The Toughest Transition of the Year

I'm about three weeks late on this post, but I still think it's worth writing about.  After all, it fits with the point of this post.

To me, the late May/early June part of the academic calendar presents the toughest transition of the year for us academic types, as we have to transition from well-defined structure to complete autonomous free-for-all.

Let me explain.  During the school year, as long as we're not on some kind of teaching leave, our lives have relatively little flexibility in a very important way -- at certain set hours on certain set days, we have to be in class teaching.  In order to do that, we have to be prepared by a certain time on those certain set days.  Sure, we can cancel or re-schedule a class here and there, but for the most part, our lives revolve around those set times on those set days.  We have no choice but to be ready to talk with and teach somewhere between 10 and 100 students.

There are other things too that are somewhat out of our control, such as faculty and committee meetings, office hours, and final grading deadlines  We have a bit more flexibility with those, but they still clog our calendars.  To get other work done, we have to work around these commitments.

But once grading is done, the switch is flipped and our lives are the complete opposite (at least, for those of us not teaching in the summer).  Suddenly, there's nothing on our schedule that is out of our control.  Our time is completely ours.  Sure, we may have writing deadlines we've set for ourselves, but they're our deadlines.  We don't have to be in front of a class of students ready to teach at 10am on Monday.

Instead, we get to our offices and have almost complete autonomy and complete freedom.  It's a wonderful part of the job.  Obviously.  But, I find it to be a really tough transition to make.  Sure, it's a relief and an incredibly welcome time of year. However, it takes me time to get into a productive rhythm.  In the beginning, the freedom creates almost too much space to fill, and it becomes very easy to fill that space very unproductively.

For those on the outside looking in, don't take this the wrong way.  This is a luxury that we have as professors, something most other professions don't have.  It's certainly something that most of us absolutely love about our jobs.  But, it also presents the "turn on the dime" problem, the transition from the inflexible schedule of the school year to the complete openness of the break.

As much as, five years into this profession, I now fully anticipate this transition, I know I still haven't mastered it well.  (After all, I intended to write this blog post three weeks ago.) Have you?

Comments

[Hanah]

I completely agree! I need routine and structure. I can create it for myself, but it takes me at least a few weeks to start up. It's very disorienting to have the school year routine removed so abruptly. Plus, there's the thought that you can do all those fun things now that you've been putting off, and they take up more time than you expect.

[Orin Kerr]

If these are our problems, life is sweet indeed.

On the merits, though, every person needs to figure out the balance they want to strike between further productivity and much-needed R&R. Given that, it's hard to know what it means to "master" the transition: For some that will mean taking a month off, and for others that will mean working just as hard as before. It all depends on what balance you want to strike.

[AnonProf]

My recommendation, for what it's worth: set definite schedules for yourself or at least a clear set of tasks for the day (e.g. writing, researching, preparing for next semester's class). Lay out plans that are realistic but err on the side of the impossible, and then the transition into summer productivity will be more smooth.