Schedule (Winter 2024)

• Tuesdays from 2:15 pm to 4:45 pm

Who is it for?

Anyone in the department who has writing to do (so, everyone...?)

Our primary goal is to create an inclusive and welcoming environment to help encourage graduate students and postdocs to meet and write on a regular basis. We understand that new postdocs and graduate students can feel isolated/alone, especially after a couple of years of closure/restrictions. Through the weekly writing café, we provide a community of mathematicians who are helping each other progress in their writing.

What is a writing task?

Writing process steps can be

• Brainstorming

• Researching

• Drafting

• Revising

• Proofreading

Who are we?

We (Seda Albayrak and Erik Holmes) are both postdocs at the University of Calgary working in number theory with Khoa Nguyen. Having gone through the last years of our PhDs and the first years of our postdocs amidst a pandemic we know the feelings of isolation. Therefore, we wanted work towards establishing a community in a department that was slow to return to in-person activities. In the near future we hope to host panels for students and postdocs which are dedicated to job documents, website construction, etc. 

What is the Pomodoro Technique?

(Here is one link to one article on the topic.)

The outline:

1. Set goals/to-do list items

2. Set timer for 25 minutes and focus on one task during this time

3. When the timer goes off you are done your first POM.

4. Take a break (stand up, get coffee, get a snack, stretch, use the washroom, get some steps, etc.)

5. Continue (our goal for each writing session is to complete 4 of these)

The no-talk writing blocks are dedicated for focused writing. However, the welcoming time, the breaks and the wrap-up time are dedicated to socializing and sharing the challenges and successes of writing. The main goal of the writing café is to provide space to write with peers.