It’s immediately clear to everyone when the spring semester has come to an end. The corridors are emptied of colleagues. There are fewer people in the breakroom and there are no longer any students around. As for me, I still have three weeks left to work. But this is the last blog post of the semester.
At this particular point during the year, I have a habit of evaluating the previous semester. My focus is not primarily on objectives and results. Rather, I try to get a sense of the feelings I’ve had throughout the semester. What has been the most enjoyable to do? What has been the greatest learning experience? What has given me energy – and what drained me of the same?
The first thing I do is to simply take a blank sheet of paper and start writing what comes up in my head. Good as well as bad things. What I try to get on paper in particular is what I have fully engaged in. Which tasks actually make me forget about time and space? Which contexts and people inspire and stimulate me? However, it’s just as important to write down what’s been hard. Perhaps resulted in concerns and anxiety. All in all, such an unstructured piece of paper gives me an overview. It becomes a map over emotions.
After having written such a piece of paper, it is time to start thinking. What of all this do I want to spend more time on? How should I go about this? What do I want to avoid or minimize? How do I do that? These are simple questions and a simple process. But if you take it seriously, it takes a fair amount of time. In my case, I need a couple of days. As a matter of fact, I have set aside the last week of the semester to evaluate and plan. In my experience, the latter is not meaningful unless you have done the former. It’s like groping in the dark. How can you plan for the future if you have no idea what you want it to look like? (Or don’t want it to look like!)
In essence, my own spring semester has been fun and rewarding. I think it has a lot to do with this blog. Sure, at times, it has been scary writing about sensitive and personal things, but my blogging has always felt meaningful and important. Publish and be damned, as journalists say. The input from you readers has also strengthened my impression that there is actually a need for this blog. There are too many things we don’t discuss with one another. And far too much knowledge is tacit or silent. If this blog is able to make an ever so small contribution in this regard, I’ll be more than satisfied.
In professional terms, the highlight of this semester was my debut as an external examiner. This occurred in April when Pär Wikman defended his thesis Kulturgeografin tar plats i välfärdsstaten. Preparing for this examination was incredibly enlightening. Carrying it out was exciting. This was the real deal. That is what I want the academy to be like.
As for my own writing, it has progressed well overall. I have (soon) done what I set out to do at the beginning of the semester. A bit more than three chapters have been written, applications have been submitted and I have finished my review of Wikman’s thesis. In addition, Johan Östling and I have written a so-called position paper on the history of knowledge, which I hope will be widely discussed.
But, as I have hinted in previous posts, there was a downside to this semester. My schedule has at times felt tight. The room for things going sideways and for having spontaneous ideas has been limited. Things have worked themselves out, but I want greater margins in my life. Because if there is one thing I have learned in recent years, it’s that things will happen. You just don’t know what and when. A sustainable plan must take this into account. Without a generous buffer, the fun aspects will not be as fun. In a worstcase scenario, they will just be difficult. And in such a case, something is wrong.
What I’m trying to say here is thus that I should schedule more time for my book writing. I haven’t finished my detailed planning for the fall, but I will probably aim to write two chapters instead of four. If I do this, there is plenty of time for the other writing and work tasks I have already planned. In practice, furthermore, it doesn’t matter whether the last two chapters are written next spring. It requires a bit of planning in terms of when I use certain funds for certain projects. But that is certainly something that can be worked out.
The alternative would have been to cut down on various commitments or write a shorter book. Neither feels right. The things I have agreed to do are things I want to do and look forward to. And as far as the length of the book is concerned, all the chapters I have planned are important for the whole picture. They serve unique functions and dropping one or two of these would result in a different book. This would not necessarily be a bad thing, and if the circumstances had been more pressing, I could have made compromises. But academics don’t write books all that frequently. For me, it will probably take another five years before I start thinking about doing it again. That’s why it feels important to stick to my vision.
Finally, I would also like to take this opportunity to thank you for this semester. Having so many interested and encouraging readers has been a privilege. I hope that you’re not yet tired, because there is still a lot of blogging to be done. I’ll get back to work in September. Have a nice summer!
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