper and send it back to them. The file usually looks something like this, and only takes minutes to create for the whole class:

Paper 1: Gorillas
Doe, John

Spelling and punctuation (out of 5 points): 3
Grammar and style (out of 5 points): 4
Basic biology (out of 10 points): 8
Social organization (out of 10 points): 7
Diet (out of 10 points): 10
Conservation (out of 10 points): 6

Total points (out of 50): 38

Comments: Good job on this paper overall, John, but I'd like to see more detail in your discussion of gorilla conservation. I particularly liked your section on gorilla diet, but be careful of typos. I'm pretty sure you didn't mean that gorillas eat their chests.

The beauty of the system is that you've given feedback on where the student went wrong, (John now knows which parts of the paper were strong and which ones were weak), but you don't have to spell it out for him. If you want, you can always add another comments column by each grade, and add that to the mail merge. For example, the grade for spelling and punctuation could have the number, followed by the comment "Please watch for typos. They are very distracting!" I find this system much faster and easier than trying to decide on (and justify) an overall grade without breaking it down in this fashion.

Typical-paragraph comments. A friend of mine is an English professor, has taught one bizillion sections of Freshman Comp, and runs the Writing Tutorial Center at Tiny U. She put me onto the idea of only correcting one typical paragraph, rather than trying to correct grammar, spelling, and organization problems throughout a paper. This is an absolute God-send when one of your students is barely capable of writing a complete sentence, and frequently fails to reach even that mark. My friend maintains that it's the best way to teach students how to write (when paired with the requirement that they re-write one of their essays). If you correct every mistake a student makes, all they will do is go through and make the changes you pointed out to them. If, instead, you mark the major problems in one paragraph and tell them to change similar problems in the rest of the paper, then they have to truly understand your corrections. As a bonus, it takes a lot less of your time!

Pick your battles. This is another tip from my friend the English professor: don't try to fix everything. Whether the paper is excellent or excruciating, pick no more than three problems for the student to fix. Those three things may be the details that turn a good paper into a great one, or they may be things like "try outlining your paper to improve organization", "please craft a legitimate thesis statement", and "for the love of all that is Holy, learn how to write a complete sentence!" It can be tempting to try to fix all of a student's problems, but if you dump all over a paper, the criticism will just be overwhelming. I don't mean that in a touchy-feely, don't-damage-their-poor-little-psychies-by-using-a-red-pen kind of way. What I mean is that too many problems to fix will lead to no problems being fixed. Many students will just give up. It's just not possible to overcome the failure of 12 years of pre-college education in the two weeks before the next paper is due. But if you give them two or three specific tasks to accomplish, they can master those before moving on.

The internet is your friend. I have created an on-line component to all of my introductory classes. Pre-labs, reading quizzes, exams, and activities can all be put on-line using a Moodle or Blackboard system. The initial set-up is a bear, but once they are up and running, many of these activities can be automatically graded by the computer and the grades put in the student's online grade book. Presto - no more grading! Obviously, cheating is easier under this system, but I've moved toward open book and open note exams, with the result that average grades have actually dropped! Why? Partly because students think they don't have to study if it's open book, but also because I can skip a lot of the easy questions and focus on questions that really test comprehension of the basic class concepts. (Yes, it is possible to test comprehension using multiple choice and matching questions.)

An added bonus of creating an on-line component to your class is that students can upload their papers and written assignments to the class web-page, which allows you to request electronic manuscripts without having your e-mail box fill up. The papers are conveniently located in one area on-line, and you won't have to hear any more excuses about failed e-mails.

balance, pt. 6: losing it

I've been sick since early September. First it was a cold, then it became a secondary infection, then a sinus infection so intense I couldn't move my head without throwing up. Meantime, Little Boo had an ear infection and Dr. Mr. Palimpsest had a cold. We were muddling along alright, until Dr. Mr. Palimpsest caught the flu, and then gave it to our daughter, Bunny. This just happened to coincide with the move-my-head-and-puke phase of my own illness, so everything pretty much went to hell in a handbasket for a while.

