Tuesday, February 03, 2015

Writing group resurrected? and other musings

We're trying to get the writing group going again, though it will be with fewer people. We'll see how the meetings go. We're supposed to have a meeting on Feb. 11 if the weather permits. We're still emailing each other each Friday with some information about how we're doing on our projects. So far I've succeeded in writing a conference proposal and sending it in. My next (current) project is to work on a paper for a conference in May where I've been invited to present. My paper is on George Kerr (GHK).

One of the nice things about being off the tenure track is that I can choose my projects and work on what I'm really interested in. But the disadvantages include having less time to work on projects and less external (instrumental?) motivation for working on research because my work isn't valued by the university in the same way that the work of a TT person would be. So I have to motivate myself to write. I also have to decide if I want to write for a scholarly audience, a general audience, or something in between. That decision partly depends on my future goals as well, though (if I intend to stay off the tenure track forever or not). I sort of bounce back and forth between extremes when it comes to these issues. I wonder what other non-TT people in situations similar to mine are doing...?

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