Years ago I started talking about Morning Eva and Late Night Eva. They have a love-hate relationship. In that Late Night Eva loves Morning Eva, and Morning Eva hates Late Night Eva.

Case in point: late night Eva gets tired and decides, “I really want to go to bed, but I haven’t finished reading this dissertation yet. No worries, Morning Eva can do it.” Morning Eva is not pleased. And then you can just replace “reading this dissertation” with a long list of things: reviewing this manuscript; drafting this paper; grading these assignments; proofing this document; replying to emails (and a bunch of non-work things, like laundry, dinner prep, lunchbox prep, school form completing)… and you can see how Morning Eva is not so fond of her close relation. Plus Late Night Eva has a choice – go to bed, or finish up – whereas Morning Eva is stuck – the dissertation must be read by 1:00 PM today, so she is stuck with it, and was not even consulted.

And so it is with Semester Eva and Summer Eva. Now, Semester Eva is busier of course. She has more meetings, she’s teaching classes, and generally, she is always sleep deprived. So, in say, February, when a big task comes across Semester Eva’s desk (well, more likely, lands in her email), of course she thinks about Summer Eva and all her “free time” and decides Summer Eva is better equipped to address the task. And thus, Summer Eva begins her summer in mid-May, thinking she has a big empty slate for cranking out manuscripts and grant proposals, but instead, Semester Eva has left her with a giant pile of grunt work to get through before she can think about manuscripts and grant proposals. And thus, Summer Eva is always in meetings, and generally is always sleep deprived.

One month or so left; what more do you want to accomplish this summer? And was your Semester Self kind to your Summer Self?

“The post Summer Eva first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on July 18, 2014.”

I had this vision that summer would bring an increase in my blog writing. I would write a new post 5 days a week, post them 2 days a week, and come fall, I would have a great store of written posts that I could use to fill in the weeks I didn't have time to write. You know where this is going, right?

There are no back-up posts. There is a list of blog ideas, and that's it. The list grows; the back up posts do not.

On sabbatical, I vowed to bring sabbatical thinking more to my summers.  As many people know, most faculty are not paid in summer, although we are expected to get work done in summer (although I did recently receive the facebook comment, "You work in the summer?") I have a part administrative position so I have a requirement of a certain number of hours for that.  I am trying to get some bigger writing projects done in the summer. And of course, everyone else is trying to get writing done in the summer, so I have a back log (so much worse than back-up posts!) of other people's work I owe feedback on.

I've been mildly successful with sabbatical thinking. I have been working from home more. Evidence that I rarely do so was the recent email I received to "get better soon!" when I told our administrative assistant I would be working from home for the second day in a row, if she needed me.

All of this preamble is to say: Working from home more; getting some writing done; mostly working on other people's stuff.

In some recent conversations, people have said things like, "how long does it really take to read someone else's paper?" A legitimate question. So I decided to start tracking it given how much of my summer has been engaged in this very act. My conclusion: I just about never spend less than 3 hours on someone else's manuscript (or thesis). I can easily spend 4-5 hours on someone else's manuscript (or thesis). And, if the manuscript is a revision, and thus also includes a letter to the editor, I may spend a bit longer.

Now I'm a bit of a perfectionist (this poorly written at 1:00 AM blog post notwithstanding), and so I do spend a fair bit of time microediting. But it would be great to get data from others about how long you spend reading/editing co-authored manuscripts. Please share in the comments.

“The post Time spent editing other people's manuscripts (and other things keeping me away from blog posts)  first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on July 11, 2014.”