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Resolutions

Happy 2026, blogosphere! May it not suck too badly. 

Early January is all about resolutions, and I think it’s high time I made the following one. 2026 is the year I accept zero review requests. No paper reviews, no proposal reviews, no reviews of external dossiers for tenure and promotion letters. Nothing.

I’ve tried to be selective about saying yes. Without selectivity, I would do nothing but review other people’s stuff 24/7. Often it feels like I still do anyway.

But being selective isn’t enough; I have to go completely off. Because amid all the noes, I’ve somehow still managed to amass  papers to review over break, and I’m already late on half of them and receiving increasingly irate emails from journals. These “helpful” reminders just add to my already high stress and amplify ongoing (peri)menopausal delights, such as migraines and the frozen shoulder (estrogen, how I miss thee).

I’m also late with grant reports, and the angry reminders from university staff make me acutely stabby. Are you going to get my students to finish the work? Are you going to write the reports? No? Then get the %^&%#% off my back. I know I’m late. I am not sitting on my hands, FFS.

***

Being that it’s winter break, I decided to take a few days off. Not the whole break off, mind you,  because that’s impossible. But just three days starting on New Year’s Eve. I even have email autoreply on, indicating I’d be back in business on Monday.

It’s no use. The staff were working on December 31 and again today on January 2, so I’ve been receiving emails and DMs. So many emails and DMs.

How do people do that, seriously? How do people disconnect? My “time off” vacillates between the “Look at all this stuff I need to finish now before the semester starts” panic and the “Relax, dammit! Relax now!” anxiety spiral. In other words, it’s even more stressful than the regular semester.

How are things going with you, blogosphere? Have you been able to take time off? Any New Year’s resolutions?

 

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2 responses to “Resolutions”

  1. Physpostdoc Avatar
    Physpostdoc

    I hear you.

    I have been extremely bad at submitting reviews this past year due to several personal/professional changes this year which played havoc with my already oversubscribed schedule — I feel extremely guilty about it, while also being busy scrambling/panicking to finish them. Not sure when an actually valuable service to the profession and community started feeling like an albatross around my neck which I secretly have started to loathe… (sigh)

    Best wishes for the new year and wishing you a relatively stress-free semester ahead.

  2. Lucia Avatar
    Lucia

    Christmas break is a non-stop working marathon 🙂 And I have a ton of migraines. Can’t imagine why… but I am enjoying the work!

    Here is how tenure committees are done in Spain. Our name gets selected and dropped in a random draw (sometimes they politely ask or tell you that you name is in) and if you get selected, you are part of the tenure committee for that univ and dpt, that can meet online or not (mandatory travel). The candidate then presents all morning, if there are more candidates, then it turns into several days. The committee must be composed of 50% women, but we are less than 30% of the professors, so we are swamped with tenure committee duties. It gets worse for full prof committees, as there are only 13% of women who are full prof in my discipline. It is a mandatory duty than can only be turned down if one is in hospital or with a similarly urgent matter.

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