The Push and Pull of Academe

Happy New Year, folks! I was only going to write my first blog of the year next Sunday, but I have been sitting here this weekend thinking I should write something because the semesters seem well underway in a lot of places. Yet I was not sure what to write about and still felt compelled to do so, and I realized that was the thing I should write about- that push and pull that is so innate in academic spaces.

One thing I discovered coming back to my unmonitored inbox after the winter break was that there were way fewer "this needs to be responded to right now at this moment" emails than usual. I am a big fan of acknowledging that folk need to work at their own pace or in ways that feel meaningful to them. So that means that maybe the winter break is when folk do a lot of catching up, but we also need to be respectful of the fact that for many (like me) winter break is actually a break, and a really needed one. I always love emails that have that little disclaimer at the end that says something like "my schedule is not your schedule so if you are getting this at 2am please do not feel you need to respond at 2am."

And I know many folk will say that sending an email at 2am or during winter break asking for a thing does in fact add pressure to respond even if the email is filled with "not urgent" "please respond later." Because I am certainly one of those people that when an email pops up I will instantly and mentally add it to my to do list and it starts taking up real estate in my processing. This is why it is great that you can set up a thing on emails and messages to have them sent at a certain time instead so that even if you are doing it in the past they will receive it in the future.

This push and pull is very real in eduspace. Something I have been thinking about a lot over the last few weeks is boundaries and how do we set healthy ones that feel meaningful without others feeling like they are not supported when they need support. There's a lot of shoulds in academe, instead of coulds and woulds, and all of those are very different. For example, my brain said I should write a blog because the semester has started, instead of I could write a blog if my bodymind is up for it. Academe would have liked me to believe that I should have worked on the 3 articles/chapters I have on the go right now over break. But I didn't, because in reality I could have worked on them, but I chose not to and to prioritize reading a bunch of books I wanted to read and writing some poetry instead.

This also plays itself out when doing course prep and it really depends on how long you have been teaching for or if this is a new course prep. When one is early in their career there is this push to have the totality of the course mapped out, all 15 weeks, with shiny slide decks, links and lesson plans, and complete assignment instructions and rubrics done before the first day of class. This seems like a way to prevent something one may have not expected to happen. But the reality is that kind of prep requires the kind of time and space that folk simply do not have.

As you go on in your teaching career you start doing that thing were folk are like as long as you keep 2 weeks ahead of the course schedule you are fine. And some will shake their heads at this and say that needs to be more planned out than that. But to this I say, where does the student experience play itself out in that prep? If the push is to finalize things in perfect perfection before one even meets a student for the first time, where is the opportunity for their voices and interests? How do the learners get to pull on the strings of the course a bit and make it malleable to their lived experiences?

Sometimes we get really stuck in that push and pull. The shoulds and the coulds. Sometimes there are different pressures that are motivating those pushes and pulls- accessibility, bodymind needs, flexibility for life responsibilities - and nothing in the big S HigherEd Systems leaves time and space for that. So we individually navigate those pushes and pulls, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so. 

As I write this blog in the back of my mind is the push of giving myself space to rethink an assignment I have in my class that I want to tweak. But at the same time is the pull of wanting to spend time in the kitchen and make myself something nice for brunch. What that will probably look like in practice is me chopping something and thinking at the same time when some "a ha!" moment about the assignment will appear out of the ether and I will scribble something on a page, or maybe instead what will appear is a word or a line of verse that will have to be written down quickly before it disappears. Can we have more space for this kind of thing? Random words over chopped green onions; student voice into assignment design. 

I hope this semester is what it needs to be for you, and not what others tell you it needs to be. May we all find balance and fulcrums of joy.