frankie penwill

digitalfeelingchart:

We’re all readers, streamers, facetimers now! Here’s what I’ve been up to / is on my list (and I’ll continue to update probably daily):

1. This thoughtful piece on the importance of friends when living alone by Lindsay Zoladz.
2. She linked to a piece in Jacobin about solidarity from Jedidiah Britton-Purdy.
3. Every time I see someone cough or touch on TV, I wince–turns out I’m not alone!!
4. Consuming all of Basically, basically.
5. I finally watched Shrill, season 2. Patti Harrison steals that whole show.

How will I ever regain the ability to focus on homework again?? My discrete blocks of time all blur into one another–meal time is study time is job app time, is leisure time, is exercise time. What we talk about when we talk about the new normal!

Good Times Coming To An End

Now this last 12 months has brought about a lot of bad, a lot!

But it’s also provided a few nice things as well, like working from home! And if you’re working from home, then why not work from home padded?

Purely from an efficiency standpoint of course, who has time for toilet breaks

I hope you have all managed to find some good in this crazy world of madness!

Create A Permanent Home Working Office

Create A Permanent Home Working Office

It’s a trend – everyone is creating a permanent home working office. Many workers will be continuing to work from home, at least partly, after Covid-19 restrictions are reduced.

Whether it’s full-time remote working or a hybrid approach, employees and business owners need to have a permanent home working office that’s a comfortable and productive space. 

This means that today is a better day…

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Making Remote Working Work

Making Remote Working Work

Remote working has been commonplace for many freelancers and small businesses for years; however, it seems like it is here to stay with recent global changes. 

And while you can enjoy the more flexible schedule, you might find it feels a little too lax. Time can run away from you; you can find you are focusing too much on the little details, extra admin, and having meetings that seem to just be…

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Because of COVID-19, a lot of workplaces have switched to home offices. Which, overall, I think is great! At first, transitioning from the office to home was a bit rough for me. But after tweaking some things, I LOVE working from home now. I also want to mention that I’m very grateful to have a job during this time.

Here are my pros & cons for working at home:

Pros:

• No more commute time: I’m saving about an hour a day from no longer having to commute to the office. That means, an extra hour to sleep!
• Increased savings: I’m saving money that would’ve been spent on gas, lunches/snacks, and impulsive “quick” runs from the store after work. From gas alone, I’m saving about $100 a month!
• Customized work office: I’d argue that most offices are pretty standardized. At home, I have things that are more personalized to me, because well, I bought them. I have a huge desk, a succulent plant from my garden that I can easily maintain, a very comfortable ergonomic office chair, and a cubby of snacks nearby. This overall improves my productivity and desire to work!
• Easy access to food: When I work from home, I typically grab food from my kitchen to eat and often do a working lunch. This means more time I can focus on doing work and clocking in my 8 hours sooner.
• Easy access to my dog: When work gets slow or hectic and I need a break, I can just walk outside to my backyard and play with my dog! This wouldn’t be an option if things hadn’t transitioned to home-offices. Usually when things get slow in the office, I just sit there and try to get through my 8 hours so I can leave and it definitely impacts my morale.

Cons: 

• Lack of privacy: Depending on who you live with at home, you may not have the best privacy at home. For example, my mom often talks on her phone with the speakerphone on (she won’t do headphones either) and would constantly disrupt me when I’m working. After a few conversations, this has subsided but it was definitely incredibly annoying for family members not to respect office time. They think that because I’m at home and visible, they can ask me to solve their problems and make phone calls for them at the drop of a hat with no consideration to my work schedule. It drives me crazy! 
• Lack of routine (at first): Initially, I struggled with the transition to work at home because I’m not used to change. I missed waking up early, grabbing coffee, taking time to think on my commute to work, etc. But I soon got used to my “new routine” and it’s been working ever since! 

Overall, I’m quite liking working from home. My company is flexible and in general, doesn’t micro-manage and I think this provides way to a comfortable, ideal working environment.

I will be going part-time (and entirely remote) in September so I’m hoping that this work-from-home situation lasts until then and I never have to return to the office… hehe.

What are your thoughts on working from home? Is it working well for you? Let me know!

Working from home now, the guy I’m sharing the office with is pretty quiet!

Sounded like a dream. And in many ways it is. I love eating breakfast like a normal person - wait, is that normal? I love walking to the coffee shop and meandering back home. I love looking after my new pup. But am I looking after me? I’m craving a structure, a schedule, this looseness is not for me - I think there is a solution, I think I can find sanity in freelance life, but for now… it’s a struggle. And getting to meetings feels so much harder because who wants to leave home when they’re already home? I’ve done what we do best - isolated myself into a lonely place and though I’m not miserable (yet), I feel I am on the precipice of something dark.  I must pull myself back from the edge and get back in the middle of things. With so much change, I must be consistent in my program. That’s the right thing, right? YES! But it’s just so hard sometimes…

10.5.2020

made some summaries of the circulatory system notes i made the other day… of course accompanied by tea ❁

9.5.2020

any active studyblr / bookblr / productivity blogs! loads of accounts i used to follow are now inactive, so reblog this and i’ll follow you :) it’s a good time to make some new friends ❃

The conference ‘Feeding the future: can we protect crops sustainably?’ was a tremendous success from the point of view of the technical content.  The outcomes have been summarised in a series of articles here.  How did such an event come about and what can we learn about putting on an event like this in a world of Covid?

