I really don’t like being told what to do.
And my job largely accommodates that. Being a college prof, I’m largely left alone to do what I wish within my tiny domains: creating classes, teaching them, and creating in general within a slow-moving bureaucracy.
Still, April and May are real “come to Jesus” moments for me.
I suspect they are for most teachers. At this point, we’re getting nearly burnt out. We’ve handled lots of apathetic people who are trying to game us or at least do the absolute minimum while testing our limits, repeatedly, day after day, for months.
Even at the undergraduate level, we deal with various classroom management problems, such as cheating, lying, multitasking during class (phones!!!), and students telling us that we don’t know what we are doing or even that we are betraying the principles of the university, all to get an extra .001% of an overall grade.
We may have also dealt with administrative bureaucracies that seem as if they don’t care about our plight and scenarios. Many schools — higher education in general — seem to care a lot about their extra-curriculars before their curriculars. They are getting into the sports-management business, real-estate business, and government-grant acquisition business, as a priority over genuine education, which requires different models than the common credentialization one.
So it’s now the spring, where I am feeling all of that rather heavily. It’s this time of year when I ask myself: “do I want to really come back or not?”
It’s been a long nine months in which I haven’t had a lot of mental stimulation, the kind that only comes from reading tough, rich books or watching complex fare.
To get perspective on my work, I make a summer to-do list. Here it is.
I’ll go through my chicken scratches with you in a little bit. First, there are two main reasons why I do this.
To have a task list to accomplish something that has multiple purposes, and not just fritter away my limited freer time
To show me what I “get” to do, as about 25% of my job that I get paid for is to do the above.
I’d reckon that a great number of people would do something extreme to do what I put onto the list above for 25% of their job. From my point of view, it looks fantastic.
I meet a lot of people in other careers who are severely burnt out or at least going through the motions. And so maybe they would prefer my work? That’s even if they get paid a prof’s salary, which —maybe you don’t know — is about our par with your average experienced fast-food manager’s or your experienced factory worker at the local window factory.
Also, you should know that I’m far from a “task” or “goal” oriented person. So the task list above can be, during the summer, a kind of annoyance that I ignore.
No, I’m a skills-oriented person — I want to do things that would build new skills or build up/reinforce ones I have. That means nearly everything on the list above accomplishes two, if not three or four, different things for me.
Probably then I need to add in something truly that has nothing to do with anything.
Because I strongly believe in doing things for the sake of doing them, and not because they are a means to the end. This is totally true in the realm of education.
Still, why can’t I do something for its own sake *and* do something that also accomplishes three other things at once?
Anyway, the “do things for the sake of doing them” is built into our summer. We, our family, have one planned vacation, a few disc-golf tournaments, and it’s likely I’ll run into about ten other fascinating things that steal my attention. The list, I hope, keeps my attention from going down some of those paths, because I really do need to do some of these things.
Thus we have the list on the left, the “need to do” section. If I don’t do those, not only will I feel behind, I will actually be behind and remain in big trouble once the school year comes back in September.
The top section reads as follows, and I’ll add two other tasks that I already know I will do:
watch one film a day, 70% of which are the 1990s project
review any major new release film, on video and in writing
read Sophocles
read Ovid
read SF (science fiction) stuff
make 24 videos
That all means that, for the middle three that regard reading, I need to read for higher-level classes I am teaching.
This will be the first time I’ve used Sophocles’ Theban plays in my “World Literature 1” class in the fall, so I’ll need to bone up. I figure that intense reading of those will bolster movie-watching, too, so this task, like all the others, is doing two things at once.
“Read Ovid” means that I need to re-read Ovid, whom I’ve taught but don’t thoroughly know well enough to feel comfortable. Same comment as Sophocles above.
“Read SF stuff” is about a newer, gen-ed, 300-level science-fiction class I’m teaching. I’ve read a substantial amount of science-fiction, but it’s time to read a lot more.
“Make 24 videos” means that I need to make 24 more videos to cover August through January 2025. That way, when the school year starts, I don’t feel any pressure to make Youtube videos each week. (Check that — I just finished one and uploaded it, so it’s “make 23 videos.)
Now, I know that I won’t get to half of the overall task list. That’s *always* happened. This year’s task-list is much shorter than previous years, when I could complete no more than 25% of the list and felt terrible for next getting to all the items I wanted to get to.
That’s also why I separated it into “need to do” and “could do.” The right side is changeable if need be.
To interpret the list properly, you should know I have ongoing summer projects — not really projects but bibliographic tasks I am trying to accomplish. File these under “doing something for its own sake.”
Read one Henry James book. Because he’s dense and long, I can’t get to James during the school year at all. So I’m working through his bibliography chronologically, slowly. This one is going to take me until I’m in my mid-60s!
Read two Roth books. That’s Philip Roth. Another attempt to complete a bibliography of an author.
read “Process and Reality.” This is my attempt to get in touch better with 20th century philosophy, which helps with nearly all of my classes, including film studies. I am also teaching a Literary Criticism class for the first time next spring, so anything helps.
play “Starfield.” This is my attempt to play through massive, major-release videogames, one per summer. It’s convenient that “Starfield” syncs up with the science-fiction class, otherwise I’d put “Elden Ring” here.
Then there are the Youtube-related tasks:
improve website. My joshmatthews.org is run by one person, me, and I really need to do a thousand hours of work on it. If I can do twenty, that will help.
create studio. That means create a studio in my house. Currently, it’s in my university office. That has some risky to it — what if they decide to move my office on short notice? The great problem here is making a studio is going to be a major expense that I may or may not undertake, plus a ton of headaches related to remodeling and moving stuff around.
make commercial. This is almost a lark — do I want to start advertising or not? If so, I’ll do this.
There’s the exercise-oriented tasks, involving watching TV shows:
“Finish Succession”
“Watch Fallout TV show”
“True Detective, season 3”
For exercise, I now have a walking treadmill, as I hate all exercise that’s not playing a sport. But the treadmill has helped. I walk 3-4 miles per day, and I do so while watching something. Again, we are back to the principle of accomplishing two or more things with one task.
And then there’s the bottom one on the right side:
Colonoscopy
I’m in my 45th year of life, and they tell me I need to get one because the screening requirements were recently lowered to age 45. Here we go!
Now, I did *not* write anything down on the summer tasklist that’s family-related. That would be a separate list. These days, I am strictly keeping my work tasks and family tasks separate.
That means, unless I’m working on Youtube or reading books, I am not working at home at all. I’m not looking at my work email on my phone. I’m not taking work-related calls outside work hours.
You have no idea how much stress has gone away since I implemented the paragraph above about two months ago. No more 9pm desperate emails to worry about!
The giant question is: is anything on this task list fun?
The answer is a definitive “yes.” And do you know what that does? It helps confirm various life-decisions, including putting up with all that I put up with during the school year!
Maybe being a prof is, thus, better than being a factory worker!
There is a high price to be paid to being a bookish intellectual type. The return on that price is, in a major way, the summer.
So what’s on your task list, for your work, for yourself personally, or for other life pursuits?
Regarding colonoscopies: Now THAT is a certain point of view. Love that it’s in the “could do” column. Brings to mind the famous T-bone quote from Tommy Boy. Better to take the butcher’s word for it! 🐮🙈