So this is the second installment of my 3-day blogathon thing (with a past/present/future theme). Today’s focus is summer goals. I have a lot of professional and personal goals to achieve this summer, some of which I’ve already knocked out—so I’m getting started on the right foot, at least. (The philosophy of goals is to have both achievable goals as well as stretch goals, after all!)

Writing goals

In a teaching-heavy position like mine, it’s very difficult to make substantial progress on writing during the semester, and nigh impossible to do so in the first year of a new job. So the summer is the time for me to reconnect with my researcher side and take care of all those creative tasks that require ample space for thinking.

1. Today: I just today finished a complete draft of a book chapter for an edited collection, titled “Timbre, Genre, and Polystylism in Sonic the Hedgehog 3” and sent it off to the editor. I’m sure there’s more revising to be done, but it feels good to complete a draft.
2. Sometime in June: I am collaborating with other authors on an article on another chapter in another edited collection, which analyzes “Partition” by Beyoncé—this is the followup project from a “summer school” I attended in Summer of 2015 (gosh, three years ago!). I promised my group members I’d respond to critique from editors in June, so I’d better keep my promise.
3. By Early July: I’m presenting my dissertation research at a timbre conference in Montreal, hosted by McGill. It’s a poster presentation, so I need to design a pretty poster.
4. July/August: I just heard back from a journal yesterday that I’ve gotten a revise (substantially) and resubmit on an article I’ve been kicking around for quite a while now. While I’m slightly bummed at the extent of the revisions that they want, the review I got was very thorough and had a lot for me to work with. Nevertheless, I’m gonna kick that can down the road a bit while I come to terms with all that.

Teaching goals

1. By June 1: I am going to submit an application for a grant on behalf of a committee of people who are wanting to revise the theory curriculum. I am trying to do a modular (i.e., non-sequenced) theory curriculum that incorporates an entire semester focused on jazz and pop music, among other things. We are also working to bring performance experience into the classroom in more tangible ways, like including a playing component to the typical battery of timed quizzes in the Theory I class.
2. By June 4: Redesign the DMA comprehensive exams.
3. By mid-July: I will have completed a course through my university that teaches professors how to design an online course through Blackboard. I teach a graduate course required for all masters’ students, and because of differing scheduling needs (educators need night classes; performers need day classes), offering the course online is an ideal presentation for this course. But, I don’t currently know how I’m going to make it as discussion-based and interactive as my in-person class. Hopefully completing the course will inform me a bit better. I’m applying for funding for this activity too.
4. By the start of next semester: Provided we’re awarded the grant, I will work with other members of the curriculum re-design team to develop new materials for the theory courses, particularly the jazz/pop course. We won’t implement anything til Fall 2019 probably but it’s still good to get this work done early.

Personal goals

(Not-so-)fun fact! I, like a lot of professors, don’t get paid over the summer. This is part of the motivation for trying to acquire some of this money for redesigns. So I’m going to really try to limit the work I try to do over the summer to these projects listed above (granted, that’s probably way too much unpaid work still). Here’s my plans for summer relaxation:

• Several camping trips. I used to go camping when I lived in Florida, but (shocker) I sold all my camping goodies when I moved to New York City. Now that I’m back in the #suburblife, and I own a Subaru Forester, camping is a lot more attainable than it had been. I just went camping last weekend at a park 15 minutes from my apartment. It sounds like a silly thing to do, but it was actually amazing. I’m hoping to do this spontaneously any nice weekend that I can. I have two more camping trips already planned this summer, to Assateague and Chincoteague islands, where the wild horses roam on the beach.
• Other non-camping trips. I’m going to New York City again and so thrilled to hang out with old friends and eat some decent food and get a decent haircut at my old place. I still miss Brooklyn terribly. I’m also going on a family vacation with my dad, both my brothers, and my brothers’ partners to West Virginia. It’s a lot to handle but should be good quality time.
• Video gaaaames. I’m still obsessed with Crusader Kings 2, which I have been for, I’m guessing, 5 years at least. It’s still fun. I’ve also been playing a lot on the Nintendo Switch, like Mario Kart. Hopefully Smash Bros will come out soon too.
• Singing! My church job recently decided to employ a quartet over the summer to sing some more polyphony in the summer Latin masses. While my church choir job has been stressing me out a bit lately, I’m definitely down for one-to-a-part singing, anytime, anywhere.

It’s a… erm… ambitious program I’ve laid out for myself here—it’ll be interesting to check in at the end of the summer and see how much of this I was able to follow through on.