Not burned out

We’re almost at the halfway point of Spring Term — Midterm “Break” is this coming Monday — and I can honestly say something that I rarely get to say at this point in the academic year:

I am NOT burned out!

I’ve probably more than beaten this point into the ground over my years of blogging here, but Spring Term is the hardest term. Two terms, Winter and Spring, back-to-back with little real break in between, starting right after the first of the year. Each term with its own flurry of events at the end — Comps presentations and oral exams in winter, end of the academic year and graduation stuff in spring. Everyone’s burned through their energy reserves and limping to the end of the year, exhausted and on fumes. And, to rub salt in our wounds, it seems like every other college and university is off for the summer, or will be off shortly, as we’re slogging through another half term of class meetings and projects and exams.

I was worried heading into this term: a shorter than usual spring break, a class I haven’t taught in 9 years with its own associated trauma (and with no grading or TA support), heavy service responsibilities. Plus, getting my two summer research students up to speed, so that they’re ready to start on the last day of finals. I thought I’d be frantically working all the time, dropping balls all over the place.

Now, I’m not naive enough to think that things can’t change on a dime. But so far, my term has actually been….manageable. Teaching on the Tuesday/Thursday schedule means that I have larger chunks of time available on Mondays and Wednesdays, since my meetings tend to fall on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Larger chunks of available time mean that I have time to think and plan. Even though I’m reinventing, or creating outright, most of the materials for my class, I’m not scrambling against the clock to assemble class plans. I have time to grade during the week! I have been doing a bit of work on weekends, but I’m able to time-box it fairly easily, so that it doesn’t feel or become all-consuming. I’ve even been able to keep up my daily reading habit first thing in the morning, at least most days, and am making forward progress on my research. I have a lot on my plate, but I feel calm and energized instead of frantic and desperate.

I also think the fact that we are having an actual spring with actual spring weather may be affecting my rosy outlook. When the sun is shining, everything is greening up, and the temperature is not cycling between “surface of the sun” and “Hoth”, life just seems more pleasant and everything just feels a bit easier.

Perhaps May will hit and everything will go to hell as it tends to do in the second half of Spring Term. But in the meantime, I will take advantage of this rare scenario and actually enjoy my spring.