Seconded time lucky

My employment in my current position began in June, eight years ago, when I was grateful to have a job, a salary and a desk to call my own.  Indeed, I still am.  Since then I have taught continuously for anywhere between thirty-six and forty-five weeks a year, running parallel to, but not in sync with, the wider university’s teaching schedule.  In the early start-up days, this included teaching from April to October with no non-teaching time, thanks to two overlapping twenty-four week programmes.  In October there was one week’s break and then straight on until Christmas.  In 2002, my first year full-time on the job, I went more-or-less mad.  I had an office to myself behind the covered bike-stands, which was a fairly grim view but offered privacy for when I needed to cry between classes.  You get the idea.

Somewhere in between the incessant turning-over of weeks, I managed to get out some: to the Old Countr(ies), France, and latterly Hong Kong and Japan, not to mention the wider environs of Aotearoa, from the Far North to the depths of Western Southland.  For a long time, my working pace was such that marathon holiday jaunts, such as one-day drives from Wellington to Auckland via the Taranaki Coast, or from north Northumberland to Oxford in a day, seemed consistent with the pace of working life.

As of today, however, I am seconded from my teaching for the next five months, thanks to the current demands of my voluntary role.  This was only confirmed in the last few days, so there has been very little mental time to prepare.  I hardly know what to make of this, and keep having to repeat it to myself: from now until February, I will be working on course development, contributing to a group research project, and (for the majority of my time) carrying out the voluntary duties for which I am now paid.  I don’t think this will really sink in until my colleagues start teaching again (and, to be honest, since that begins a week before my wedding, I doubt I’ll be paying too much attention for a while).

I feel neither excitement nor trepidation at this point, so much as relief that I won’t be potentially short-changing my students by rushing off to meetings.  Now I can rush unencumbered.  I think if I am to make the most of this time in terms of the skills I have worked so hard to acquire for much of this century — and from which I am officially on hiatus — it will be to think hard, but stealthily, about what I’ve accomplished and what I would like to do next.  I’m enjoying, a great deal, the stimulation of university-wide work and the opportunity to contribute on a wider scale (and have been helped to this point by the fact that those students who know about my role think it’s a cool thing to do); it serves my altruism and my love of meta-narratives alike, not to mention my sense of responsibility to my colleagues in the wider university.  But I wonder how long it will be before I miss the classroom, the responsibility and the intimacy of the teacher-student relationship, the blend of duty and creativity.

I don’t know what’s next.  This is the first time in nearly nine years that I’ve been able to say that.  I’m happy that the possibility of new adventure synchronises so well with my intention to marry next month.  Even if life continues with business as usual, the symbolism of the juncture will be sustaining.

A hat-tip to MTNW for the video link.