In Medias Res #3-The Local Memory Comes Around

I find myself composing these blog posts in my head during the week. Sitting in a long drawn out meeting, I write a masterful examination of supervision, or an extended reflection on the delicate nature of the work/life balance in student affairs. Then I get back to my office, start doing work again, and completely forget about it. In fact, memory is one of the things I’m having perhaps the greatest difficulty with.
Ah, the trouble with memory. It manifests itself in multiple forms. I have trouble recalling the lessons I learned in grad school when a student challenges me with something patently stupid. Is it not developmental to tell people something is patently stupid? Is it problematic?
Memory is particularly playing havoc with me on a day like today when I am just frantic. Fridays have become my students’ favorite day to schedule meetings. As such I end up in back-to-back advising sessions, racing to get lunch and perhaps the occasional check in on paperwork and email. My schedule seems to run counter to everyone in the office. On Mondays and Tuesdays they are swamped with requests and by Friday a decent number of my coworkers are popping their heads in and out of people’s doors expressing sheer boredom.
I know with time I will get the rhythms of this office down. I know, now, for example, that I need to keep my calendar free on Fridays, and those things I had expected to leave for the end of the week (like posting my blog) needs to really be done on Thursdays.
This isn’t a complaint. My head is still well above water, and I am happy to have the work. I am equally happy to have such dedicated student leaders that they wake up on Friday morning to come and meet with me. I’m just wishing I took better notes, because it seems like every five minutes I am forgetting something today.
This observation lends itself to a new realization: this job is changing the way that I work, or perhaps rather I am changing the way that I work to be more successful at this job. For one it forces me to be quite a bit more organized. Between my own programming, collaborative programming, and advising my student groups I have way too many balls in the air to think that I can retain every detail in my head.
Similarly I find myself avoiding procrastinating on the small stuff that irritates me (like paperwork) that as a grad student would have sat on my desk for weeks. Now I spend the first half hour of every morning reserving rooms and banging out purchase orders. This way I feel accomplished at the beginning of the day, and more importantly I don’t have to think about them again.
What strikes me most about the transformation is how differently I consider my work now from the frame of mind I employed as a grad student. Here I am deeply concerned with my success and that of my students. I am much more on top of things, and I feel infinitely more competent. I guess..I actually feel like a professional? Which is kind of neat.