Last Day of Winter Break

Today is the last day of winter break, although it will be a slow re-entry back to my teaching life schedule at Spartanburg Methodist College.  

Tomorrow we have a day of faculty meetings and workshops--and breakfast and lunch!  The world is divided into two types of people, those who understand why I am so thrilled to have breakfast and lunch that the school provides and those who don't see it as a big deal.  I spent years of administrator life arguing that if we required faculty to be on campus all day, we should provide them food, snacks at the very least.  If we weren't going to do that, we would need to give them a real lunch break, at least 2 hours, if we thought they'd all go out and get their own lunch nearby.  Most of my fellow administrators, almost all of them not exactly pro-faculty, thought I was unreasonable:  these faculty should be grateful to have jobs at all!

Unlike some years in the now more distant past, I don't mind going in for a day of meetings and workshops.  On Friday, we have a morning of meetings.  Again, it's fine with me.  It would be even more fine if my commute was shorter, but that's on me.

This morning, I was a bit gobsmacked by realizing how long it's been since I've been a full-time faculty member returning from winter break:  that would be early January of 2007.  After that, I was an administrator, and I would find out what it meant, truly meant, not to have had enough time away.

Today I'll continue getting ready to go back to my full-time schedule:  some organizing, some laundry, some syllabi creation.  I also need to work on my faculty annual report, but I'll do that after getting syllabi for Tuesday classes ready.

It's strange to think how some of these requirements, like the annual faculty review form, used to drive me crazy, but now I'm not disturbed at all.  Part of it is that I'm older, and I understand that much of the world works this way, with some annual review and assessment as part of ongoing full-time employment.  Part of it is that I've worked at places where it was all performative and no one ever looked at these laborious forms; at my current job, we get extensive written feedback on our annual reports, from everyone from our department chair to the provost.  The provost has a face to face meeting with every full-time faculty, which I've never experienced in any work setting I've ever had.

While I never want to go back to dealing with assessment and accrediting the way I did as an administrator, that experience, too, helps me understand why we need to do some of the things we do as a department and a school.  I am happy to pitch in.

And to be honest, these requirements don't take much from me.  The annual report will take an hour or two to write, but the writing comes naturally to me.  The faculty workshops always give me a nugget or two--or more--that I can use.

Part of it, too, is that I have had a generous break.  I left campus for Thanksgiving and haven't been back.  That week after Thanksgiving, I worked remotely so it felt like the first week of winter break, even though it really wasn't.

Yesterday my spouse asked me if I was looking forward to going back to work.  I said that I wasn't dreading it, the way I had in past years--and that is a gift.  I'm happy to be able to recognize it for the gift that it is.