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Overwhelmed

So I'm sitting at my desk today. Staring at the things I HAVE to get done over the four day weekend.

• Grade, set up online class for week
• Finish reading grad school stuff (two books, ten articles) for class starting next week
• Get tax stuff together so it's ready to file as soon as I get forms
• Finish prepping class I'm teaching this semester

It's not a huge list, but it's a chunk of time.
And I'm still procrastinating about all of it. Some of it may be because I'm not concerned about NOT getting it done. But as I stare at my desk, and the mindless TV on in the background, I think I'm procrastinating because other things are leaving me feeling a little overwhelmed.

I woke up this morning to an alert from my bank that I had a zero balance. I was pretty sure this was a mistake, because I'm brutal about balancing my checkbook. But nope, not a mistake. So I logged into the online account to figure things out. And saw my savings accounts. Which led me to the other overwhelm factor today. The house in NC isn't really showing. Only two people have been by. No downstairs renter means every month it doesn't sell is $1200 out of pocket. Money that won't be replaced. Money that comes out of the long term savings (otherwise known as the job market, support between PhD and job money). How many months until I'm seriously screwed?

Being by yourself has some serious advantages- I only have to worry about Nehi and myself. My time is my own. But it also means that when things become overwhelming, there's really nobody to help shoulder some of the crap. It ends up with me just staring at my desk.

I realize that there's nothing I can do about the house. Finding sellers, getting approval for a new mortgage, finding Dad a new place, getting him moved, it's all out of my hands. So logic dictates that worrying about it, or letting myself be overwhelmed by it all is pointless. I'm still worried though.

And part of me feels guilty. Because this has all happened because I quit my job and decided to get my PhD. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret doing it, I love what I'm doing. But I was counting on a long term renter to cover the mortgage in NC. Not on them not paying me, and breaking the lease three months in. So now there is all this other stuff. Stuff I have no control over, that severely affect my future plans.

I don't say any of this to invite you to a pity party. It's just, there are lots of ways that being single is difficult. Being on your own can be hard. Going through grad school with only yourself for support is hard.

So I've balanced my checkbook. I've reasserted order over chaos. I've picked out my highlighters to annotate the books I have to read. I've made a list of tax items to pull together. As for the rest, I guess I'll walk in the sun with Nehi, and try not to let my brain scramble from the stress of it all.

Using One Note to Make Your Life Easier

File under: helpful to PhD students or academics

I like handwritten notes. I have notebooks for all classes I teach and take, and they are color coded. I like that I can write in different inks, put colored Post-Its, and color code with highlighters. As much as I am a tech geek, using technology in my classroom, and professionally, I never found an online version that would give me the same thing my hardcopy notebooks gave me. Or even a program that would supplement. While I love Google Docs, and use them all the time, they're not quite integrated enough for me.
Then I was faced with a conundrum for spring semester- one class required a ton of supplemental articles. Last semester, another class had the same thing and it was an ongoing battle all semester of running my home printer toner dry once a week, having to make time to print on campus, and lugging articles around, as well as worrying over leaving items behind. So over winter break I started hunting the Internet for software that could help.
The answer I found was One Note. It comes bundled with Microsoft Office.
And it's a godsend.

These are my notebooks. I have a general one, one for my dissertation, one for classes I teach, or want to teach, and one for current classes. Within each notebook, you can create sections, and within those sections, you can create pages. You can do screenshots and insert them, type on them, highlight, draw, full Word-type functionality, copy and paste from the Internet (and it includes the original link for you). But, to return to my original problem, you can print to it. When you open an Adobe or Word (or any other program) and Control-P, Send to One Note is a feature. It then asks you which notebook, section, and page you want it on.
I printed all the PDF articles to my class notebook, highlighted and took notes in PDF, then was able to export that class section as a PDF, and send it to the campus copy center. It costs $20 to print and copy. Cheap at twice the price! Staples priced the job at $300!

Another feature that I plan to use this semester is that I can scan my handwritten notes, and insert them into the notebooks. The best of both worlds- all my notes in one easily accessible place, and no need to hunt for items later as I study/read for comps or work on my dissertation.
You can also share notebooks with other people, or on SkyDrive. This is great for the same reason GoogleDocs is- I can work on a notebook at home on one computer, and because I have it set to sync whenever something is changed, those changes are auto-updated on my Surface which I take to campus.

The idea as well that keeps rattling around my head is that this would be a great tool to have students use. A student or group could create a notebook as a class project, and then share it with group members and me. I'm not quite sure how I would use it specifically, but it's a great tool to have in the tool box.

So that's my new favorite tech tool for the coming semester! Hope others will try it out and let me know how they use it, and what they think.

Integrating Technology into Your Courses (a basic primer)

I'm presenting at our Spring semester TA training, and thought I'd share some brief thoughts on how integrating technology into your classroom can be easy and beneficial.