This blog is meant to chronicle my second (upcoming) sabbatical, partly because of how my first sabbatical went. My first sabbatical was planned for 2020-2021; by those dates you can guess what disrupted it. Originally, I was approved for an official semester of sabbatical in fall 2020 and a semester of fellowship leave in spring 2021 for my Fulbright in Germany.

Once my apartment lease ended in spring 2020, I planned to move my stuff to storage, and become an RV-driving cross-country nomad for the first summer and fall. Then, I would move abroad for spring, and maybe stay there through the second summer.

But on March 13, 2020, we went home for spring break, and we never came back. Fulbright was paused. I was stuck in Connecticut. I did still do some travel, but only around New England, which had some of the country’s most stringent safety protocols. (New England was so strict, you were supposed to quarantine for two weeks before even traveling between states. In fact, at the crisis point of very early COVID, particularly in Manhattan, Connecticut even attempted to close its borders to New Yorkers driving in.)

I ended up on a few very isolated solo trips: A week in an off-the-grid tiny house (pictured above) at the Canadian border in Vermont, and a week in similarly Canada-adjacent Downeast Maine (pictured below).

Let me pause to once again acknowledge how grateful I am to have had any sabbatical opportunities, even in the catastrophe of a pandemic.

I did finally get to take my Fulbright in late summer 2021, which stretched through most of the following fall. I went to Universität Duisburg-Essen in Germany, where things were still quite locked down. I spent the first month working from the kitchen table in my Düsseldorf apartment before we were allowed back on campus. Nearly every week after that I got a COVID test on my walk to the train (which was impressively offered cost-free to all German residents!). Many Fulbright plans were still not back in place, and unfortunately I missed out on a lot of the usual networking. Yet, even among all the restrictions, I was given an office and a great research team to join. There, I launched an algorithmic literacy project that has become my entire research program. It was, without a doubt, what made my whole broken sabbatical worth it.

Now here I am, already planning for…

This is where the story becomes unclear. I had a solid plan for Sabbatical 1, and it fell apart in a wholly unimaginable way. And yet, it was still more productive than I anticipated. I spent my sabbatical semester doing a Python certification and taking advanced German courses at the Goethe Institut. Then, my Fulbright semester was successful by every important academic measure: publications, grant funding, another fellowship, international collaborations.

But, everything has changed in 5 years. In spring 2020 I had just earned tenure and was still riding out the commitments I had set up to prove myself in my career. Then, after the exhaustion of COVID + the tenure slump finally broke years later, I was ramping myself right back up for the next promotion. Less pressure than tenure, but also less clarity, so I felt there was a lot to do in a few years if I wanted to be Full before my next chance at a sabbatical. Now, my external letters are being written, while I’m putting the final touches on my package due next month. And then?

I don’t know exactly how I want this sabbatical to look. I have broad ideas, but so far I’ve only been able to define boundaries around what I don’t want to be doing. That’s why I’ve been devouring every sabbatical guide and story. And that’s why this blog.

Image: Downeast Maine coastline in fall 2020; reminiscent of my home state (Oregon) coast.

My posts are never written with AI. I love writing, and I always want my writing to flow from my own brain, even (especially) with all its human imperfections.