Sabbatical from home

I am on sabbatical. The goals for sabbatical are generally speaking to get your groove back, scientifically speaking. To do some rejuvenating of your science portfolio.

I think a rest was in order. Tired and semi burned out brain is not going to be terribly creative. And I was sort of semi-burned-out. I could feel it. Small tasks that should take no time will take hours. Hard to think, never mind creatively. So burnt-ish.

And hey after the 2017–2022 tenure track with the Orange One’s shenanigans with immigration and visas, a bunch of health issues, finding and setting up a house, a slew of students, most of whom were just frikkin’ awesome but also an emotional investment, so many grant applications, 7 different new courses taught, Breanna Taylor (incident, protests, two different armed militias in town etc etc) and oh YES a pandemic for half of that time.

Yeah whisps of smoke curling off from me.

I set aside December last year for emergency rest. January is for wrapping up a bunch of commitments. And then…er…

There are some limitations. To begin: kiddos still need to go to school. It’s not like that goes away. Spouse R has her job and that does not come with a lot of flexibility. So there is intrinsic structure but less incentive to travel to places.

And I had LOADS of ideas I could do. There was a huge list of papers I would not mind writing. There are limits thatI set for myself: if the paper is more suitable for an undergraduate to do. Leave it for a UofL student. If I’m really the person to do it, that is when I should do it.

Grant writing same thing: only when I really want to. So JWST proposals and theKentucy PAARE grant. After that we’ll see. It’d be nice if I can afford graduate students after this.

But the main effort is to make sure to have infrastructure for the next 5 years: this means ideas, grants and software.

Yes I am going to build an astropy package for overlapping galaxies. That should make future overlapping galaxy projects for myself and students (and other people) so much more easy. Hopefully. Or no one will use it. We’ll see.

Another major goal is to reconnect. This is a post-pandemic…talk to people? Still have not quite mastered the art yet and lost a lot.

I mean it’s probably not as bad as this TheOatmeal “working from home” cartoon bad? OTOH I am tenured so a scruffy beard is an option.

But i missed my peeps and with that I mean the astronomical community. The AAS in Seattle was a breath of fresh (masked) air. Hanging out with the CEERS team was fantastic. But that was all I managed to do.

So first lesson learned: if you have a sabbatical, plan to rest and reconnect. In that order.