Sunday, March 7, 2010

Sabbatical Report

Dear Board of Trustees,

My sabbatical totally rocked. I got to bed early in the evenings. I spent more time with my family. I cooked more. I kept the house from falling apart. I read a lot of eighteenth-century stuff related to my dissertation. I went to the UK a couple of times. I made a baby quilt. These are all things I cannot manage to do when I'm teaching full-time.

Oh, and I got a lot of work done on my sabbatical project, too. I read some articles and books. Wrote some stuff. Researched a few things about pedagogy that I said I was going to research.

Are we good?

Respectfully Submitted,
GEW

(What do you guys think? Will this be sufficient for the BOT and my colleagues? Any advice for writing a sabbatical report that will make it sound as if I worked my butt off, thereby totally earning my, albeit reduced, salary while my colleagues continued to slave away at their heavy teaching loads?)

7 comments:

TKW said...

You are too funny! I think that little note should totally suffice.

Anonymous said...

Sign your name in glitter pen!
jc

Ink said...

Glitter pen! Glitter pen!

Ok. My two cents: spell out, in excruciating detail, the fruits of your research. E.g., list the materials you found, by name. And discuss the places you went to gather that research (which often have longish, report-expanding names). And perhaps a section about how your idea has developed, or how your manuscript has progressed (whether or not it actually has). And future plans...how having the sabbatical made X possible. All they want to see is pages of scholarly looking reportage.

Merely Academic said...

Depends on your institution. If you actually submitted anything, or went to any conferences, or anything of that kind, put them in with as much expansion of detail as you can. Give your manuscript a title, and any library you happen to have visited while swanning around in the UK. :) Or if you were "visiting locations" as part of your research, by all means mention that.

I take it the point is not so much to justify the previous sabbatical, as it is to safeguard your chances of ever getting another one? That's how it works here. I mean they can't take the last one away from me. I don't feel I need to justify taking time off at the expense of my hard working colleagues, though - after all, they're all going to have sabbaticals too.

This Ro(a)mantic Life said...

I'm with the glitter pen folks! Make it a scrapbook page with rick-rack border and photos of you and the kids ;)

Seriously, though, I'm with Ink on how to make it look work-filled and subsequent-sabbatical worthy. Them's some fine tips to my untrained eye.

Good Enough Woman said...

Glitter pen, check! And I like the scrapbooking idea, too!

Merely Academic, Thanks for stopping by! And, yes, I want to try to ensure future sabbatical opportunities, but also I *do* feel some need to justify my leave. I'm at a community college, and it's not common for faculty to take sabbaticals. Part of that reality stems from the fact that only one or two faculty per year can get them. Sometimes, sabbatical funding gets cut altogether. In addition, we don't have sabbatical-taking culture. But I want to be a sabbatical-taking indvidual because sabbaticals rock!

Merely Academic said...

Sabbaticals Save Our Sanity (proposed bumper sticker). Seriously! I have been known to take a term of unpaid leave once when the sabbaticals were too far apart. I enjoy this line of work but it is very energy-intensive. We all need time-outs!