10 Helpful Things I Learned in 2018

Here are 10 things I learned in 2018. They are helpful in that they helped me; results not guaranteed for anyone else.

1. How to balance bullet journals and flexibility.

I like keeping records. I like maintaining habits, planning out routines that help me achieve goals I want. However, because of that, I also find it easy to get caught up in focusing too much on the stats and not on what I meant them to represent: on the exact number of servings of vegetables I ate rather than on whether I ate a balanced diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables, or on the length of my streak on Duolingo instead of whether I am actually learning any German and Hebrew.

That makes deciding how to use my bullet journal a constant negotiation. I don’t want to write/draw/design myself into routines that don’t end up working for me. But I do like having a system to keep myself on track. This year, after leaving the good ol’ BuJo behind for a few weeks on my honeymoon, I decided to ditch most of my trackers over the summer, and I ended up returning to them in the fall once the school year started. So far, that seems to work well (and so does giving myself permission to forget filling in a column or layout if it doesn’t end up helping me).

2. How to move from machines to bodyweight/free weight exercises

This was partly inspired by not wanting to have to pay gym membership forever and ever just to get a good strength workout, and partly by wanting to “graduate” from the machines to moves that would help me during sports and other real-life scenarios. At first, I started small, steering away from the exercises I figured a priori would irritate my bad joints or moves I was scared could be dangerous without a pro coach correcting my form. As I tried more and more, I realized that the strength I’d already built up and the support of my sports braces let me do a whole bunch of stuff I thought was out of my reach.

I enjoy the challenge of compound moves. I want to get to a place where I can lift and press my full bodyweight, and it’s definitely more fun to grab a pair of dumbbells and try stuff out or play with different features of a multi-purpose squat rack than it is to wait five minutes for a particular machine.

I’ve even noticed that some of my joints respond better now that I’m lifting less weight with more muscles instead of lots of weight with one specific muscle. My hip pain has… drastically decreased? Weird.

3. Nude bras > white bras

First, though, a shout-out: bra-shopping (or indeed, any conventionally gendered shopping) can be daunting when your gender presentation is non-conforming. Tryst Lingerie was welcoming and inclusive, and their staff were super-helpful, so check them out.

Anyway, so I decided to splurge on properly fitted bras, since, ya know, those are kind of important for comfort. Along the way, I learned from Tryst’s FAQ that I was doin’ it wrong: instead of wearing light-coloured bras under light-coloured shirts, I should be wearing bras in my skin tone under whites and pastels. The more you know… (… the less the outline of your bra is visible no matter how thin your shirt material.)

4. Kickstarter can be fun (although I should avoid impulse buys)

For the first time this year, I backed a few Kickstarter projects. I’m not sure why now — I guess it just so happened that there was one by creators I knew, trusted, and liked and a couple more that seemed fun and sufficiently inexpensive that it wouldn’t be a big bummer if the project collapsed.

True, I kind of wish I hadn’t ordered one of them now (a reusable straw that attaches to your keychain), mostly because I’ve had plenty of time for buyer’s remorse (it turns out I’m OK at remembering to bring my drink container’s regular reusable straw with me to work). However, overall, my experience has been positive.

5. How to get better at communicating in a marriage

Communication is tough. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t have a job. And I think Husband and I built a lot of strong communication skills over the years we were dating. I guess my takeaway is actually that we can always get better at communicating with each other, and as long as we keep aiming for that, we know we’re on the right path.

6. How to grow plants from seed

First, buy the seeds in season instead of two months later at the dollar store. Then, be ruthless about thinning out the young plants when they crowd each other out. Do not try to re-plant tiny seedlings because they are very delicate and will just die. Have pots big and deep enough for your plants so your tomatoes can actually grow tall and… oh, wait, I haven’t “learned” that last one yet? I just had a poor struggling tomato in a planter that’s too shallow because I have only a balcony garden and no real room? sigh

My basil from seed was doing great though… until those pesky bugs killed it INSIDE the apartment double sigh.

7. How I manage with teaching an evening class.

This fall semester, to make everyone’s schedules work, one of my morning classes (9am start) wound up becoming an evening class (6pm start). I wasn’t sure if I could handle teaching after dark as well as I manage teaching during the day, but it turns out… well, it turns out it’s a mixed bag.

I think my teaching quality is equally good, but it’s harder to feel secure changing rooms/sending students around the downtown campus. It’s also tough to manage coming home and going straight to bed/figuring out dinner when Husband has early hockey and I’m not back until 9:30. In particular, if I don’t finish scheduled marking before class, that’s that.

On the other hand, I like getting to wake up at my own pace (on the morning I’m writing this, I got the flu shot the day before and absolutely needed all the sleep I could get before I teach tonight). I like having the full daytime hours available for prep, grading, chores, and appointments, and I definitely like not having to take the TTC during rush hour. Overall, I think I prefer daytime classes, but if the opportunity came up to teach a night class that I wanted to try, I’d be open to it.

8. Budgeting doesn’t mean sticking to the same tight budget forever and ever.

I’ve come to understand that I have an unhealthy relationship with financial responsibility similar to my relationship with health responsibility: sure, I could maximize my GAINZ by pushing through another rep at the gym, and I could save a teeny bit more money for an eMeRgEnCy!!! instead of adding avocados to our grocery list, but although both those long-term goals are important, so is not pursuing them at the expense of everything else.

Of course Husband and I need to save for our future; of course we’ll need to tighten our budget if we take on more expenses by buying a condo or having a family. But no matter how much we save, we can’t avoid all financial problems, just like no matter how often you exercise, you can’t prevent all health problems. The future is uncertain, and we don’t have to wait until then to feel happy and be kind to ourselves. I’m allowed to increase my monthly leisure spending even though I technically “could” still get by on my austere grad-student budget.

9. I cannot be trusted with social media or freemium games.

The best thing I did this year for my mental health and productivity was quit Twitter and stop following pretty much anyone on Facebook. I love y’all, but I also love not distracting myself every few minutes and/or nursing a bad-feelings day by reading dozens of political tweets I already agree with.

I joined and un-joined freemium games like Pokémon GO a few times. I enjoy playing it, but I don’t like how I’ll boot it up whenever I’m bored, or that I find myself going out of my way in real life to achieve some arbitrary goal based on location or time. Freemium games are great when they’re a tool for being patient in a long line or adding a bonus reward when I need help convincing myself to run some unpleasant errand. They’re not great when they use me instead of the other way around. And because completing boring in-game tasks is such an easier way to feel productive than completing boring real-life tasks, sometimes I need to get rid of the temptation.

10. How to reduce my marking load without lowering my standards.

So, quick clarification: by “marking load,” I mean not the total amount of student work I must grade over the duration of a course but the work–per-work-day nitty-gritty. The rate of grading. Calculus.

Up until now, the biggest challenge of teaching multiple sections of the same course hasn’t been staying on top of scheduling or creating slightly different assignments for each class; it’s been how every section has their papers due in the same week, which can leave me with hundreds to mark in a two-week span. And before I finished the first set of hundreds, I was already receiving another set from the sections I had earliest in the week.

So with the help of my employer’s evaluation design expert, I put together a modular course system. Each section got the same assignments and material and had the same amount of time after receiving each assignment to complete it. However, I staggered the assignments so that I’d only ever get grading from half the sections at any one time. That worked way better, although I still need to figure out the timing on the overlap between the X-sections’ second assignment and the Y-sections’ fourth one.