At the beginning of the year I very optimistically opened my outlook calendar and marked off every thursday as a recurring appointment called “research day”. Today was the first day I actually managed to keep this appointment. Every other week during the term the persistent little reminder would keep popping up until I gave in and dismissed it by about Friday lunchtime. Up until this week, research has been squeezed around all other tasks throughout the term. But today, blissfully, I had the luxury of a whole day to fill with whatever I wanted.
So naturally, I didn’t know where to begin.
I spent the day on those twiddling kind of jobs that are necessary but not really all that fulfilling in terms of visible progress.
I updated my cv/research profile for an application that I wanted to get in today. I found a conference that looks worth attending, and then started jotting some ideas and searching online for relevant background reading, in preparation for sending a proposal.
And I finished refereeing a paper, submitting my comments online.
So it was at least a start.