Monday marked the start of Spring Term at Carleton — a gorgeous, sunny, record-breaking warm day, full of hope and promise and springtime and all the feelings that an especially warm March day brings.
As I write this, for the record, it’s in the 20s and windy — a miserable weather change that matches the change from “yay, a new term!” to the sinking reality of 10 more weeks of slog.
Spring Term, as I’ve written before, is the time we all hate the quarter / trimester system. Fall Term? Love it, because we get to enjoy all of August before starting up. Winter break? Especially love it, because we get a full break for the November and December holidays. Spring break? Fun for students, not at all a break for faculty, who frantically work to submit Winter Term grades before turning around to frantically prepare for Spring Term. Spring Term is when the reality sets in that we’re in the middle of a 6 month slog towards summer, and that when the majority of US institutions end their academic years in May, we’ll be at the midpoint of the term.
I’m heading into the term with an even emptier tank than usual. While I’m usually able to take a bit of a break during spring break (a day or two off at least), this wasn’t in the cards this year — and work even bled into both weekends. And a confluence of obligations means that I am completely swamped through the end of next week — and will be working the vast majority of this coming weekend as a result. Plus, the world is still a dumpster fire in many respects, and many of us are dealing with various forms of trauma.
The good news (?) is that I completely recognize that I am at / over capacity right now, and unlike Previous Amy, I recognize that this should not mean that I push myself even harder and beyond my limits. I also recognize that, while things won’t magically get all the way better when the confluence of obligations ends at the end of next week, I will at least regain more control over my time and to-do list. And, as I find myself saying often these days, that’s not nothin’.
The other good (?) news is that I’m taking this as an opportunity to triage, not just my own list but what I expect of my students. When putting together this week’s course activities, I removed one activity (developing a team contract) from the list and moved it to Week 3, because I knew that I didn’t have the energy to shepherd my students through that process this week and that the world would not end if students worked for a couple of weeks without a team contract. (And, in fact, there may be benefits in applying some of the tenets of iterative development that we’re discussing in class this week towards evolving team rules and norms.)
I then realized that there’s likely value in removing one thing from each week of the term. I do this when I write exams (in courses where I give exams). I draft the exam, take the exam and time myself to see how long it takes me, tweak the questions based on my experience taking my own exam, re-take the exam — and then I remove one question altogether. I do this to give students extra breathing room, so that they are not worried about finishing the exam. I also find that there’s always one question that may be a very fine question, but really doesn’t add anything to what I’m trying to assess. The same concepts are assessed elsewhere, or I realize that I could slightly modify a different question to assess the same concept. It stands to reason that there’s likely at least one activity I’m assigning or introducing each week that’s nice and all, but probably not strictly necessary for student learning. And if that makes everyone’s lives easier — my students, to make their loads more manageable; and mine / my course staff, to reduce the time spent assessing the activity and answering questions about the activity — well, then, that also benefits learning.
What are you triaging this week, either for yourself or your students? How are you preserving your own energy for the things that matter?
This is what a computer scientist looks like 