December 2019 Monthly Review

disclaimer: these reviews are for my own personal accountability and aren’t really meant to be articulate blog posts. if you are curious about anything I write here, feel free to email me at nichole.lynn.bennett <at> gmail.com

highlights from the past month

• turned in all of my projects for Ph.D. classes
• got back into Burlesque Intensive classes with Austin Academy of Burlesque
• hosted a game night
• restful winter break at home with Marc
• almost finished with organizing the house!
• lovely Christmas with friends at Lindsey and Peter’s house
• phone calls with Lacy help me feel braver and more normal
• building yoga into morning routine with meditation and morning pages

lessons learned from last month

• be gentler with myself and pay more attention to the symptoms of burnout

theme or emotion that sums up the month

• chilled out, recharging

outcome of last month’s goal, projects completed

• revised and turned in report for Rita Allen Foundation on science communication fellowships
• plotted out my Program of Work for my Ph.D.
• did I say we almost finished organizing the house! yaaayyyy
• plotted out structure of website and wrote first bits of copy
• parsed files for ICA book chapter and started intial word count analyses

goals for the month ahead

grad school

• get preliminary data on word counts for ICA book chapter
• revisit grad students in STEM literature review and refocus with research questions

creative

• website up and running
• PR/blogging content map completed for STEMprov
• publish information about next STEMprov series
• start improv directors working group

personal

• organize computer stuff and get workflow ready for new school year

media enjoyed in the last month

films

• Sorry to Bother You
• The Persuaders
• Generation Like
• Not Business as Usual

TV

• The Mandalorian
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

books

• The New Celebrity Scientists: Out of the Lab and into the Limelight
• The Craft of Research
• How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
• Lords and Ladies (Discworld, #14; Witches #4)

podcasts

• Healing Justice
• On Being

courses

• 10 Tools for Radical Self Love (Sonya Renee Taylor)