This morning my wife and I were walking our three dogs in the park and I was lamenting about how I was a little behind in grading. “Every semester I say to myself, ‘this will be the semester when I look at student work within 48 hours,'” I said to her. “And yet again, this semester I’m still behind in my grading!”
“I don’t get it, Katie! I’ve been teaching for twenty years; I feel like I should be able to make good on my resolution! I know I’m teaching this new Python course, and I may have over indexed my proficiency with Brightspace, but still! I should be better at this!”
And then Katie said, “Dave. There is always a python”.
She is right.
There is always something that will demand my attention. If it isn’t an LMS migration, or a new course, or a new tool to learn, or a new curriculum, or a new textbook, there will always be something. I can’t depend on a smooth semester; that’s the nature of our job. Instead, I need to be realistic in my workflow. I need to plan for “invisible time”. I need to acknowledge that my perpetual optimism for a flawless semester needs to be tempered.
After the walk, I got to thinking about my students. I mean, if after twenty years I still have a misperception of how my time aligns with my responsibilities, I imagine a number of my students – new to college! – probably suffer the same affliction. I do take care to tell my FYE students about the illusion of time. That is, students hot off the heels of high school might feel like they have a ton of time. High school typically consumes thirty to forty hours a week, so when a college schedule has only fifteen hours of class, that’s twenty-five hours of free time! But we all know that isn’t so.
I’ll tell you what – I’m not going to hold my breath for more time for grading work next semester. But I might sit down and have a realistic conversation with my students about time management when I see them next. I’m going to ask them what their python is. And what their python will be next semester. I’m not sure what my python will be, but I know it’s going to be there. And now that I’m expecting it, I’m a bit better off.
Image by blickpixel via Pixabay
