Lost in the Weeds: Monarchs in the Milkweed

At school, for the past several weeks, I have been racing from pillar to post (what an interesting phrase!) getting ready for the upcoming accreditation visit (Monday--gulp!).  I've worried a bit about the effect of it all on the folks who aren't as much a part of the preparations.  I've tried to be present and stop whatever I've been doing when a non-accreditation task needed attention.  But I know that some of the intensity can't help but be felt by my colleagues and the students.

Yesterday one of my colleagues stopped by to say, "I thought you'd want to know that the monarchs have returned to the milkweed plants."  And we had a short conversation about how we hadn't seen the butterflies lately and how great it was to have them return.

It was a small moment, but it reminds me of how people have cared for me during these intense weeks.  There have been numerous conversations where people helped me process conversations, plans, and directives, where we came together to figure out the best approach.  You might argue that those people are just doing their jobs when we put our heads together.  I would argue that they are going above and beyond.

Similarly, the cleaning crew came in and got the accreditation room cleaned up once the drywall repair was done.  Just doing their job?  In one way--but in an important way, their thorough work meant that I had one less task.  A week ago, the decision was made to change the room, which meant that time to get it ready has been running out.

As we've moved through the weeks, I've thought about what these stressful times reveal about the character of us all, both as individuals and as a group.  I've thought about one of the best compliments I've ever gotten, where a grad school friend was watching the PBS show about Pioneer Valley, the show where 21st century people try to live the way pioneers would have in the later decades of the nineteenth century.  She said that she and her spouse agreed that if they had to live this way, they'd want me and my spouse along--we know things that other people don't, and we have a can-do spirit.

Not everyone has a can-do spirit.  In my younger years, I assumed that people were more like me than different from me--and thus, in my younger years, I've been surprised by how people respond to stress.  This year, I'm less surprised.

I've also been thinking about the department chair at a different campus who turned in her letter of resignation shortly after the accreditation visit was announced.  This month has been the kind of month where I understand.

The milkweed is blooming this week--these are plants that have been eaten back to bare stalks several times since I bought them in July.  They are hardy souls.

We are too.