One of the things that I love about my job is that there are so many new beginnings. It is rarely boring, and even the most trying semester is temporary. The tradeoff, though, is that new beginnings bring their own stresses. There's time-sensitive stuff to figure out. Sometimes I tell myself (no, always I tell myself) that maybe it will be better this time around now that I have more experience. Experience. however, has not taught me how to bend the space-time continuum to my will.
Next week should be calmer. Tomorrow is the last day of week #1.
This week I was thinking about how I sometimes struggle to work ahead. I will assign myself the task of planning out two weeks' worth of classes for a new prep, but then I will not complete the task. I'll make a start, I'll make thoughtful faces at the computer screen, I'll flip through a textbook, I'll google a half-remembered quote that might be illustrative. So far so normal, I think -- prepping new classes requires creativity and creative processes tend to be slow and non-linear. The thing I'd like to work on, though, is the perfectionism that trips me up.
I say to myself, "I'd better keep working on this. I'll finalize it later. It needs more attention. I won't post it quite yet." It's often the time pressure of a deadline that compels me to say, "This is good enough and I will stop now," because I can't argue with the clock (see above re: continued inability to warp the space-time continuum). I want to work on the skill of saying, "This is good enough and I will stop now," and giving myself the peace of mind that comes with being done ahead of schedule.
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