Just as many middle-class families are one paycheck from poverty, so are most professional women one set-back away from total chaos. I was never more aware of how precarious is our family balancing act until it was disrupted so radically by a simple illness. But, there we were: our house filling with trash (mostly used tissues), our laundry piling up, our meals going uncooked, and our classes barely getting taught. I didn't do a writing accountability update last weekend because I got absolutely nothing done the week before. I'm lucky I didn't have to cancel classes. This week, it's taken me until today to get caught up and return to a normal routine, a process that was not helped by Bunny staying home for two days from preschool because of the flu.

It's been a tough time, but strangely enough, the last two weeks have made me incredibly grateful for all that I have. I am grateful for the help I receive from my husband (when he's not bedridden). I am grateful for those productive moments of peace in the office when the kids are at daycare. I am grateful for the energy I have (when I don't feel like death on toast) to get stuff done, day after day.

Thank God for a return to balance!

balance, pt. 5: cleaning house

I said in my first post about life balance that I hate cutting from my to-do list, because I love everything I do. That's not 100% accurate. There is one thing that I really don't enjoy at all: cleaning the house.

I'm not a hyper-clean person under the best of conditions, and long work hours and two small kids are not the best of conditions. Still, I have some standards, low as they are. I know the clean-as-you-go method is the best, but I've never managed to pull that off. Dr. Mr. Palimpsest and I tried a designated a clean-up day (Saturday morning), but too often something else interfered and we were left with a filthy house.

My current system is working fairly well, within limits. I designate the cleaning of certain rooms to particular parts of my daily routine. For example, while I'm helping Bunny to brush her teeth and change into pajamas, I do a quick pick-up of the bathroom, her bedroom, and the playroom (which is conveniently located in-between). Similarly, when I feed our two cats (Orangey and The Brain), I also pick up the mud room and take out the compost (both located near the cat box.) Theoretically, I truly clean these rooms on the weekends (mop, vacuum, scrub, etc.), but that doesn't happen as often as it should.

This system works well for every room except the kitchen, which is the room that gets the dirtiest, and therefore just takes too long to clean. It can't be delegated to a quick pick-up in the middle of some other daily task. Once Little Boo is old enough to amuse himself, I'm sure it will be easier to find the time. Until then, does anyone have suggestions for keeping the kitchen clean?

balance, pt. 4: class prep

I don't teach any classes in my field of research. The closest I come is a four-field course on environmental theory and anthropology. I don't even teach the introductory archaeology course at Tiny Liberal Arts College (it's taught by Dr. Mr. Palimpsest). Instead, I teach introductory courses in biological anthropology and (gasp!) cultural anthropology, as well as higher-level courses in bioanth and archaeology. The only higher-level archaeology class that I teach is focused on a region I've never been to, much less conducted research on.*

I can easily spend 6 hours prepping for each class period, especially if it's a new class. Since I have a high teaching load, if I'm not careful I lose all my time to teaching and have none left over for research. One trick I've learned that helps: do all class prep in the evening, after the kids go to bed. This has two advantages: 1) it forces me to work during a time that I often get lazy and just want to read a book (or write a blog post). The panic of not having anything to teach the next morning will work wonders; and 2) it forces me to limit the time I devote to class prep. Prep-work, like a gas, expands to take all available time between its initiation and the actual class. If I prep in the evenings, then pure need for sleep will eventually force me to call it quits.

I should note that this plan didn't work at all when I had all new preps, my first year on the job. Then I had to work evenings and all day to get it done. I will also admit that this plan worked a lot better before Boo Too was born. Between sleep deprivation, and an infant who will only sleep while in my arms, my evenings have been increasingly devoted to the Red Menace (aka Netflix). I've found the evening prep time to work well in the past, however, and highly recommend it. I hope to return to it, once Boo Too starts sleeping on his own.

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*"Why?" you ask. Don't ask. The inner workings of this department are not for the faint of heart.

balance, pt. 3: research

If I didn't have to - or didn't want to - do research, I could easily achieve a zen-like state of life balance. Alas, in the real world, I desperately try to cram research into the crevices left by a 20-credit teaching load, two small children, service, and the necessary maintenance of our bodies and home. Research is the sand around the rocks in the jar of time, or maybe it's the water. It's definitely the straw that makes the jar too heavy to move (not to mangle my metaphors or anything).

