Fall term theme: Maintenance

It’s now been just over a week since Fall Term classes started, and just over 2 weeks since my kids started school. We haven’t quite nailed down our routines yet, partly because we have yet to have a “normal” week: out of town guests the kids’ first week of school, a half week for me last week where my classes met at different-than-scheduled times, one kid starting at a new school, and both kids home for 2 days this week while we waited for the results of a COVID test (negative, thankfully).

I finally sat down this week to set my Fall Term goals, a task I usually eagerly complete in early September before the chaos starts. I’d found it hard to identify an hour-ish block of time to evaluate my summer goals, figure out where various projects stood, review the landscape, and set priorities for the next few months. Today’s too full, I said. I just want to finish up this one task from the summer and then I’ll make my fall plan, I said. I should do this other, more pressing thing instead with the hour I have in my schedule this afternoon, I said.

Once I started my “brain dump”, the first part of the process, I realized that my foot-dragging had very little to do with lack of time to plan and everything to do with the theme that emerged. Rather than exuding energy and excitement and new beginnings, my lists reflected things like “staying on top of things” and “put the rest of these pieces in place” and “finish this handoff”. Not exactly ground-breaking, transformative tasks.

I realized that I’m firmly in a Maintenance Phase, in pretty much every area of my life. I’m not training for any fall races, for the first time in a long time, concentrating instead on building strength as a way to recover from consecutive ankle injuries. In my leadership position, I’m working to rebuild relationships and connections that we kind of lost when we went online. I’m teaching a brand new course this fall and don’t have a lot of energy for other projects, because new courses take a lot of energy. And as I look to rotate off of a couple of leadership / director positions, I want to make sure my successors have clear and concise information and records of what I’ve done, to ease their transitions.

So MAINTENANCE is my theme for the fall. I’ll concentrate on keeping things moving forward slowly and steadily. I’ll fix the things in need of repair from 18+ months of pandemic chaos. I’ll prioritize what I’ve already started instead of starting up new things. And, most importantly, I’ll make sure I don’t run down my energy reserves and stick to my limits, so that once I am ready to take up new initiatives, I’ll have the space to do so.

What is your theme for this fall?

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What I’m reading: Finishing up Race After Technology, by Ruha Benjamin. (I got within about 10 pages of the end before it was automatically returned to the library, so I’m back on the hold list so that I can eventually finish the book!)

What I’m listening to: The latest Best of Both Worlds podcast episode with Dorie Clark, on “Playing the Career Long Game”. I guess you could consider my maintenance phase this fall, where I focus on putting things in place, as one way to play the career long game!

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Day 1

Carleton’s Fall Term officially started yesterday.

The first day of Fall Term feels different from the first days of Winter and Spring Terms. The first day of Fall Term is a culmination of several months of planning and anticipation, unlike the first days of Winter and Spring Terms. There’s the frenetic anxiety present at the start of any term around meeting a new set of students and wondering whether your carefully-designed course will go as planned or go off the rails, of course. But since Fall Term also starts off the academic year, I’ve found this heightens our already-heightened anxiety, and adds to the anticipation. And the first day of Fall Term has its own special schedule, with shorter classes, Opening Convocation, and the president’s reception for faculty and staff. I think this is why at the end of the first day of Fall Term, I’m ten times more exhausted, and more relieved, than after the first days of other terms.

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Perhaps the first day of Fall Term’s wardrobe changes also contribute to the heightened exhaustion at the end of the day.

I’m teaching one class this term, a first-year seminar on Ethics of Technology. It occurred to me, right before classes began, that given my class’s time slot, this would likely be my students’ FIRST CARLETON CLASS EVER. No pressure, right? And after 4 consecutive terms of teaching fully online (except for Comps), I worried a bit about being rusty with how to run and pace an in-person class. Turns out, the majority of my students spent the better part of the last school year virtually, so we’re all rusty and re-learning how to learn with others in the same physical space.

