Saturday, June 20, 2009
What I did on my summer vacation
Lately I've been having a lot of conversations that are all very similar. Someone asks me if I'm teaching this summer, and I say no. Then they always ask, "So what are you doing?"
This is partially a natural function of our culture with its obsession with "doing" and defining people by their jobs. The common opening question when meeting someone is "What do you do?" So I get that people are curious.
What I'm doing is not teaching.
What exactly this looks like varies from day to day. If we need something done around the house or something from a store, I try to do that while my wife is at work so that we have more time together. And I have plenty to do to prepare for fall semester. Teaching well is a constant work of adjustment and adaptation, and after my mediocre performance the past couple of years, I'm eager to do better. That'll require some prep work from me. I have a new book for one class, minor cleanup for another, and some significant updating for a third.
That won't take me forty hours a week for three months, though. And so people in our work-obsessed culture don't understand what I'm doing. They want me to have some big project that I'm involved in.
Nope.
I'm not teaching. That is the project. Along the way I may do some writing to think through my teaching. I also will go for walks and play games on the computer and read things I want to read and just sit and think.
But mostly I'm not teaching so that when the school year starts up again, I can be teaching and teaching well. I want to have the reserves I need to act with patience and creativity and love. That requires some healing and rest, along with time to pray and meditate and plan. And some time to just goof off and do whatever I want to do.
Maybe someday I'll be stronger and healthier where I won't find this need all this time to recover, or maybe not. Maybe other teachers don't need this. I do, and I'm not going to apologize or feel guilty about it, though my training by the culture tells me that I should.
It's my off-season, and I'm enjoying it.
This is partially a natural function of our culture with its obsession with "doing" and defining people by their jobs. The common opening question when meeting someone is "What do you do?" So I get that people are curious.
What I'm doing is not teaching.
What exactly this looks like varies from day to day. If we need something done around the house or something from a store, I try to do that while my wife is at work so that we have more time together. And I have plenty to do to prepare for fall semester. Teaching well is a constant work of adjustment and adaptation, and after my mediocre performance the past couple of years, I'm eager to do better. That'll require some prep work from me. I have a new book for one class, minor cleanup for another, and some significant updating for a third.
That won't take me forty hours a week for three months, though. And so people in our work-obsessed culture don't understand what I'm doing. They want me to have some big project that I'm involved in.
Nope.
I'm not teaching. That is the project. Along the way I may do some writing to think through my teaching. I also will go for walks and play games on the computer and read things I want to read and just sit and think.
But mostly I'm not teaching so that when the school year starts up again, I can be teaching and teaching well. I want to have the reserves I need to act with patience and creativity and love. That requires some healing and rest, along with time to pray and meditate and plan. And some time to just goof off and do whatever I want to do.
Maybe someday I'll be stronger and healthier where I won't find this need all this time to recover, or maybe not. Maybe other teachers don't need this. I do, and I'm not going to apologize or feel guilty about it, though my training by the culture tells me that I should.
It's my off-season, and I'm enjoying it.
