Monday, May 5, 2014

Sometimes, I Just Wanna Pinterest

It's that time of year.  I don't mean warm weather; I don't mean planting a garden.  I mean the end of the semester.  If your professional life is in any way tied to education, you know what I mean.  It is the time of year that brings a heady blend of restlessness, anticipation, and drama.

Today is the last day of classes at the college where I work.  Today will be followed by a week of final exams, some senior festivities, and graduation.  And although I work through the summer, I look forward to the relative quiet and ability to work on projects with (relatively) little interruption. 

And here I go getting ahead of myself.  Ahem.  It is the last day of classes.  It is the day when students who haven't gone to one or more of their classes since before spring break begin to panic. It is the day when would-be-graduating seniors realize they will not graduate with 119 credits.  Or with one teeny tiny requirement missing.  It is the day that all of the nagging emails sent and ignored over the last few months seem to register.  It is the day (and I swear this literally just happened) a student walks in and says he just realized he has two finals scheduled at the same time... tomorrow.

Very little of this shocks me at this point.  I've worked in higher ed for nearly thirteen years and I've seen, if not everything, a fairly representative array of student crises.  It's time-consuming and angst-ridden, but it doesn't blow my mind.

That said, I am of a mind that I should be able to get it done, wipe my hands, and move on.  Move on to the draft of the novel that is stuck at around 50,000 words.  Move on to clever blog posts that will make me more like Queerie Bradshaw and less like an assistant dean.

Yet.  Yet, I don't feel inspired or energized or feisty.  I want to sit at my desk and drink my diet coke and look at Pinterest.  I want to zone out and look at pretty bathrooms and over-the-top kitchens and million-calorie desserts and ways to burn off said calories. 

This isn't a bad thing, especially when I can resist comparing my life to the photo-shopped fantasies that are rampant on my boards.  It's just that it isn't moving me forward.  It isn't helping me to make the life I want to live.  I'm inclined to do it anyway, then feel guilty about it.

This morning, I gave a floundering student advice on how to think about and value his experiences, how to make priorities and work towards things.  I told him that every good decision counts; every twenty minutes you spend doing something worthwhile puts you in better shape than when you started. 

So, here I am. I'm writing a blog post instead of merely thinking about it.  I'm going to hit the "publish" button.  Then I'm going to click over to Pinterest for a few minutes before my next meeting.  And I'm going to feel awesome about it.

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