Slowly, but steadily, the end now really is in sight! It took a bit of work, and quite some stress, and even some sleepless nights, but we did it. Last week, we harvested our barley greenhouse experiment. Check! This past weekend I planted my first local Freising tansy field experiment – which consists of leftover plants from our larger Jena tansy field experiment. Check! Today, me and two of my team, Lina and Sarah, planted the second Freising tansy field experiment, which is basically the stock of mother plants that we have chemically characterized, measured a whole list of traits on, and basically want to hang on to for a little while longer. I hate throwing things away.
The most daunting challenges on my to-do-before-parental-leave list are now out of the way. It’s done! This means that there only a small couple of things on my list that still need finishing, and all of them I can – in theory – do from home office. I generally don’t mind working from office or in the field, but with the pregnancy time bomb about to burst, I feel more calm being stuck at home with some desk work. I basically have to dot some i’s and cross some t’s. Today, I received the final small bits of information for a manuscript revision which is otherwise ready to submit. Give me two hours, and I can send it to co-authors for their okay. Then, I need to finalize a work package description for a grant proposal (which is otherwise ready to go). Half a day should do… Furthermore, I need to finalize some admin work for our course administration for next winter semester (for which I sadly am responsible in our department…). This may also take me a couple of hours still. Last, but not least, I will have to go through the final student reports for my landscape planning course, but given that the final presentations were excellent, I don’t expect big hurdles there. Nevertheless, marking takes me ages, so I expect to take two days for this – if I’m lucky.
Robin Heinen 