Whew! Every school year the first month flies past at an unbelievable pace and just completely knocks me out. I keep thinking that I'm about to catch up and get my head on straight, and then I get overwhelmed again.
So, as always, I'm hanging on until the end of September. And after that I'll hang on through parents' weekend, in mid-October. Plus, there are the fourteen letters of rec for seniors that have to be written in the next three weeks. Yikes!
Clearly three is only one reasonable option: sucking less. Back in January 2009, a colleague and I came up with "suck less" as our new year's resolution, and it was probably the only resolution I ever actually kept! The beauty was that the bar was so low that it was really easy to step over it; no matter how inefficient or lumpish I was being, I could exert a bare minimum of energy in order to suck just a little less.
The colleague with whom I came up with this resolution is the friend who left and taught at another school for a couple of years and is now back at FGS -- so fabulous to have her back! And with her return has come the return of our resolution. She raised it yesterday as we grabbed a moment to sit in the sun after lunch and catch up, both of us confessing just how behind we've been. As we walked back into the school building, she said to me, "You know what we need to do, WN. We need to suck less."
And a resolution was reborn.
I woke up this morning with four sets of assignments all partially graded. Ugh. So I made myself buckle down and got one of them finished in time to return it in class. Hurrah! Yeah, sure, there are three unfinished sets left, and my juniors are turning in their first big essay tomorrow, and I still haven't started those college letters ... but that's not the point. The only relevant point is that I managed to suck a little less this morning than I had sucked a couple of hours earlier. Success!
At this very moment, I could crawl into bed and go to sleep. But it's only 7:30 p.m., and I've already eaten dinner, and I might as well take an hour now to do a load of laundry and to plow through a little more grading and to suck just a tad less.
yay!
Posted by: nicoleandmaggie | September 27, 2013 at 07:02 AM
Very useful for my present situation (which includes a similar variety of undone and half-done tasks). I will adopt the motto; thank you!
Posted by: Contingent Cassandra | September 27, 2013 at 09:25 AM
I *love* "suck less." It has inspired me often over the last 3.5 years...and it's just inspired me again! I'm going to do something on my massive weekend list *right now*, and *then* I can take the nap I'm dreaming of.
Posted by: Heu Mihi | September 27, 2013 at 12:57 PM
Plus I just read Notorious Ph.D.'s "three things" resolution (http://girlscholar.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-return-of-three-things.html): every day do one work-related thing, one cleaning/organization thing, and one errand. I love this and will incorporate it into my sucking less!
Posted by: What Now? | September 28, 2013 at 08:39 AM