Today is the first day since 2015 that I haven't kicked off the fall semester with an 8:00 class. It's the first August since 2010 that I haven't been teaching at all. It's weird. But in a good way.
Instead I sat down at 8:02 and revised a manuscript for two uninterrupted hours, and then I took an hour to unfog my brain. I walked around the neighborhood with Stella and we read a chapter of Anne of Avonlea aloud together. Then I sat down for ninety uninterrupted minutes and worked on a different manuscript, the one with the highest DDQ (Dread and Dissatisfaction Quotient). I am pleased with those 3.5 hours, in which I did not open up a single distracting tab or even peek at my phone.
Sabbatical is supposed to be a time to focus on research, and I have plenty of research goals. But I am also going to try to put in a little time each workday to prep for spring semester teaching. I will be teaching one of my classes for the first time, and all three of the classes I'm teaching will be online. Today I opened up Evernote and the materials that another instructor shared with me and wallowed in the I-don't-wannas for a few minutes. Unexpectedly, giving myself permission to indulge in a brief wallow uncorked a flood of ideas about what I do want to do with this class.
We're living in this weird era where people from across the political spectrum complain about higher ed. It's too expensive, it's too progressive, it's inhabited by people who only wanted to teach because they couldn't get real jobs, blah blah blah. In that landscape, sabbaticals are sometimes regarded suspiciously, as if they're extended paid vacations for people who ought to have been working harder in the first place. I am trying to be cognizant of the privilege and diligent about protecting the time.
Back in the spring one of the kids made me a pipe cleaner crown to wear when I was working on something that required particular concentration, because sometimes scowling at the laptop screen means I'm thinking very hard about a difficult question and sometimes scowling at the laptop screen means I'm scrolling through a particularly scowl-inducing swath of Twitter. When the crown is on, no one is supposed to interrupt me. It's been pretty useful. Maybe I will ask them to decorate it for me: Jamie Gladly, Sabbatical Queen.
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