Today I sent off a rough draft of that packet I’ve been working on. It presently stands at about 30 pages, and so I waited a half hour to check for feedback. Nothing yet. Until I hear back it is perfect. Or terrible. We should also allow for the possibility that it is perfectly terrible.
Anyway, they give you this checklist and you attend a whole bunch of meetings and there are more shared documents than you can possibly be expected to keep in your head. All of this in service to this packet, where you are required to write a narrative about your teaching, including student feedback and your response to that, and peer reviews, and your response to that. Then you write a narrative that discusses the service you’ve done in that time, so committee work and projects and things. And then you write a third narrative about your professional development — so research and presentations and every little other thing you can remember. (Take notes throughout is the lesson.) Above these things are some forms detailing classes, and on top of all of that is a fourth narrative, the executive summary, where you finally realize you’ve actually done quite a bit these last few years, and a long nap, a cup of tea and a peppermint sound pretty good right now, in any order you like.
You’re not getting those things, of course, because there are still all of the appendices to append. There’s the batch of student evals, and the peer feedback, and some other forms that have to do with your original job ad, which is hilarious, and then some paperwork that must get signed and some feedback from your previous review …
By the time I’ve spelled all of that out another 30 minutes have passed, and there’s no feedback. So it is perfect.
Anyway, I’ll think about this until March 16th, when it is due, so just two more weeks. But I can have that nap, and tea, and peppermint.
Except I can’t, because there are slide decks for tomorrow’s classes to finalize, and two presentations next week, and a host of meetings for which I must prepare. That master calendar I made last week was a good idea. So far I’ve not only scratched everything off the list, but I’ve gotten to everything scratched off on time. Score one for To Do lists.
I’ve soured on To Do lists. Sounds rebellious, because I am rebellious. There’s an issue with To Do lists, a notion of responsibility, work demanded. The satisfaction of striking things off the list does not outweigh that.
But the real problem is this: I have discovered Want To Do lists. No mystery to that. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Only no one ever tells you about them. Big List doesn’t want you to know about Want To Do lists. But before “they” track me down and bury me under another pile of administrivia, let me speak to you of the truth of this uproarious uprising, this revolutionary revolt: When you start making Want To Do lists you’re doing a powerful thing. I first wrote about this in 2023, apparently, so let’s just consider me an expert.
What you do, right after you’ve made yourself a Want To Do list, is to do one of the things on that list. Do it just for you. The feeling of scratching one of those things off one of those lists, that’s satisfying.
But you have to attend to the Want To Do list. I wonder how many of those I have floating around, still incomplete. At least two, surely.
Well, a few more months weeks, and maybe we can see about some of those thing.
Then, in a few more weeks, it’ll be “Well, in two more months.”
That’s the power of the list. If you just say it, you just say it. The idea floats in your mind and in the air but things out soon enough. But if you write it down — and go stream of consciousness here, rank ordering a Want To Do list is madness — then you can ignore the list. But … But! When you finally get around to it, you have that list in front of you, and you can recall that thing you wanted to do last November. Then you only have to remember why.
And do the thing.
But first, work stuff.
