Beginning Again

Perhaps my favorite thing about this New Year was that as I was scrambling around to get everything ready for the semester (which starts absurdly early on Jan. 9th!) I actually knew where to scramble. I knew where to pick up the copies of my syllabus I ordered, where to take books for ereserves, what policies needed to go on my syllabus. Come to think of it, I even knew things like where my mailbox is, and I even have pens in my office now, my very own pens. I'm wondering now how in the world I survived teaching last semester in a new place!

Perhaps my least favorite thing about this New Year was spending so much time having to justify my existence as a professor, which is what putting the tenure notebook together (completed today!) felt like. This amount of introspection and accounting did not put me in the mood for doing News Years resolutions. Nevertheless, its hard not to take stock of what you want to do better in a fresh semester. It is one of the things, in fact, that I love most about my job - I get to begin again every 16 weeks or so. Sometimes this means doing the same thing over again, but seeing how you can tweak it or improve it. Sometimes this means doing something completely different, which is both refreshing and challenging.

So without formally creating a resolution list, I did ponder what I felt I learned from my first semester that might carry over into some changes this semester. This list goes in wildly different directions, but I think the most important idea I focused on was quality of life. I didn't want to just focus on work goals because I don't want my life to just be work.

The resolution I'm deciding to focus on (because who can handle more than one resolution, really?) is to improve my ability to plan my time, which begins with taking time to plan. Doing a weekly plan sunday did not work too well for me, I too often did not do it. So now I'm going to try monday mornings, which means I will need to either take away a precious hour of writing time or get up an hour earlier. I'm leaving that open for now.

I will also need to start assessing my week every friday to see how I'm doing with sticking to the plan, and also so I get better at determining how much time to allot to certain tasks. My hope is that by focusing so much "resolution effort" on this one action (creating a work plan), it will actually improve my quality of life, by making me a more effective teacher, efficient scholar, and content person who can actually relax without feeling guilty.

What are your resolutions? Like I said before, I sort of hate the feeling of being coerced into reflecting and making goals, but I do strongly believe that our society never slows down long enough to be reflective. I believe the rewards of taking time to be still, however immeasurable, are well worth it. Try it out and let me know what you think.