Greetings! do you have any suggestions for how to best use a fellowship year? Reflections on how your year went/what you would do differently next time/definitely will do again? So far the only advice I have gotten from my colleagues is you will hate coming back...
anon it’s me, i absolutely always have thoughts. it’s nice to have a reason to reflect tho; my thoughts are almost always forward-facing!!
I have one very important truth that deserves a spot right at the top here. whether you have 2 or 12 hours of “work time” a day, the human brain can only do focused, mentally-draining work for 3-4 hours, maximum. like, scientifically speaking, that’s the range. I came into this year like, wow, I can get so much work done. and I did! I got way more writing & research accomplished this year than I could have ever managed if I’d been working as usual. however. academia’s subliminal (sometimes not so subliminal tbh) message of it’s never enough can feel particularly pernicious when you have this Magical Year of Research. for me, it actually made me anxious—like, I have no excuse for not being groundbreakingly productive this year; there’s nothing else competing for my attention. remembering that 3-4 hours is the biological limit for deep brain work helps me feel less frustrated about the fact that I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to (an amount which is frankly stupid and unattainable anyway; academic labor expectations are  insatiable). it also makes me think about the other kinds of accomplishments that I made happen this year, outside the Deep Brain-Work category!! which is important to do, i think.
what would I do differently?
focus on my own work. I spent my first semester finishing up solicited work instead. If I could do this again, I would have started saying “no” a little earlier, so all of those solicited pieces were cleared off my desk by the time I started the fellowship year and I could prioritize the thing that needed to be prioritized, right from the jump.
plan a bit more intensely at the start—I didn’t get really serious about establishing (flexible!) timelines for different projects until February, maybe? and then i got really really serious over the summer. things were fine but I think I would have been more efficient and intentional about how I worked, if I’d been more on top of that.
what would I absolutely do again?
set up a routine. if you’re used to teaching, regular committee meetings, or other firm schedule obligations, the thing that feels craziest about starting a research fellowship is how much wide-open, unstructured time stretches out in front of you. I know that I work best with more time constraints than with fewer, so I built out my own weekly schedule where I made perfectly negotiable activities (gym! coffee shop! dog walk! office time!) non-negotiable scheduled commitments. I adjusted as I went, but treating them like Real Events made sure that I never felt adrift even in a new place with new people and very few required appearances.
take advantage of the chance for a new community. this depends on the nature of your fellowship and also the vibe of whichever institution is running it, but especially in Wisconsin, the vibe was super friendly and supportive. plenty of people were essentially ghosts (which is fine! I assume they got a ton of work done) but others, including me, made a concerted effort to show up for things. making it a priority to spend time, either at institutional events or just hanging out, was so, so rewarding, both professionally (invaluable conversations abt work, academia, etc.! mentorship opportunities, in both directions!) and personally (new friends!!!)
figure out what the fellowship affords that your regular job doesn't. if you’re at an archive using rare materials, that can be obvious. In Wisconsin, it was library access—my home institution’s library is a sort of distressing nightmare, tbh, and it was a total gamechanger to be able to ILL a book and have it ready for pick-up 24 hours later… and I rarely had to ILL, because their collection was so good, especially in history of medicine. it might also mean people (who’s working there that you can grab coffee with?) or geographical proximity (what’s around the area that might be helpful to you?). you might also think about personal stuff too!
the one warning that I got from a friend before I left last year was that I would come back feeling like a totally different person. I remember feeling doubtful about that but good lord… she was right lmao. I’m gonna return to my department with a really different energy than I left with, and I think that’s a good thing!! that said, I also don’t hate having to go back to “normal” life—it’s been such a good year, so beautiful and full of growth in so many different ways, and I’m really pleased with how I’ve done and grateful that I could do it! but I’m also ready to be boring as hell for a while. catch me saying “no” like a champ this year.
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