Academic and Scholarly Nesting

It’s taken me about five months to really find my groove and get back in the teaching/researching/writing saddle that my universe centers around. That’s not to say that I’ve not done some work toward this, but I’ve struggled to find a real rhythm to my semester. When I graduated, I had a plethora of creative and scholarly ideas I wanted to pursue. However, once we got to Statesboro and the semester kicked off, I couldn’t work–not at the office, not in the 1-room cabin we were renting, and barely (and only when I had an upcoming deadline) at a coffee shop. I attributed this to the new job and feeling certain that everybody had a bit of a scholarly block when starting a new job. I went about my daily routine almost on auto-pilot.  Up at 5am, struggle through the morning routine, teach 8-10, lunch, teach 11:30 – 3:00, office hours until 5, home, nap, try to work on student paper assessment, rinse and repeat. In all honesty, it was my worst scholarly semester ever.

I did manage to pick up speed and start pondering new topics to explore, but that quickly fell by the wayside. I also picked up an awesome research opportunity this fall working with Janice Walker on the LILAC Project. This, I think was when the motivation began to return. LILAC investigates student research habits to explore ways that we can improve pedagogy to better the research methods and results of our students. When Janice and I first spoke about the project, she explained the research methodology and I was hooked immediately. The methodology resembles stages from my dissertation, thus making me even more eager to join the investigation. I spent a good portion of the semester reading and researching and getting familiar with the background for the LILAC project, but I still wasn’t really finding my stride. In fact, planning my spring course syllabus was the one thing I became productive at during the last month of the semester. That, however, seemed more an attempt to procrastinate portfolio reading.

Before I knew it, the semester ended. We kicked off our winter break with a quick visit to family and then settled in to our private break. During the next two weeks, I built a massive desk for my home office. I gave myself about 9 feet of desktop, and two bookcases. I planned out specific spaces for both computers and a large flat space for laying out research. It took about 2 weeks to build, and almost 3 days to get moved into the desk–books, computers, and everything else. I went shopping for new desk organizing accouterments, decorated, and admired the work. Interestingly, as I was unpacking the books and sorting them into shelves, I had three brilliant ideas for large projects. Before I could get the ideas written down, I started thinking about the CFP draft that needed completing. As I was scribbling away madly with these new ideas, I realized my scholarly block much less emerged as a result of the new surroundings, but as a a result of not having the opportunity to properly nest before the semester kicked into full swing.

We all work in specific locations, at specific times, and with specific conditions surrounding us. I find this important enough to teach my students to study and reflect on their productivity and adjust to make themselves more productive for academic time management. I always assumed that for my own productivity, I needed a cup of coffee, my computer on a table of some form, and a desk. Apparently, I was quite wrong. I need my stuff around when I’m productive. The first realization of this should have come in the arrival of my office furniture. This happened the end of the 3rd week of classes, and nothing productive happened. Only once my stuff was moved into the office in mid-October did I start finding the office a more productive place.  At home, because I was planning to build my desk, I continued working from a folding table in the corner of an empty office. The brilliant scholar I knew resided in my head refused to come forth. Yet again, as soon as my stuff began adorning the shelves she ran right out and started tossing ideas at me.

Personally (and keep in mind I’ve done very little research on this process) I’m convinced this is the equivalent of a pregnant woman nesting. If you are unfamiliar with the idea of nesting, this occurs when a pregnant woman is close to entering labor. Nesting doesn’t happen to all pregnant women, but in those that do nest, it causes a frenzy of last minute organization, cleaning, and preparing for the new baby. This is something I’ve always done as a new semester approached, but I never realized how important having the full environment for nesting was to my scholarly pursuits. Thinking back on it, the concept makes sense. I nested several times during my graduate school career–rearranging the office before my M.A. comps, rearranging again before writing my thesis, once again before my doctoral comps, and at least twice during my dissertation.

So what’s the point to all this nesting talk? Awareness. Try googling nesting with any set of academic or scholarly keywords; you will find the results are all related to pregnant women nesting. I know I’m not the only academic out there who nests, and I know there are plenty of other reasons people nest. So why are pregnant women the only ones who get the chance to validate their nesting via Google?

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