A Day in the Life of ISLT Professor, Dr. Vanessa Dennen

A day in the life of an ISLT professor.

What does a professor do all day? Especially when it’s not a teaching day? Here’s a glimpse at how Dr. Vanessa Dennen spent Monday, March 26.

I am lost without my morning tea. It helps me do my best!

My work day started at 8 am, when I woke up. I spent 15 minutes checking in with email and double-checking that everything for my online class successfully opened up to my students overnight. Then it was time to get my first hit of caffeine brewing – earl grey tea with local honey – and get the kid off to school. By 8:45 I was drinking my tea out of one of my favorite mugs, and checking out my to do list for the day.

Butter and candy ... a 9 year old's dream?

I spent the bulk of the morning working through some data and creating tables, and then realized that I needed to finish preparing slides for a Webinar. In the midst of my work I discovered the grocery list my daughter had sent to my printer. Needless to say, I do not plan to shop from this list.

Ready for webinar!

Before I knew it, it was 12:40 and I had 20 minutes to get situated for the Webinar. I cleared my desk, discovered that my desktop computer wanted to restart, and quickly substituted my laptop.

The Webinar was recorded -- a full hour of my day documented!

Feel free to watch. 

I worked with Dr. Tami I'm on this study and we're finalizing a manuscript to send out for publication.

 

Lunch, aka leftovers converted into a salad. It was yummy.

When the webinar ended at 2, I assembled lunch. A great perk of working at home on Mondays is that I get to eat lunch with my husband, who is also a professor and who also works from home on Mondays. We don’t see each other most of the day, because he works in the apartment in our back yard while I work in a little office nook off the kitchen (or in the dining room, or in the living room).

Getting some fresh air while talking ISLT business. 

And ... back at the computer again while we finish the call.

After lunch I had a call to return. Dr. Klein! I started the call outside on my screened porch – after being inside on the computer all morning I wanted some fresh air – but then I had to look something up and ended up inside on the computer again as we finished our call.

Spinster? Really? That term is still in use?

Once we ended the call I started to catch up on email again and work on some visa paperwork for an upcoming conference trip to Hong Kong.

Working hard? or hardly working?

On a typical Monday, I would head to campus by 3:15 for the Graduate Policy Council meeting, but this week it was canceled. Lucky me! I got some extra time to work. I had some administrative tasks to take care of, checked in with my online class (it gets relatively little action on Mondays), and then grabbed another cup of tea while I triaged my to do list. I feel like the afternoon just evaporated, which happens sometimes when I do a lot of smaller tasks. As you can see, my co-PI wasn’t being very helpful today, either.

When I next looked up, it was 5:15 and time to head out the door for Pilates. I find that it’s really important for me to have some interests outside of work, and to make sure I get out and stretch. One of the things I like about my Pilates class is that I’m a student, and I’m not in charge. I’m happy to listen, follow directions, and learn new things.

When I returned home, it was time to focus on being a learner in another context. This year I started taking viola lessons, and I had to practice. As a beginner, I only practice for about 10 minutes at a time. I get tired quickly, and discouraged easily. Tonight I sounded so scratchy, and felt like I couldn't remember the new bowing technique my instructor taught me next week. Being a novice and having much to learn in this context helps me remember that my own students may also get tired and frustrated.

I love having a garden. I visit my garden when I feel stressed. Or when I need fresh herbs.

Next, I took a trip to the garden, grabbed some rosemary for dinner, and proceeded to cook while watching a show on Amazon Prime.

Manuscripts. So many manuscripts.

 After dinner was over and cleaned up, it was around 9 pm. I’d taken almost 4 hours of a break from work, and it was time to get back to work. The evening’s work? Editor stuff. Several new submissions accrued over the weekend, and I started going through them.

 Sleepy time tea, updating the bullet journal, and then off to sleep.

 The day ended, and I felt like I’d accomplished relatively little. Looking at all of the items crossed off in my bullet journal, I see that I did quite a lot – it was a jam-packed day, even if I did mostly sit at home on the computer.