I had a post planned about Research Day (one day a week that I don't teach but dedicate to research), but to be honest, that's never worked for me. I kept thinking that it should, but inevitably that day is eaten up by meetings and paperwork and all the little things that have built up over the week. So, I've decided to try a new approach.

A friend posted this useful link on Facebook. It's the first article in a series by Kerry Ann Rockquemore aimed at helping academics write. She argues that most of us try to apply the habits that worked for us in graduate school (scheduling large blocks of writing time) to a new job situation where large blocks of uninterrupted time just don't occur. She suggests a daily writing system, and this first article offers several challenges. These are:

Let go of any past writing failures and release yourself from the negative feelings associated with not writing, producing, or finishing your work in the past.

Create a semester work plan that identifies your writing goals, outlines the tasks required to meet your goals, and maps the work that will be required to meet your goals onto your calendar (visit the NCFDD discussion forum if you need some examples).

Share your semester plan with your mentor and ask for his/her feedback.

Commit to 30 – 60 minutes of writing each day this week.

Greet your resistance with curiosity and compassion when it shows up (and it will).

Commit yourself to whatever supportive community will meet your needs this semester.

OK, so letting go of past guilt is a little on the touchy-feely side for me. The rest of this seems sound, though, and God knows I'm ready to try almost anything to improve my productivity. So, yesterday I came up with a semester plan. Here it is, with details changed to protect my anonymity:

Week of Sept 13 - write pre-tenure sabbatical application, send to colleagues for feedback
Sept 20 - Begin article A revisions, re-writing introduction and background sections
Sept 27 - revise and finalize pre-tenure sabbatical application, re-do graphs for article A
Oct 4 - re-write body and conclusions of article A, send to colleagues for feedback
Oct 11 - bibliography and formatting for article A; outline revisions for article B
Oct 18 - revise article A with comments, write section on [prey type] ecology for article B
Oct 25 - write section on ethnographic studies of hunting techniques for article B
Nov 1 - write section on climate change evidence for article B
Nov 8 - article B bibliography and formatting, submit
Nov 15 - begin work on grant application, outline and get finalized list of assemblages
Nov 22 - write project narrative
Nov 29 - finish project narrative
Dec 6 - bibliography, budget justification, PI biographies, etc.

I don't have huge expectations for this semester, I'm just trying to turn one conference paper into a full-blown publication, extensively revise one article for re-submission, and write the bulk of a rather large grant application. Oh, and apply for a pre-tenure sabbatical semester. I tried to be realistic with my goals each week.

In accordance with challenge #3, I intended to show this plan to my mentor when we met for coffee this morning, but we're both very sick, so we had to cancel. We've rescheduled for next week, and I'll definitely show it to her then.

To meet challenge #4, I spent some time playing with my electronic calendar system, and I have now blocked off 60 minutes every day except for one (long story). This morning, when writing time came, I closed my office door and started on my pre-tenure sabbatical application. I was able to write nearly 1,000 words in an hour, and I think I've set things up well for the next writing hour. Obviously, I hope to actually write more than 60 minutes a day on some days. This semester, my Friday schedule is very open, so I'm hoping that consistent writing on Mon-Thur will set me up for a very productive day at the end of the week. Who knows, I may even get well ahead of my schedule!

Challenge #5 - yeah, we're getting into touchy-feely territory again. I promise I'll be compassionate and curious about my resistence, or whatever.

Finally, on to the last challenge: committing myself to a supportive community. In the past, I've tried writing groups and they didn't work for me. I found Rockquemore's post on supportive communities extremely helpful in this regard. She describes many types of writing groups. I don't need a traditional writing group to read my work, I need someone to keep me honest about my writing time. Rockquemore describes a "Writing Accountability Group", a group in which each person declares, on a weekly basis:

1) my goals for last week were _______, 2) I did/did not meet them, 3) if I didn't meet them, it’s because of _______ and 4) my writing goals for next week are _______

Just that brief moment of accountability, I believe, could do wonders.

So, I see two options for creating a writing accountability group. One is to do a weekly writing accountability post on this blog, and to encourage any readers to join me. Anyone interested?

The other option would be to do a weekly post on Facebook, which might be annoying to a lot of my old high school acquaintances, but would have the advantage of making me feel accountable in a way that an anonymous blog post would not. On the other hand, a lot of my colleagues are Facebook friends, and if I start posting a string of failed writing weeks, it could affect how I'm perceived on campus, even my tenure case.