Class went really well. I’m really liking this group of students and, from what I could discern in one 50 minute class meeting, their collective energy. I used an icebreaker activity to get students thinking about how their experiences build frameworks through which they make judgments, which then segued into having them think about one of our central course questions (on balance, is technology a net positive, net negative, or neutral for society?) with their frameworks in mind. (We had a particularly lively discussion about chocolate vs. vanilla ice cream.) One icebreaker question was “do you prefer coffee or tea?”, a question I end up asking most of my classes at some point in the term. I’ve found over the years that the younger-skewing my class, the less likely they are to prefer coffee, and that held true in this class as well. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s definitely a consistent trend.

I debated whether I should attend Opening Convo in person, given that we’re not done with baseline testing, but I did and I’m glad I did. Instead of our usual speaker, several faculty, staff, and students read stories submitted by the community about Carleton community members who went above and beyond during the pandemic. It struck exactly the right tone. A tradition at Opening Convo is the singing of the alma mater, which made me very nervous, but instead one of the Carleton choral groups sang it for us. And now I want us to have them sing at every Opening Convo, instead of having us all muddle through.

Between class, lunch with colleagues, and Opening Convo and the reception, I was pretty peopled out by the time I left campus. I ended up hanging out with the neighbors when I got home, so I’m starting today with depleted people reserves and a schedule full of meetings. Whoops.

It was lovely to be back in person, and it was lovely to start of the term on such a positive note. I’m really looking forward to the term ahead!

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What I’m reading: Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, by Ruha Benjamin. HIGHLY RECOMMEND so far.

What I’m listening to: The podcast Depresh Mode with John Moe. This week’s episode touched on how family traumas shape us, and I thought it was really well done.

Random thoughts, week-before-classes-start edition

I attended my first in-person retreat yesterday — our annual Department Retreat. I was surprised by two things in particular:

1. How much I didn’t know I missed meeting with, and discussing things with, my colleagues in person. While we’ve certainly had our share of deep and important discussions over Zoom and Slack over the past year and a half, there’s just a different level of engagement, particularly around difficult topics, that occurs when you’re all sitting in a circle in the same physical space.
2. How draining meeting with people in person is, after a year and a half of meeting online. I had a few things I meant to tackle post-retreat, but instead I found myself looking at everyone’s first day of school pictures (school started in my kids’ district yesterday) and tackling my email backlog. I have another retreat today, and will try to remember to give myself some grace if I’m mostly brain-dead and unproductive afterwards.

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I have a longer post brewing about my goals for the year, including (especially) my leadership goals. I spent a lot of unproductive time this summer beating myself up for all the things I wanted to do as STEM Director this year that…just didn’t get done. Conveniently forgetting, of course, that perhaps leading and shaping a brand-new collaborative model among independently-operating departments DURING A GLOBAL PANDEMIC and *waves hand at everything going on in the world* is, perhaps, an accomplishment in its own right. And, after taking a few weeks “off” from STEM Board stuff, I am able to reframe some of the past year as “growing pains” for this new model.

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As I alluded to above, the kiddos started school yesterday. 9th grade and 5th grade. One kid was excited / nervous, the other more of the “let’s get this first day over with” mentality. (I’ll leave it as an exercise to the readers who know my kids in real life which kid was which.) By all reports, the first day went well. I’ll admit that I feel less panicked about the school year now that our district requires masks in all the elementary and middle schools. (Do I wish they’d included the high schools? Yes. But this is better than nothing.) Fingers crossed that we get through at least a few months of “normalcy”.

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What I’m reading: We Begin at the End, by Chris Whitaker. I got this recommendation from What I’m listening to, which is Episode 251 of the You’ve Got This podcast. I’m still on the fence as to how I feel about this book, because it’s not exactly a light-hearted romp, but it’s so far managed to suck me in.

Squeezing in some summer fun

Most years, I try to preserve time in August for relaxation and rejuvenation. I opt to start working with students right after Spring Term ends so that we’re wrapping up by the last week of July or first week of August. We don’t sign the kids up for camps or other activities. We take our family vacation. I spend time with the kids. We go to the State Fair (although not this year, with the lack of masking / vaccination requirements). I often end up doing some work, but I try to limit this to a few hours a day if I can.

