OFD Spring Writing Retreat
The Office of Faculty Development will host an all-day, all-faculty, and librarians writing retreat on May 30th from 9:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m. Breakfast and lunch will be served; please register by Wednesday, May 22nd to ensure we have ample refreshments for all attendees.
The theme of this retreat is Renewing your Writing Practices. In the morning, we will write as a large group in the main room or in one of the various nooks in the suite. We will also open one smaller room for those who would like to use the Pomodoro method of writing—writing in 20-minute increments with small pauses to check in with your body and to take a brief (1-2 mins) break.
In the afternoon, participants can also choose to attend two workshops that will run back to back:
- Renewing and Building Your Writing Community, 1:00 p.m. - 1:50 p.m. - Are you looking for a writing community? This workshop is designed to help you identify your writing needs and then guide you through finding a writing community that can support you and your specific writing needs. The workshop will feature your colleagues, Jenny Adams, Aida Villanueva Montalvo, Stephen Paparo, and Veronica Martin Ruiz, who have all been part of various writing communities across and beyond campus. They will offer advice and ideas for starting, working in, and sustaining a writing community. If participants are open to it, we may use some of the time to form writing communities among participants.
- Embracing Our Limits, Befriending Friction, and Pausing for Awe, 2:00 p.m. - 2:50 p.m. - Having too much to do seems a constant of academic life – it can put us at odds with what’s most important and meaningful to us – even the intellectual passions, community, and goals that drew us here in the first place. In Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux 2021) Oliver Burkeman’s first tip to those in this predicament is to admit defeat -- it's not all going to get done. But he insists this is “excellent news.” After a brief overview of Burkeman’s way of approaching meaningful work and time through choosing, we’ll work in groups to identify how to put these into practice in our lives and writing practices.