Well, that was a short trip. But it was good. I am filled with a lot of ideas. At the same time, I’m sort of behind on a lot of things. I have presentations coming up and numerous personal obligations to fulfill and resident interview season to manage and podcast stuff and and and —
But it’s going to be okay. I can only do one thing at a time.
Today’s priorities (other than be with kids/Josh):
1- send detailed weekly email out to residents — ALREADY DONE. If they don’t feel loved when they receive a lengthy email from their PD at 5 AM on Saturday . . . well, they should.
2- podcast emails! When we record, I generally write an email that day to our audio team that includes show notes and any specific instructions (example: cut out something dumb I said). We recorded 9/19 and I have yet to do this email! (Don’t worry the eps don’t air until mid-October but STILL.) — EDIT: DONE AS OF 6:30 AM
3- book flights/finalize hotel for NC trip for my sister’s baby shower. I am taking Annabel! I haven’t yet decided whether we will leave evening and stay 2 nights or leave super-early Saturday AM and just stay one. But I need to get this finalized! — EDIT: DONE!
4- work on residency applications! I am in interview selection mode. It is a difficult task but I am 40% of the way through one of the piles. I did delegate part of this project to the APD (she is going to go through international grads specifically) but I definitely still feel responsible! EDIT: DONE (to the point that I wanted to be done) DURING G’S NAP
Whew. Kind of a lot for a Saturday. Hopefully G will take a good nap! I will save time by running with the stroller once she is up rather than trying to sneak it in early (also I owe Josh b/c he was up with her for an hour at 3 am, OMG). — EDITED: ran on my own. THANK YOU JOSH!
6 Comments
Your dedication to your residents is great. However, if some of your program teaching is to preserve/protect their work life balance, please consider sending out emails on non weekend days. It may make you feel good to send out, but be careful of the message.
When I started working in the corporate world after science, people would always try to limit emails and messages to mostly go out during work hours, even when written earlier. I really appreciated that after years in academia.
Of course, medical residents have very different hours, so this may not make sense – but maybe it could be a way modeling the change you want to see in the world.
That’s a really good point – some of it was just save the date stuff and I didn’t want to delay sending but I don’t want them to feel like they need to check email all weekend, either!
I agree w/Kat here. Especially the early weekend morning email! (And I say this as someone who was emailing back and forth with colleagues before 8 am this morning, mostly because it was the email that should have gone out yesterday before 5 pm and didn’t. As a general rule, though, I don’t send ‘program director’ type emails over the weekend, and I never correspond with students after 5 pm.)
BUT glad you had a good trip and productive morning! I’m going to start tracking my time tomorrow…
That’s fair! A tiny bit more explanation is that it was a newsletter type email that usually goes out Friday – not a to do list :). But point still taken!
I am just really impressed you were able to focus and check those all off! Now you get to relax all day, right? 😉
I like a good productive morning. I’m so behind on preparation and have an extra lecture this week so I’ve asked my husband and toddler to go out and not come back until naptime. They’ve gone to run all the errands and I suspect will also make a stop at a cafe and playpark.