Academic Gratitude

It is the Thanksgiving long weekend in Canada which means I had 3 days to fill instead of the usual 2. I spent my Saturday doing what I usually do on Saturdays which is nothing. Well at least nothing remotely work related. I decided more than a year or so ago that I needed to give myself at least one day a week where I was not doing all of the things and I decided that that day should ideally be Saturday. This means that even when I was teaching, had stacks of grading, needed to do prep, conference papers to write, or even an article- all of that waits until Sunday. My rationale behind this is that if I give myself space to just think or heaven forbid relax that I will be a more productive person come Sunday. Sometimes this works like a charm, sometimes this backfires a bit. I usually avoid the ghost of grad school past by reading a book for pleasure on Saturdays. I’ve talked a fair bit on this blog about this ghost of grad school past, it’s the feeling produced by “not doing anything” and it is a nice mixture of guilt and anxiety.

This Saturday was different, I actually didn’t have a book in the house I wanted to read so I literally did nothing. Yup a day of nothing. The only things I did was go to the farmer's market, go vote, and make a nice Thanksgiving meal for myself. That’s it. Not an academic task in sight. And it felt-weird. Really weird. Like what is this copious amount of thinking I am doing weird. I spent most of the day thinking about the projects that I am working on and structuring them in my head so that I could reflect on gaps or needs. I can’t remember the last time I had a day where I didn’t even read a book. I didn’t even listen to a podcast.

However, this day of deep reflection and nothingness really had the intended effect because yesterday I sat and worked on a project for 11 hours straight. The result of this was also that when I decided at 9pm that it was time to call it a day my brain was so revved up that I listened to 4 podcasts and a watched a Netflix documentary on the Women’s March so that I could get to a place of rest.

Now we are Monday and I still have a whole day. Because of how productive I was yesterday I am starting today with a sense of hope and a sense of gratitude because ‘tis the season. I have to work on a different project this afternoon but this morning I am again in deep reflection about the privilege of having the space and time to be productive. I am thinking about all I have done this year but more specifically all I have done since late May and I realize that none of the work I have done could have happened if I didn’t have the space and time to think and to do the work. The book reviews, the blog posts, the conference papers, the encyclopedia entry, the articles, the monograph I am working on, none of it would have happened. 2019 is shaping up to be my most academically productive ever and this fills me with gratitude.

My current role at work is wonderfully rewarding and I have the opportunity to interact with faculty, graduate students, and staff to discuss pedagogy and SoTL. I engage with research and ideas daily, ideas that in turn inform my own research and interests. I know that having a position that is so reciprocal in nature and that also supports your passion (for me that’s inclusive, accessible pedagogy) is rare and I am thankful.

This gratitude is also extended to the people in my life who truly get my academic nature and support me and my work. The people that I am closest to have mostly all came into my life because of academia. One of my best friends lives in Alabama and I met her at a conference at Yale in 2007. Another dear close friend I met at work at a college and by twists of fate we are colleagues again- having someone who understands your academic history and work that you do now is invaluable.

I am also grateful for all the students I have met since I started teaching in Higher Ed in 2005- all 2309 of them says “Ye Olde Spreadsheet of Students,” which is what I have named the Excel spreadsheet on my computer that keeps a numerical tally of the number of students I have taught. For those in STEM that may not seem like a lot but for English it is. I am still in touch with a lot of them, social media makes this much easier, and in fact I am meeting a student I taught in 2017 next week to discuss grad school applications.

There are depths to my academic gratitude. I am of course grateful for non-academic things as well, good food, shelter, the new Tegan and Sara album- but my gratitude for academia always seems so central because it informs so much of who I am as a person. I hope that you all had an opportunity to pause this weekend, if only for a little while, and to reflect on all the people and ideas that bring you happiness.