As the kids get older, this prolonged August break gets harder to pull off. The Resident 9th Grader plays a fall sport, and we learned that practices start early-to-mid-August for these. (School starts after Labor Day in our district.) The Resident 5th Grader had 2 weeks of “band camp” this year to prepare for 5th grade band with a new-to-him instrument. School orientations and assessments dominate the latter half of August. Next summer, the Resident 9th Grader will likely be working. Squeezing in a vacation amidst all these moving parts starts to resemble a Tetris game.

Not quite sure I’m ready for this.

I also waffle as to whether I’m better off front-loading my prolonged break in June and working into August, which seems to better match the reality of our schedules. On the one hand, I like having a break heading into the new academic year. On the other hand, if I’m already burned out at the end of Spring Term, summer feels like a slog.

Regardless, this summer we stuck with the August Break schedule, even though it meant the Resident 9th Grader missed some sports practices. And despite the pandemic, I managed to take two short, fun trips.

Trip #1 was a family vacation to a mountain biking mecca in our state, a transformed former mining area. My partner is a HUGE cyclist, and has never met a bike he didn’t like. A few years ago, he got me a mountain bike. I’d done some mountain biking since then but never felt really comfortable on the bike or the trails. This summer, I saw an ad for a local women’s mountain biking class and signed up. BEST DECISION EVER. I learned so much and, more importantly, gained a ton of confidence in my abilities. So I was excited to try out my new skills on our trip.

We rented an acquaintance’s airbnb. Our kids were not really into the biking aspect of the trip, so my partner and I rode in the mornings, and we all swam in various local lakes in the afternoons. (Some of which are former quarries, so they are deep, clear, and cool.) We played lots of board and card games, read a lot, and sampled the local coffee and ice cream.

The classes made a HUGE difference in my mountain biking. I felt braver. I embraced speed rather than panic braking. I took more calculated risks and embraced failure (and also succeeded more times than I expected). Biking was a lot more fun! And, much to my surprise, I am now seriously considering getting a fat bike so that I can continue riding the trails in the winter.

Whee!

Trip #2 came straight off my 21 for 2021 list. The Resident 9th Grader and I escaped to Chicago for a few days. We planned this trip before the pandemic took a turn for the worse, so we were both a bit wary about the plane trip in particular, even though we are both fully vaccinated. But I’d accumulated enough miles to put us both in first class on both flights, and we also double-masked on the plane and in the airport. So it was a bit unnerving, but mostly ok. Chicago has a city-wide mask mandate in place, which made us feel safe-ish when we visited museums and stores. We did mostly takeout, with some outdoor dining. And we spent a lot of time outdoors, even though it was hot and humid for much of the trip.

I lived in the Chicago area in grad school, so it was hard not to Do All The Things!, but I kept our plans mostly in check: one scheduled adventure per day to leave time for relaxation and spontaneity. We visited the Art Institute and the Field Museum. We took an architecture boat tour. We visited some of my old grad school haunts and the Northwestern campus. We went thrifting. We rode the ferris wheel at Navy Pier. We swam in Lake Michigan. We rode the L and walked for miles. And we saw a really cool art installation.

I’ve missed this skyline.

Mostly, though, we just enjoyed spending together. Middle school is rough in the best of times, and, as it turns out, particularly rough during a pandemic, and high school brings a host of new challenges and adventures. So it was nice to have the time and space to hang out in silence together, to share experiences, and to talk without interruption about the mundane and the important.

August was mostly frenetic and involved a surprising amount of driving people around, but these two short getaways provided a much-needed reset going into what is sure to be another challenging year. While I didn’t take as many day adventures as I’d like, I’m grateful for the time off I managed.

Did you take some time off this summer? Do you front load, back load, or spread out your breaks? I’d love to hear how you think about taking time off in the summer.

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What I’m reading: A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload, by Cal Newport.

What I’m listening to: Back in the day (way back in the day), when I was finding my way as a new mom, I discovered the Manic Mommies podcast. They retired in 2014, but un-retired during the pandemic. I discovered the reboot just before they re-retired, and I’m now working my way through the pandemic episodes. Listening to the unfolding pandemic through the episodes and re-living the last year and a half through their eyes is an interesting and sometimes surreal experience, but always laugh-out-loud funny.