So, what do you all think? Accountability blog posts, or Facebook posts, or - heck, why not? - both?

balance, pt. 2: menu planning

I plan a series of posts about my attempts (on-going and not 100% successful) to create life balance. For me, the key to balance is organization. Truth is, I am an extreme and pathological organizer (which is not the same thing as being an organized person. I over-organize and then hope to actually follow at least 75% of my plans and schedules). I'm sure someone with annoying tendencies toward pop psychology (like me!) would consider this an indication of control problems. Personally, I find hyperorganizing helps me to identify my priorities and make sure they aren't lost amid quotidian minutia (or random crap, if you prefer).

One of our family's top priorities is to cook healthy, fresh meals on a daily basis. Hence menu planning. At the end of a long day, with two kids needing attention, and an evening of work ahead of us, it is too easy to say "Hell, let's just nuke a frozen pizza." Menu planning helps us avoid that in two ways: 1) cooking dinner doesn't seem such a daunting task when we have all the ingredients, and some part of the meal may even be pre-prepped; and 2) it short-circuits those conversations that start with "Honey, what should we make for dinner?" "I dunno", and all too often devolve into "Hell, let's just nuke a frozen pizza."

There are a lot of Mommy Blogs out there with information about menu planning. (Try this one, for example. She runs a Menu Planning Monday on her blog). I've been playing with menu planning for about a year and a half, and I've tweaked a lot to find a system that works for our family. Our current system is working fairly well, so far.

Our menu planning system is a bit different from the "standard". We have a three-ring binder with four weeks worth of recipes and notes in plastic page protectors. When we've made it through the four weeks, we start over from the beginning. We like to eat a lot of the same foods over and over, so this works for us. At the beginning of the semester, we arranged the weekly recipes so that we have fast-prep dinners on busy days and the more complex cooking takes place on weekends and slower days. On Sunday afternoon, we shop and pre-cook some items that can then be used throughout the week. Pre-cooking greatly increases compliance.

The recipes/notes/etc. are printed from a Word document that I'm constantly updating/changing. Here's an example:

Week 1:

Sunday afternoon preparations:
Chop vegetables for stir-fry, soup, and fried rice (store in fridge)
Make spaghetti sauce (or thaw some from freezer)
Shop for all ingredients


Sunday dinner: Roast chicken, served with roasted vegetables
(the actual recipe for roasting the chicken is printed on the page)
Pull all remaining meat off chicken, chop and store in fridge
Overnight, make stock from the chicken carcass and roast vegetable odds and ends

Monday: Chicken stir-fry (using left-over roast chicken and pre-chopped veggies)
(again, the actual recipe is printed on the page)

Tuesday: Vegetable soup (using stock made from the chicken carcass and the pre-chopped veggies), served with brown rice
(again, the actual recipe is printed on the page)
There is also a note on the page to make some extra brown rice, which can be used for fried rice the next day

Wednesday: Chicken fried rice (using left-over roast chicken, pre-chopped vegetables, and leftover brown rice from Tuesday)
(actual recipe printed here)

Thursday: Spaghetti (using pre-made sauce), served with a green vegetable
There is also a note here to buy one pound of pork for next week's meals, since we usually buy organic pork, which comes frozen and must be thawed.

Friday: We don't plan a meal for Friday, because there is often a faculty party or we get together with friends

Saturday: Shrimp fajitas with corn tortillas, sour cream, and chopped tomatoes
(recipe printed here)

You get the idea. Many of our recipes have some flexibility in the ingredients or spices (like the stir-fry or soup, which could be made with any combination of vegetables), so we don't find this system too constricting. Also, I'm developing alternatives that use similar ingredients, to increase the diversity. For example, vegetable pot pie could be an alternative to the soup.

As an added bonus, this system has helped us to reduce our meat consumption, not that you can tell from this particular example. We buy a pound of pork or chicken breasts on Sunday, cut it into pieces, and cook the meat. Then we can pull a bit of the meat for each meal throughout the week, just enough to add protein and flavor. A pound of meat per week for the entire family isn't too bad, especially considering our many, many dietary restrictions (a topic for another post).