All week I've been extremely busy, and I was looking at today as just another long list of chores. While I didn't have classes to teach or online essays to score, I had my WW weigh-in at 9:00, my volunteer commitment from 10:00-12:30, and a department meeting from 2:00-3:30. None of these tasks was mandatory; I could have skipped any or all. I definintely wanted to do my weigh-in; even though I couldn't stay for the meeting, as that wouldn't have left me enough time to get to my volunteer activity, I wanted to see where the scale was. On the way to my volunteer place, I ran through a dozen excuses for why I couldn't go, even as I kept driving toward the location. I hadn't been able to help for many months, and I was actually excited to get back to it, but I wasn't sure I'd find the new location, I wasn't dressed very professionally, and the list went on and on. But I did it, and it was wonderful. On the way back from that, my son called and I talked to him for a while; my plan had been to come home and grade for an hour or so before heading up to the near-by campus for the meeting. He seemed to need to talk, so I set aside grading and focused on our conversation. That left me just enough time to eat a banana and drink a glass of milk before running out for the meeting.
Now here's why, even though these activities took up nearly my entire day and were optional, I'm glad I did every one of them. At my weigh-in, I was down two-and-a-half pounds! That's double my loss in any previous week since I started the program. I had been really discouraged about sticking to the plan so well and not seeing results. Today I finally did, and it motivated me to do even better, adding more exercise to my routine. My mock-interviewees got a lot out of our sessions, and I was happy to be helping. The clients are randomly assigned to volunteer interviewers, and one of mine said, "I'm so glad I got you! You've given me great advice." The program director was happy that I had returned, and so was I. Moving on, in my department meeting I met some full-time instructors, including one who had sent me some materials last week to help me prepare for the course. More importantly, perhaps, I found out that the hiring for which I was annoyed that I hadn't been called in for an interview had never happened. The position is being re-posted for a January start date. This puts me back in the running -- and at a greater advantage, now that I'm on that campus. After the meeting, the dean thanked me for attending (I was the only adjunct who did), and I asked him about the full-time professor, prefacing my question with, "If this isn't awkward . . ." I didn't know why the hiring process was starting again from the beginning. I asked if I should reapply. He said I definitely should, and that he would do his best to keep me informed about the process. It seems there was some bogging-down of paperwork in the central HR department and time was too short for the interview process to happen before the beginning of the fall semester. Wow! And here I thought I had been deemed somehow inadequate. He was very encouraging, so I'm excited about that. And my showing up at the meeting and taking an interest in department affairs made a good impression.
It would have been so easy to blow off any or all of these events. I would have been happy to laze around all day in my pajamas and do nothing. But pushing myself to do all of these things reaped big rewards -- and my pajamas are still here if I'm ready for them now (which I am, and it's not even 5:00). Grading can wait until tomorrow afternoon. (I have four hours of online scoring in the morning and still have to prepare for my Saturday class.) It's been a stellar day.
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