TITLE: The End of a Different Year
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: July 21, 2006 5:15 PM
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I am coming to the end of my first year as department
head, which officially began on August 1 last year.
In that time, I have written less about management
than I had expected. Why? One ingredient is that I
blog using my public identity. I don't often mention
UNI or the University of Northern Iowa in my entries,
but the blog is located in my departmental web space,
and I provide plenty of links off to other UNI pages.
For much of what I've thought to write in the last
year, I would have had a hard time writing in an
anonymous way; too often, it would have been obvious
that my comments were about particular individuals
-- folks that some of my readers know, or could know,
and folks who themselves might stumble upon my blog.
In a couple of CS curriculum entries such as
this one,
I have referred to a nameless colleague who would
surely recognize himself (and our current and former
students can probably identify him, too) -- but those
were posts about CS content, not discussions of my
role as head.
Why would that be a problem? I think that I am more
prone to write these days on negative experiences that
occur as an administrator, manager, or dare I say leader
than I am to write on positive events. This is the same
sort of motivation I have for writing software patterns,
negative experiences that happen when programming and
designing. But in those cases I also have a solution
that resolves the forces. As an administrator, I am
mostly still looking for solutions, feeling my way through
the job and trying to learn general lessons. And that
gets us to the real reason I haven't written much on
this topic: I'm not there yet. I don't think I've
learned enough to speak with any amount of authority
here, and I don't have the confidence to ruminate yet.
As I wrote
back in May,
I thought I might have more time to write in the summer,
at least more regularly. But instead of fewer distractions,
I think I've experienced more. I've actually had less
concentrated time to write. In that same entry, I related
a quote from Henri Nouwen that "... the interruptions were
my real work." The idea behind this quote is that we must
come to peace with the distractions and view them as
opportunities to serve. In a rational sense, I understand
this, but I am not there yet. Sometimes, interruptions
just seem like interruptions. I can go home at the end
of a day of interruptions feel like I did something useful,
but I also usually feel unfulfilled at not having
accomplished my other goals for the day.
Sometimes, the interruption really does turn out to be my
real task, one that displaces other plans in a meaningful
way. The best example of that this summer has been a
long-tabled proposal for our department to offer a B.S. in
Software Engineering. I definitely have plenty to write
about this in the next couple of weeks, but it won't be
my colleagues here who might be unhappy with what I say;
it will be colleagues at our sister state institutions.
This week has been filled with nothing but distractions
of the former type. For most of the week, I have felt
like a preemptible processor thrashing on a steady flow
of interrupts. On the other hand, I did manage to tie
up some loose ends from old projects, which should make
August a more enjoyable month.
In that May entry, I also quoted Chad Fowler's vignette
about "fighting the traffic". I have come to realize
that, unlike Fowler's cabbie, I don't love to fight the
traffic. At least not as my primary job. I know that
it is an essential part of this job, so I am looking for
middle ground. That's a meta-goal of mine for the coming
year. I'd also like to refine how I respond to interrupts
and how I schedule and manage my time. This year will
tell me a lot about whether I should consider this as a
long-term professional opportunity.
But now I am ready for a little vacation. I haven't take
any break other than at Christmas since long weekends in
May
and July of 2005. While I am not despairing for my job,
I am reminded of a quote I used when
starting as head
last August 1:
Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits
Where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.
-- William Shakespeare
All's Well That Ends Well (II, i, 145-147)
Earlier this summer, I had a fantasy of a running vacation:
Drive somewhere mostly isolated, and find a home base in a
little motel. Get up every morning and run from 5:30 until
9:00 or so, anywhere from 12 to 15 miles. Come back, shower,
eat, and nap until noon. Then spend the day reading, writing,
and goofing off. Mmmm.
But I also have a strong desire to spend some time with my
wife and daughters, and so that's what I'll do: hang around
home. I'll do some "home"work, relax and read. I'll probably
also spend a little relaxed time corralling my work to-do
list, to prepare for returning to the office. That will
actually feel good. I'll even do some disciplined reading
of work e-mail -- but I don't want to be
this guy:
If I have to go an extreme, I'd rather be Delbert T.
Quimby, a guy from an editorial cartoon by
Ed Stein
back in 1995. I can't find this on-line and don't have
a scanned version of the cartoon, so you'll have to settle
for my description. The scene is a cozy den, with a wall
full of books. In the soft spotlight at the middle of
the room is our protagonist, comfortably dressed, book
in lap, glass of wine on the side table. The caption
reads, "Eccentric Internet holdout Delbert T. Quimby
passes yet another day non-digitally."
Back in 1995, such a maneuver was likely viewed as an
act of rebellion; today, it would be viewed by many as
just plain nuts. But, you know, it sounds really good
right now. So who knows?
(My students probably consider me to be a Delbert T.
Quimby already, not for the wardrobe and dumpy physique
but for this neo-Luddite fact: I still have only a
dial-up Internet connection at home!)
Oh, and I will definitely run a lot of miles next week
-- 52 or so -- and blog a bit.
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