"Every wall is a door." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happy Labor Day! I promised a post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so this is me keeping said promise. :)
Today I am going to comment on a dilemma I have been facing lately - whether or not to keep my office door open when doing my reading for classes. I have been attempting to not read in my and Jenn's apartment, because it is too easy to fall asleep, turn on the TV, and/or do anything but work there. Furthermore, when you add up all of my "scheduled time" - meetings with RAs, professional staff meetings and trainings, conduct hours, hall council time, committee meetings - that amounts to about 15 hours, give or take 1 depending on the week. To keep the good work-life balance I am still acquiring, I am supposed to work 20 hours a week. If I stuck to that, I would be in my office - available to residents to stop in, say hi, and most likely ask questions - only 5 hours a week. Since I do not find that fair, I read in my office when not doing 5 hours of preparing for the scheduled time (returning e-mails, preparing team-builders, writing reports, etc.).
The associated dilemma is whether or not reading will actually be done in such an atmosphere. So far, the open door policy has proven quite helpful as far as assisting residents. I have helped residents to order refrigerators, switch rooms, watch "Pretty Little Liars" in the TV lounge, work through other crises, and more. When I am helping them, though, I am not helping my studies, because I need to focus my attention elsewhere for the moment, and then take time to refocus it upon my return. It is not an incredible interruption. Of course, there is also the noise factor - my office is right off of the lobby and near a lounge. Factoring in the usual noise from the front desk and the piano in the lounge, there are additional organic detractions to focus.
Is the open door always helpful to residents? Emerson seems to lean towards "No" in the quote above. If they had a smaller issue - one they could fix themselves - then possibly a closed door could create an educational moment. As I have been learning more about the goals of higher education, I can now say with some authority that we hope for students to learn how to solve problems on their own. We want them to know their options, think critically about each of them, then use that thought to choose one and follow-through. By being so available, I am providing them a shortcut that they may not need, and thus taking away a potentially educational moment.
Still, the fact that a larger issue - one in which a resident truly does need me or someone to talk to - could walk through my open door keeps it open for me. I still have not gone through my weekly routine yet, and will not until next week, so I cannot say definitively whether or not I have enough time to read in my office. I will report back eventually, but for now I may just need to turn up my classical music.
Quote Citation: Emerson, R. W. (n.d.). Goodreads. Retrieved from: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/31820-every-wall-is-a-door
"In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is everything." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
As you may have noticed, there have not been posts here the past two days. As you will soon notice, today's is shorter than others. I can promise you that this will not become a pattern, but I cannot promise that it will never happen again. In other words, I plan to write a post every business day, but have certain items that jump onto my to-do list that I need to prioritize before reflection and subsequent writing.
Part of this plays into my new favorite way of thinking about time management. While sitting in RA Training the other day I had the pleasure of attending a session on the topic led by my colleagues Dan and Alex. They presented on three different time management theories: Eisenhower's Matrix, Maslow's Hierarchy, and Analysis Paralysis. I will discuss Eisenhower's model here, as it spoke the most to me and my time management - the latter two you find out all that you would care to on a simple Google search. The basic model, attributed to US President Eisenhower and Dr. Stephen Covey (1994) takes two facets of one's tasks - urgency and importance - and places the tasks on a grid based on the relative values of those two facets. One axis is labelled importance, the other urgency. This created four quadrants: tasks high in importance and high in urgency, tasks high in importance but low in urgency, those high in urgency but low in importance, and those low in both urgency and importance.
Two days ago, this is how my matrix looked:
As you can see, "Blog" fell into the bottom-left quadrant, so when it came to the time I would normally work on this post, I instead attacked the items in the top-right. As time moved-on, though, some of those top-left items shifted to the right, becoming more urgent. For example, Opening is now in only two days! Priorities can change as well making some of those less important yet urgent items more important, such as when I realized the RA Social was only two hours away and Pandora was playing some non-inclusive music. Also, classes will become much more important for me next week, but right now I am focusing on my work.
What do you think? I had never seen this prioritization technique before, but now I am using it almost every day! I wish I could move the blog, but right now I feel that there is simply not enough room in those two top quadrants. Maybe once opening passes!
Citation: MindTools.com. (2013). "The Urgent/Important Matrix." Retrieved from: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_91.htm .
Quote Citation: Qtd. in Nixon, R. (1962). Six crises. New York: Doubleday.
Photo By: Me
"It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously." - Peter Ustinov
One of the larger adjustments I have had to make during training for my new assistantship is becoming a supervisor and learning the responsibilities that role entails. I've never truly been "in charge" or anyone. Yes, I've been in a position to tell people what to do, and long ago when I was an assistant instructor for karate classes there was no question of "who's in charge?" But I've never held the complete responsibility of supervising another person in their professional tasks - it has always been much more of an advisory role.
I remember thinking very specifically about the differences between advising and supervising before my interview weekend, and it was an exercise our leadership development coordinator had us do during training as well. One of my colleagues used an analogy that stuck with me: advising is guiding someone, whereas supervising is steering them. In some situations, you do not have to follow a guide. Sure, it is usually in your best interest, but the most they can do is show you the path, and it is up to you to take it. If someone is steering the jeep down the path, though, the only way for you to not go down the path is to jump out.
What interests me about this adjustment is not that part of the analogy, though. I am honestly fine with my small staff of RAs being required to take the path I choose, or else "jumping out." It is my being required to choose the paths that has been the largest adjustment. In my advising roles in the past much has been chosen or set for me, while in this new supervisory role I am responsible for setting list after list of requirements and expectations for my staff. I have set "Staff Expectations," "Training Expectations," "Duty Expectations," and so on, and every time I have finished a list there has been this foreboding feeling of having sealed someone's fate for the next academic year.
To get past that feeling I remind myself that this experience is all part of my journey of professional development, and so I take the supervisory responsibilities that much more seriously. I double- and triple-check those expectations, invite questions and comments on them, and envision how conversations concerning them will go. And - much more importantly than my own growth - I always consider my staff's professional growth and how my expectations will steer them on their paths. Because only guiding them would not be taking the full responsibility entrusted to me as their supervisor.
Quote Citation: BBC News. (2004, March 12). Ustinov's comic touch. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3578959.stm
Photo by: Me
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