Measuring Importance

I'm sure we're almost all familiar with the Urgent versus Important paradigm that has helped numerous professionals and students manage their time and energy. It's a very useful tool, and one that I rely on very heavily during the fall and spring terms.

However, I find it isn't as helpful when considering my summer activities, or my professional trajectory, in general. Over the summer, when there are no class or committee meetings to prepare for, everything is important and almost nothing is urgent. Similarly, when I look at the time I have each semester or each year to spend on research projects and writing, the urgent items (grading, answering e-mail) is already scheduled. The problem I run into is choosing between important things.

I ran into this same problem this week, when I took some time (during Spring Break, grumble grumble) to figure out my goals and commitments for the summer. I needed a way to distinguish between what I absolutely had to accomplish, what I wanted to make progress on, and what I wanted to dream about should I have the time. I needed to think through what my job requires me to do (preparing classes, setting up initiatives for my department) and what is good for me to do (attend conferences, stay up-to-date on journals, write). Basically, I needed to add a third dimension to the urgent-important matrix.

Here's what I came up with:

This chart makes use of two axes that separately evaluate whether a project is important for my job (i.e., conducting the business of my classes, department, university) or is important for me (i.e., promoting my own development and professional impact). So, for example, in "Essential" I have preparing my fall courses and developing my department's assessment plan. In "Need to Make Progress" I have finding a grant for my department to apply to. In "Need to Pursue," I have learning some cosmology. In "Nice to Do," I have working on the second edition of my aviation physics textbook.

Will this schema work? We'll have to see how the summer goes...

Pray for us... on October 15

So glad to get back to the blogosphere! As the fall semester ramps up (mine starts this week), I'm asking for readers to pray for Christian faculty, and faculty & teachers in general... on October 15.

Why October 15? Well, let's take a journey...

I once asked for prayer for effective first impressions for the sake of the gospel just before the semester began. I might ask for the same thing this semester, but since then, I've come to realize two things...

1. While many Christians will pray for professors & teachers at the beginning of the semester, there's at least a small sentiment among non-academics that says something like, "Pray for them? Didn't they just have the entire summer/all of December off?" (Granted, anyone who has talked to me over the last four months knows I didn't have an easygoing summer after being asked by my university to serve as Blackboard administrator.) I'm not going to address the issues of nine-month versus twelve-month contracts and hourly pay versus salary and limited classroom access and the need to catch up on scholarly expectations that impact teachers' and professors' lives, but I will acknowledge that, to an outsider, it probably does seem a little odd for us to feel such a weighty need after summer, and that we typically do come at the beginning of the academic year with renewed energy.

2. While the beginning of the year is important, as I mentioned above, we do generally come at it with a relatively high level of energy. And here's the second thing I realized: The other time (besides the beginning) that Christians typically call for prayer for teachers & professors is at the end of the semester or academic year. "Lord, help them to finish well," I've heard more than one pastor/elder pray. This most recent year, though, it occurred to me, "I started finishing around the middle of the semester. That's when I needed prayer and support."

The middle of the semester is when the despair sets in, when you stare down the gaping chasm of how ineffective you've been this semester (prompted by mid-term grades, students asking the same questions every week, students asking no questions every week, receiving last semester's course evaluations, realizing that you haven't budged on that to-do list on your board while tenure evaluation creeps closer), leading to the existential crisis of wondering if this pursuit is worth spending your life on. The situation never really is as bad as you feel, but that feeling (as my wife likes to remind me) is real. The end of the semester actually has a natural burst of energy thanks to the relief of escaping that chasm once more, such that the low point in motivation and energy and faith is somewhere in the middle.

So, this semester, I'm asking you to pray for teachers & professors... on October 15. If you want to pray for them now, that's super! But around about October 15 is when we'll need it in a very poignant way. So, go ahead and open your calendar, create a new appointment, set the date for October 15 (If you make it an all day event, be sure to set the reminder for a non-integer number of days, so it won't ding at midnight.), and maybe even paste in the link to this article.

And if you feel like it, maybe set aside some time that day to take out a teacher or professor you know (whom you probably won't have seen very often when October 15 rolls around) for lunch or dinner or coffee. (Breakfast is great, too, but be prepared to wake up early...) There's a major criticism of prayer these days that those who believe in prayer don't actually do anything to help the situation they're praying about. (I have a good deal of empathy for this criticism, but that's another topic for another day.) If you're praying for teachers & faculty to be encouraged and energized, offering time with a friend outside the academic world is a great way to be an answer to your own prayer request.

Well, I need to go open my calendar to October 15...

The Real Academic Calendar

This was forwarded to me by a colleague. Very true!

The Real Academic Calendar



By Laurie Fendrich


I just learned from my very smart colleague, Neil Donahue, associate dean of Hofstra’s Honors College, that I’ve been stupidly following the wrong academic calendar in setting up my spring courses. I was structuring the content of my courses around our two-day spring break, our long spring vacation, our study days and the examination schedule. How foolish could I have been? Turns out the real academic calendar follows the successive philosophical stages through which all students necessarily progress.


For the reader’s benefit, I’ve added my own words of explanation to Neil’s academic calendar and have forwarded this to the provost’s office. I’m confident that by next spring our academic calendar will be organized the right way, and look like this:


Idealism


Early January. Because students don’t have very many claims on their attention, it’s good to send out reading assignments even before school begins.


Optimism


February. Students love all their courses, and are gung-ho about doing well. There’s no reason they can’t earn a grade of “A” in just about every course. This is the time when smart professors really pile on the work.


Realism


March. Students have come to terms with the fact that it’s going to be darn hard to get all those “A’s” they originally thought would just fall in their laps. The moment calls for triage: It’s time to figure out whether to drop calculus or the course in the history of mirrors. Also, students need more sleep than they’re getting, and the way to fix that is to sleep through the first half of the early morning class.


Pessimism


April. It’s too late. Whole lives are doomed. Students will never get into law school with the grades you, the vile, wretched, cruel-hearted professor, have been unfairly giving out.


Cynicism


May. The semester ends. Professors never gave students a chance, or considered how hard they tried. The world is stacked against them. What does it matter? There are no jobs out there anyway.


Sybaritism


June. Whatever happened in the past is over and done with. Time to forget everything and party like hell.


NOTE: Summer inevitably passes. With fall, the Sisyphean climb resumes.