Disappearing Act

This semester has been hard. Between the added responsibilities at work and the seemingly infinite amount of start-of-school events, I’ve barely had any time for myself. It seems that I spend all day at work taking care of the sort of things that “just come up” meaning that when I get to leave work and go home, I have to spend my own time doing other things for work – responding to emails, planning ahead, etc. My laundry bag hasn’t been touched in weeks, my kitchen smells kind of funky, and my closet is empty because none of my clothes are on their hangers.

I actually had a lot of posts planned and (mostly) written. I’m not too sure what happened for the second half of September…I know I had a TBT post that I NEEDED to write and I just didn’t get around to it…so I guess I just stopped logging into WordPress? Real logical there, Author. The ironic part is that I wrote a whole post about some anxiety issues I’ve been struggling with…only to see that I never posted it!! (Which might be a good thing because then y’all might have thought I went off the deep end!)

So here’s my game plan: it’s October (yay) which means I am FINALLY eligible for a new phone. I’m going to go buy it tonight which means a good portion of my evening will be spent backing up the old one and setting up the new one. Which means I’ll have time to blog? Hopefully?? And as I mentioned earlier, I have some posts already written (and some wonderful post ideas) so I should be able to get this bad boy back on a normal schedule!

Sorry for the radio silence and I’m hoping to streamline my life a bit more in the coming days!

Side Projects

I’m the sort of person that does better when I’m busy. I’ve always been that way. My first semester at school, I took a normal class load and took on a small part time job. My grades weren’t all that great, so the next semester I cut down on hours and took the minimum amount of credits to be considered full time. I had tons and tons of free time! But somehow, my grades were worse at the end of that semester.

It turned out that more free time did not mean more time spent studying and doing homework. I compared it to how my mom sets the clocks fast but it doesn’t make her rush out of the house. While both of us gave ourselves more time, we kept that extra time in the front of our minds. I used my extra time to hang out with friends. She used it to squeeze more chores in before leaving for work. I did horribly in school, she was late for work.

By my junior year, I was crazy involved in campus activities, working over 35 hours per week, and taking classes that were incredibly challenging. At the end of what seemed like my hardest quarter, I had a 4.0. How could that be possible? With less free time, I had to spend all my free time doing work that needed to be done. If I had a two hour break during the day and had work or club meetings after class, those two hours were all I was going to have to get my homework due the next day done.

Recently work has been very busy and I’ve been getting tons done. Minus hitting the dislike button on Pandora occasionally, I’ve been staying on task. Part of this is due to me not answering every single email as it comes in, but it’s also due to the fact that I just have more to do, just like my junior year of college.

I’ve also found that this applies to my personal life. If I know I have nothing to do after work other than laundry or dishes, I do NOTHING. On weeks that I have lots to do, like cooking for an event or going to Junior League stuff, I play out my after work time so I stay on top of household chores.

Before I got involved in things in my new city to keep me busy after work, I needed to invent projects for me to do. Not projects like rearranging my closets (although I have done that) but longer term projects like crafting and this blog. I’m not the best at sticking with projects so sometimes I surprise myself I’ve kept the blog going this long. If only I could stick with a diet or going to the gym that long…

Too Hard? Too Bad.

At my last job, I had the reputation of being the hard ass in the department. Somebody missed a meeting? Warning letter. A student didn’t complete a sanction on time? Off to judicial. Professors hand out zeros for late assignments all the time. A deadline is a deadline and in this day and age there are thousands of devices that can beep and ding at you to remind you of them. Not to mention good old fashioned pen and paper.

I haven’t gotten much nicer since coming to my current job. At the moment, I’m waiting for TWO students that missed appointments. Yes, the department secretary accidentally double booked me and BOTH missed their appointments. One was an RA. I’m currently trying to thing of a sanction/about to dig through the dusty RA manual to see if there’s one already listed.

So many times my co-workers say things along the lines of, “Well…have you tried calling him/her? Did you send a reminder?” I’m not an alarm clock. I’m not going to call and remind little Susie to come down for her meeting. Some of these students are seniors…they are about to go into the “real world” where I’m pretty sure their bosses won’t be playing mommy and reminding them of every little thing.

I don’t mean to sound like a complete grinch. If people come to me with acceptable reasons, I talk through things with them. I’m even rather soft about things some of my co-workers won’t budge on. For example, one of my RAs came to me three months in advance saying she had to miss a staff meeting because she had a dress rehearsal for her play scheduled. A lot of my co-workers don’t think that’s a good reason to miss a meeting. I knew that the play meant a lot to this RA and was happy that she had let me know FAR in advance. I let my RAs and the students I work with that I would much rather hear about something sooner than later.

I compare this to an experience I had with a professor in undergrad. She was known for being a real you-know-what. My friends told me stories of her giving zeros for assignments not for being a day late, but because the student was five minutes late on the day it was due. When I got my syllabus, I noticed that there was a project due the week of a major sorority event that I was the chairperson for. The syllabus also said the project description wasn’t going to be distributed until later in the semester on a specific day. I spent the next two days working up the nerve to ask to get the assignment description a week early so I could turn in my project a week early but still have the same amount of time as the other students. That seemed fair. When I met with my professor, she said that I would get the assignment the same day as the other students BUT she would give me an extra week to turn in it. She said that she had never had somebody come up to her so far in advance and that’s why she was willing to give me the time to complete it without being stressed out.

Sorry if any of that seemed a bit rant-y. What are some sanctions that you use with students/student workers?