Sorry, Foucauldians: you’ll learn nothing powerful/knowledgeable from me. Go buy the book.
Today I find myself possessed of that rarest of professorial commodities: free time in mid-November. As I’ve mentioned in the past few posts, obligations rain down hot and heavy past the mid-semester mark. In addition to all the usual work of reading, grading, and class preparation–all of which become more challenging in the second half, as students become more disenchanted and/or more desperate and require additional attention and energy–I’ve found my days gummed up with the business of governance. The English Department is in the midst of its triennial program review, and my committee responsibilities have multiplied like pre-moistened Mogwai. I pride myself on foresight, so the onrush of obligations seldom catches me flat-footed; even so, it can be hard to remain abreast of all the developments that a semester might bring to bear.
The past several days have been grindstone-intensive: on Saturday I graded 45 exams, on Sunday I graded 20 senior capstone essays, and the past three days have been devoted exclusively to program review, which is something of a mystery to all parties concerned. I was entrusted with compiling and interpreting assessment data for our baccalaureate concentration in creative writing, a task that involved more mystery and imagination than I care to admit. Natheless, after a timely consult with the chair of the department (who was handling the same questions at the M.A. level), I was able to churn on through and file away the papers yesterday. For good measure I spent last evening reading Chabon’s The Final Solution, which I teach next week. When it comes to getting stuff done, I’m something of a show-off.
What’s somewhat interesting to me (at least this morning, as the caffeine starts to kick in) is the sacrifices academics and students make–the corners we feel obliged to cut–as we head into the last leg. One of my colleagues recently lamented the necessity of skipping her morning yoga class so that she could tackle the last of her grading; another posted on Facebook that she would be foregoing trips to the gym until she had the chance to wade through a batch of essays. On Friday mornings I normally meet with an extra-shiny student to talk shop about an ongoing project, but she’s fallen into something of a slump, almost certainly a consequence of her attempt to juggle several writing-intensive classes and grad school applications. Still another student has a project proposal for a spring independent study pending, a proposal she’s set aside in order to wrangle paperwork that will allow her to teach abroad next fall. There’s a reason we get so frazzled at semester’s end, a reason we need the time off that mercifully arrives during the holiday and summer seasons. Academic obligations have a way of sprawling, of occupying every minute we’re willing to give them, and once we’ve set the bar for our best attempt we tend to slough off the superfluities in our lives: the acts and habits that bring us pleasure or contentment as we limp toward December. They seem like weight we can’t afford to carry.
In the past I’ve accepted the inevitability of the same pattern, but this semester I’m committed to fighting that practical gravity as much as I can. Admittedly, my R&R probably isn’t very restful or recreative when judged by human standards, but I still save space to indulge in my therapeutic nerdery. More importantly, I’ve worked determinedly to take the critical second step: resisting the guilt and regret that attends such “wasted” time. Most teachers find themselves squeezed between a self-inflicted Scylla and Charybdis: some experience guilt for falling short of self-imposed standards (trying to return all work to students within seven days, for instance), while some simply surrender to the inevitability of failure and stop trying to meet the deadlines they set in happier times. What’s doubly tragic, however, is that both groups forsake their sources of pleasure and contentment along the way, the former in the attempt to create the time they feel they need, the latter because that sense of failure fouls their enjoyment with a corollary shame. Pushing past that part of the process represents a real challenge, especially if one is prone (as I often am) to an exaggerated sense of accountability.
We’ll see if I feel the same way at semester’s end, but right now the choices I’ve made feel positively (if inversely) Rochesterian: the time I’ve taken to gratify my appetites, such as they are, has generally kept me perky and productive when it comes time to tuck in to those stacks of books and essays.
Am I looking forward to the holiday break? Sure and begorrah. But I feel much less apprehensive about the condition I’ll be in when it arrives than I normally do at this time of year.