Spring is here and I’m ready for it. The first few months of 2024 have been intense, with lots of travel and transitions. The transitions began in the first week of January with the start of my three-week intensive course, “Mindfulness and Self-Care in the Helping Professions.” Within the first month of the year, I’d started and ended one academic term and launched another. That might not sound like much of a transition, since it happens every year and is an expected part of my job. But I’ve come to recognize that all beginnings and endings take energy, even when they happen on a predictable schedule, even when they are good beginnings and endings.
Even when I’ve taught a class multiple times, there’s a lot of start-up work. Some of the start-up is mechanical: revising the syllabus and lesson plans based upon the experience of the last time I offered the course, reviewing and reacquainting myself with course materials, updating syllabus dates and details, setting up the course website on the institution’s learning management system, creating the spreadsheet for my attendance log and gradebook, etc.
Other tasks are more relational and require a lot of emotional and spiritual energy: learning the names of new students, getting to know this group of students as a collective, figuring out what students are bringing into the semester and adapting, managing tensions between students (including those that are carryovers from their previous encounters with one another), facilitating a transformative learning space, and guiding them through the cognitive, emotional, and theological dissonance that often accompany new learning.
Closing the term brings its own set of challenges. There are time pressures around grading and graduation deadlines. The office hours that have been unused all semester are suddenly filled by students who are anxious over grades and over their careers. There’s the mad scramble to arrange meetings with colleagues and the list of tasks to be completed before the academic year ends. There’s my low-but-still-present concern about student evaluations and my fervent desire to bring this semester to a close so that I can reclaim my time for writing, reading, and resting.
It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve taught a course and if every student is one whom I already know. Each course like launching and landing a rocket; both are high-stakes. Prior to launch, every part of that rocket has to be inspected and some parts require updating or rebuilding. You might have to make changes to meet the needs of the crew, which are different from the needs of the last one. Landing brings its own set of issues, especially pressures around time, debriefing, and leaving things in a good state for the next launch.
I’m also wrapping up a busy period of travel and speaking. Last week I made my first trip to the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing. I had the privilege of speaking at the university chapel service and doing a festival talk on the importance of Black women’s voices in pointing the way toward liberation and healing. The highlight, though, was doing so live recording of the Truth’s Table podcast with Ekemini Uwan and Dr. Christina Edmondson. The other highlight was breaking bread with writer/speaker friends like Dr. Natasha Sistrunk Robinson and Dr. Jemar Tisby (follow him on Substack). Buy their books!
Travel tends to be very disruptive to my self-care rhythms. This year I made a promise to myself that I would maintain my exercise and nutrition habits even when away from home. For years now, I’ve packed a portable yoga mat and strap in my suitcase, but they’ve often gone unused. This year, I’ve used them consistently while traveling. And I’ve added a set of resistance bands so that I can do my strength training on the road. It’s a personal point of pride to say that I’ve exercised in six states this year. The trip to Calvin was no exception. I did strength training, yoga, and got plenty of cardio. In fact, I closed all three rings on my Apple Watch everyday of the trip!
Despite that progress, I’m ready to ease into the rhythms of summer. My next book project is starting to bubble up and I need space and time to dream. That, for me, requires personal daily rhythms of meditation, exercise, reading, and writing, rhythms that are hard to maintain under the constant pressure of classes and speaking. One of the oddities about academia is that we are expected to write but we aren’t given time for it. Summer is when faculty do the work required for tenure and promotion.
I really dislike cleaning, but spring cleaning for me is about clearing the way to reclaim my time: my time for meditation and exercise; my time for hanging out with family at the grill and with neighbors at the pool; my time for doing the work that is most meaningful to me. So over the next month, I’ll be putting things back in their proper places, discarding what I no longer need, and dusting off some things that have been neglected. Pretty soon the sign is going up on my schedule and my to-do list: “closed for cleaning.”
While I'm glad you'll get some time for "spring cleaning" soon - I am very much looking forward to hearing you speak at the ACPE Conference in Pittsburgh next month. And if it helps you to have a yoga buddy or gym partner, while you're there, let me know!