Spring quarter got off to a hectic, full, and rather overwhelming start. We’re in an assortment of different groups now (I’m in two strategies groups, English and social studies), as well as still meeting as a whole cohort to work on research, curriculum design, assessment, and a whole slew of other things.
After our first week ended, I consulted my 4 syllabi and compiled a single list of homework for the following week. It included over 500 pages of reading from our books in addition to reading a research article and a journal article, 3 papers, writing 2 lesson plans, an assortment of assessment plans, a 15 minute presentation, a research annotation, and a few other small assignments.
The workload definitely made me balk. In other quarters we have started off easy, and worked up gradually to intense workloads. It seems like this quarter we’re starting at the level of intensity that we ended with last quarter! It’s been a hard quarter already, and I’ve had a number of nights with too little sleep, and it was all really starting to stress me out.
I had my start-of-the-quarter meeting with my faculty on Tuesday. We chatted about how the quarter was going so far, and I told her that I was feeling really overwhelmed by the work. We talked for a bit about how I’ve been handling the stress (apparently I don’t show it in class!), and then she told me I should stop working so hard.
Come again?
I can’t say I’ve ever had a teacher tell me to stop working hard. I sat there and just looked at her for a minute, not really sure how to respond. She asked if I thought I could do that, and I think I sputtered out something along the lines of “I’m not sure”. And it’s the truth. I can be a slacker, I did that in high school. But that means me not caring, and that’s about the furthest from where I am now. I care deeply about what I’m learning in this program. I caught a cold after week 1 and still attended every class week 2 because I feel like if I miss a single class I might miss something vital for my future teaching. I’m super engaged in what’s going on in this program, and everything seems relevant and important. I don’t know how to be this engaged and not give it my all.
To which my faculty responded that she was then making it a “faculty order”. She told me to stop reading everything, cut myself more slack on papers and presentations, and overall just stop working so hard. When I explained my fear of missing something crucial, she said that I have a talent for finding patterns and putting pieces together, so even if I did miss something from one assignment, I’d catch it elsewhere.
It was definitely a nice boost for my academic confidence, but in it’s own way it presents me with a new challenge. I have to figure out how to work, but not work hard. As we talked more, my faculty shared another reason for her new order; there’s a lot of work to do as a teacher, and if you spend all your energy focused on the work you wont have any left for when you’re with your students. She said that learning how to prioritize and to work smarter not harder is a skill that will serve us well as teachers.
So, now I’m focusing on not working hard. It’s hard work not working hard, but I think I’ll figure it out.