This event was born from two parents. The first was a vision and the second was collaboration.

The vision began in the SCI AgrIsciences committee. We had organised a series of events in the previous few years, all linking to the general theme of challenges to overcome in food sustainability. Our events had dealt with the use of data, the challenge of climate changeandthe future of livestock production.  Our intention was to build on this legacy using the International Year of Plant Health as inspiration and provide a comprehensive event, at the SCI headquarters in London, covering every element of crop protection and what it will look like in the future. We wanted to make a networking hub, a place to share ideas and make connections, where new lines of research and development would be sparked into life. Well, then came Covid…

2020 is the International Year of Plant Health. 

From the start, we knew in the Agrisciences group that this was going to be too much for us alone. Our first collaboration was within the SCI, the Horticulture Group and the Food Group. Outside of the SCI, we wanted collaborators who are research-active, with wide capabilities and people who really care about the future of crop protection. Having discussed a few options, we approached the Institute of Agriculture and Food Research and Innovation, IAFRI and later Crop Health and Protection, CHAP.

By February 2020, we had our full team of organisers and about half of our agenda all arranged. By March we didn’t know what to do, delay or virtualise? The debate went back and forth for several weeks as we all got to grips with the true meaning of lockdown. When we chose to virtualise, suddenly we had to relearn all we knew about organising events. Both CHAP and SCI started running other events and building up their experience. With this experience came sound advice on what makes a good event: Don’t let it drag; Keep everything snappy; Make sure that your speakers are the very best; Firm and direct chairing. We created a whole new agenda, based around these ideas.

How do you replicate those chance meetings facilitated by face-to-face events?

That still left one problem: how do you reproduce those extra bits that you get in a real conference? Those times in the coffee queue when you happen across your future collaborator? Maybe your future business partner is looking at the same poster as you are? It is a bit like luck, but facilitated. 

We resolved this conundrum with four informal parallel sessions. So we still had student posters but in the form of micro-presentations. We engineered discussions between students and senior members of our industry. We tried to recreate a commercial exhibition where you watched as top companies showed off their latest inventions. For those who would love to go on a field trip, we offered virtual guided tours of some of the research facilities operated by CHAP.

Can virtual conferences take the place of real ones? They are clearly not the same, as nothing beats looking directly into someone’s eyes. But on the plus side, they are cheaper to put on and present a lower barrier for delegates to get involved. I am looking forward to a post-Covid world when we can all meet again, but in the meantime we can put on engaging and exciting events that deliver a lot of learning and opportunity in a virtual space.

Feeding the Future was organised by:

James Garratt, SCI AgrIsciences

John Points, SCI Food

Liliya Serazetdinoza, SCI AgrIsciences

Robin Blake, SCI AgrIsciences

Bruce Knight, SCI AgrIsciences

Sebastian Eves-van den Acker, SCI Horticulture

Neil Boonham, IAFRI Newcastle University

Katherine Wotherspoon, IAFRI FERA

Darren Hassall, CHAP

Technical and administrative support was provided by:

JacquI Maguire SCI

Shadé Bull SCI

Theo Echarte SCI

Sandy Sevenne CHAP

Claire Boston-Smithson, IAFRI FERA

Guest chairs and moderators were:

Rob Edwards Newcastle University

Ruth Bastow CHAP

Richard Glass CHAP

Every library is closed, so are universities and you may be desperate because the library was the only place where you were able to focus.. I totally get you! But as someone who’ve spent most of its school years studying at home.. I can assure you that it’s totally fine! You just need a few techniques and organization skills and you’ll see that everything will be ok ! So here we go : 

• Clean and declutter your study space. Store the books you don’t need anymore and only keep the essentials on your desk. I’ll share with you an old article I wrote on Tumblr about how to upgrade your workspace!
• Block distractions : give your phone to your mom, use the Forest app, the Flipd app or just put it in airplane mode !
• Cut the outside noise : a good playlist (my Lofi playlist for example :P), earplugs and the door shut can help you be in the « library » mood…
• Make a study plan and try to stick to a routine.. It’s easy to lose track of time when you spend all of your days at home! This is why keeping a healthy routine and set hours for meals and breaks is really important!
• Since it’s easier to get distracted at home, make sure to take more breaks than the usual (for example a 45min study session and a 10 min break).
• If you have online lectures and a #studybuddy that you trust, why not split the work (for example you follow half of the lectures and your colleague the other half) and then sharing your notes? Also, why not creating a Google Drive with your colleagues so everyone shares their notes? The quarantine will be long so a little support from each other is more than welcomed!!
• You can also have skype sessions with your colleagues to debate about a subject, or quiz each other so you don’t feel too alone and you keep track of your progress :)
• You can also take the time to go deeper into the subjects you have to study and not only scratching the surface like you may be used to do ! This is also a great way to discover if you’re more interested in some subjects than others and who knows, maybe you’ll find a new passion !
• If you feel like you can’t focus anymore then.. stop. It’s totally fine to not being able to study all day, especially when you have nothing else to do and when the deadlines are still far and unsure. So Take this time to enjoy your family, work on yourself, read a book, or start a new hobby.

Studygram

……Waiting for 5 o’clock

BEFORE

andAFTER

PLANT PROPAGATING

Happy Hump Day! Enjoying my afternoon with my pothos plants

Afternoon

It’s time for a lovely cup of cup! Happy Thursday.