The sabbatical experience

I’m writing this post from the Gold Coast, where I am visiting on sabbatical (or as we call it at ANU, Outside Studies Program) for another five days or so (I’ve been up here since mid-June).  I’ve been working on a couple of research projects with a colleague at Bond University during this time and have been lucky enough to bring my family along with me so we can all experience:

…instead of:

…during a cold Canberra winter.  This has been a blessing and I’ve managed to make my schedule flexible enough that we’ve made a few weekday trips to Dreamworld whilst working weird hours (I’m currently writing this at 9pm after having put the kids to bed).

I’ve been on sabbatical since mid-January and I will be finishing it in only one week; this post will give my thoughts on the experience.  It is somewhat of a follow on from a post from a post I wrote in February outlining my research interests and what I hoped to get done during my sabbatical.

My personal life has gone a bit haywire since I went on sabbatical, with significant family medical issues meaning I have spent much time during sabbatical being a carer rather than a researcher.  I’ve said to my wife a few times over the last few months that the sabbatical has come at the best possible time (for family life) and the worst possible time (for getting research done).  So whilst I have made some progress on the first two research areas in my previous post, I have made little to no progress on the other two.

That said, I’ve found the whole process of the sabbatical rather unusual.  I’ve said in a different previous post (well the comments section if you want to get picky) that my Myer’s Briggs personality type is ISTJ.  One of the characteristics of ISTJ’s is that we tend to be hyper-organised and so I wrote a lovely little colour coded table in a spreadsheet that outlined my plans over the sabbatical period.  It’s so pretty I thought I might share it with you below:

It’s all there…everything I planned to get done during my sabbatical!

But there has been something about the lack of structure during the sabbatical period that just hasn’t worked for me.  Perhaps it has been the medical issues I’ve had to deal with, but I’ve found it very difficult to get any momentum going over the sabbatical period.  It feels to me like doing research full-time is difficult…I like having the balance of teaching to give my working life some variety from day to day.

So in many ways I’m looking forward to finishing my sabbatical.  I have a large research agenda on my plate at the moment, and in some strange way I’m hoping that getting back to teaching will help me get more focused on my research.  Only time will tell!

Adam Butt.