Academic Lightning Round

Another one of those Friday evening blog posts from me as I try to process the week. Inspired by the 3min thesis type lightning round talks I attended today at a conference I want to share so many ideas and thoughts which I hope will come out in some sort of cohesive way. 

Today is an important day of remembrance in Canada. I have written blog posts about the importance of December 6th many times on the blog. One ten years ago if you can imagine (because I have been writing this blog a very long time), and another one four years ago. The issue in particular today, which is also why I called this blog lightning round, is that I have had no time to reflect and mourn about this today. I have been in an online conference for the last two days and today I gave a workshop on supporting trust in the work we do.

The workshop I think went well. I gave folk space to share their feelings; I held space for folk to reflect on some prompts around building trust. The conference and the last 2 days have been a bit more difficult for me because I already had many meetings and to dos scheduled in that time so I have had to work my participation and engagement in the conference around those asks.

I know that often we tell folk when you sign up for an online conference make sure to block your calendars, but I don't know about you but this has been harder to do lately, or at least is more difficult to do right now. It is exam time, there are a lot of things to put in place. There are many things that folk want to wrap up in bows before the end of the semester, an end of semester that is actually only 2 weeks away.

So my brain today has been a bit like popcorn, going from thing to thing, checking off things on the list, with lightning round accuracy, to make sure that we can really work towards a sustained time of rest.

We talked a bit about this in reading group last night, that academics are seemingly always working towards some magical time that never exists "all I have to do is make it to the 20th and then I can rest", "all I have to do is just edit this document and then I can rest," "all I have to do is finish these emails and I can go run errands." Except the thing is that magical time never really seems to come, something always ends up in its place. As we said last night it all seems like wishful thinking or a manifestation towards hope. 

So my brain is going on overdrive right now, so much so that I tried to order something to eat for supper because I was too tired to make supper, and I was honestly both over-stimulated and under-whelmed by the options so I just took a baking tray and filled it with tater tots and shoved it in the oven. Is it what I wanted to eat for supper? Nope. Is it what I ate for supper? Yup. 

Those days, those weeks, when you are literally and figuratively bouncing off walls, take so much out of you. I knew that I needed to write this tonight, because this weekend I need to narrow down the to dos to 2 things, actually buy groceries and attempt to decorate the house for the holidays. I know I am so not alone in having this mile a minute brain, lightning round situation happening right now.

The things is with lightning rounds there is no time to process, it is an information dump for later cognitive review. And sometimes those glimmers from what was said reappear later when you least expect it. Maybe when you are grading, maybe when you are buying cheese. But I know what I need, and what so many need right now, is the space to slow down, to process, to feel the feelings and immensity that a day like today brings. To mourn and reflect in ways that maybe our busyness has not allowed, or in ways that your spaces or institutions haven't acknowledged. That's going to be what I do this evening. Give myself some space and grace, and maybe you should too, as we all recover, in our own ways, from academic lightning rounds.