Making a list. Do I have to check it twice?

Some people are list makers. My mother, for example. My partner. The chair of my department. These people are highly organized, efficient, and extremely functional. They are often full of advice on how best to face an overwhelming series of tasks. All of this advice is, I’m sure, helpful and sound, particularly for me as I face the dual goals of cleaning out my current life (university geology professor at the end of a semester), and packing up for my new life (university professor on a seven-month sabbatical). And yet, seven days to departure, I do not have a master list, and any attempts to make one have thus far been half-hearted at best. 

I’m actually terribly excited about this sabbatical, which will take me to New Zealand until July 2011. I’ve been excited about it for years. I have a great fondness for New Zealand, and also some latent nostalgia; I was actually a student there back at the difficult age of 12. It’s a country that hosts a wealth of geologic sights in a relatively small space—and has a cultural and political awareness of environmental issues predicated on mutual survival in that small and isolated space. Since environmental geology is my own educational passion, I can’t imagine a more gratifying place to spend a semester away from home. 

What I am finding difficult at present, though, is tending to the myriad of preparatory details that seem to multiply like bacteria, popping into my head at the oddest moments. (This morning in the middle of teaching an aerobics class I remembered I had to clear out my voicemail account.) The list makers’ solution to this problem is, of course, to make lists. To prioritize. To categorize. Logically, my brain can see the appeal. I can even see the practicality in my own circumstances. Unfortunately, the actual act of putting pen to paper (or, in this digital age, fingertip to keyboard) seems to me as just one more thing to do. Once the list is completed—and really, is a list ever truly complete?—the sheer enormity of the work, all listed together in the same place, is overwhelming enough that it just adds to my general stress. 

I suppose that if one were to make lists all the time, there might arise general lists that preclude the making of new lists, saving even more time. (My mother in fact has sent me a packing list.) I guess, like all good habits, it only comes with practice. It takes, I have heard, at least 3 weeks of good practice to form a new habit. Three weeks is not so insurmountably long; I can make time for three weeks of practice. I’ll put it on a list of things to do—when I get back from New Zealand.

Technobabble

I was reading today about the Millennial Generation--the group of students currently sitting in the desks facing me. I’m finding myself further and further displaced from them—it’s uncomfortable to realize that I no longer think like they do. Or, rather, they no longer think like me. (Perhaps it is wishful thinking that they ever did.)

I remember rebelling against the label “Gen-X” and its less friendly version “slacker”, so it wasn’t a surprise that some of the students at the Senate meeting today were uncomfortable with the label that had been placed upon them. Perhaps it’s part of the strong American cultural streak of independence to refuse to accept stereotypes when applied to oneself. Some didn’t think they had such ready access to money. Others felt they were not always on top of the newest gadget. Curiously enough, most did identify with the more positive generalizations they feel they are generally optimistic about the future, and most did admit that their access to and knowledge about communication technology is far more advanced than that of Generation X. It threw my aptitude into stark relief, as I haven’t ever sent a text message.

The good that came of all these musings was about an hour-long training session into the art of Google Calendar…and several applications that link up to it. I was amazed by all the bells and whistles I can use just to make myself more organized (always welcome in my chaotic lack of order). My tutor was even a fellow GenX-er from Student Affairs who caught on a lot sooner than I had. Turns out all of administration is up on it; it’s just the faculty that are still trying to schedule meetings by shuttling phone calls back and forth (“Are you free at 3?” “No, I could do 2.” “Well, Sarah can’t make it at 2…”). Our idea of making the process more technologically savvy was to hold the conversation by email.

Now that I’m carrying around a netbook wherever I go, and the entire campus is practically wireless, I’m taking hopefully another tentative step toward understanding the existence the students already take for granted. Next semester, I'm going for lessons in optimism for the future.

Reverse culture shock

Writing is definitely not my thing. The new school year starts (yet again), and I find myself reading other people's blogs about other people's lives. It's disheartening to consider that the most obvious conclusion to draw are a) my life is so dull that I need to read about the day-to-day happenings of other lives to entertain myself or b) I dislike my life so much that read the day-to-day happenings of other lives just to escape.

Returning from travel abroad seems to throw the average happenings of life into the mundane. I would say into stark relief, but there just doesn't seem to be anything here stark about it. Of course I 'm not entirely sure I would prefer to travel constantly. For one thing, it turns out to be a somewhat isolated and lonely existence. (But then is life in Tiffin that much more social?) It's also stressful dealing with the unpredictability of travel. At least the stress of tomorrow's lab is stress that I know. Sort of.

It's a new lab (and course) for me this semester, and there are constant little reminders of that First Year Experience (that would be the first year as a professor) as I build lectures day by day, and lab from scratch. The number of hours it takes to feel like I know enough to run a class period. The extra time to make materials for that class period. And walking into class knowing that if I just had one more hour to prepare, it would be so much better. Being older, with 9 years of experience, just means I'm not willing to trade on one more hour of sleep. (That is, if I could sleep over all this jet lag that I'm wading through.) The office next door is inhabited by an actual First Year, who is in fact trading her sleep for that extra hour of work. She's doubly loaded as she works through the last bits of writing for her dissertation--just watching her work is tiring. The comparison makes me feel grossly inefficient.

So I should be working...I have a quiz to grade, a lab exercise to edit, and my resume to update for the latest round of campus evaluations. Instead I'm reading about former students now working in Disneyland, the Czech Republic, or just as far as Fremont, and thinking about the last month I spent in New Zealand and Australia. If I lived there, would I be sitting at a computer, fantasizing about my travels here? (Does anyone ever travel to Tiffin?) Still reading about other people's lives?

I've gotten 4 messages on Facebook about the trip (jealousy, wonder)--and looking over my pictures makes me nostalgic about it: e.g., the view was wonderful; hard to remember how @#$* cold it was on that peak... But washing laundry this morning just doesn't really seem on par with walking around the top of Mt. Stromlo, even if it was freezing. Even LAUNDRY somehow seemed less mundane--when it was in the Blue Mountains.

The big excitement of my day today was...getting an email from someone new. It doesn't quite have the same ring. So the trick of the semester is to find the fun in the day-to-day. And not to stress about how it sounds in a blog. Dramatic turn of phrase, perfect paragraph construction, and immactulate grammar and spelling aren't something I seek out in other peoples' blogs, so I'm not going to demand them of myself.

After all, a blog isn't really for a grade, is it?