The big myth

Here's the myth about school breaks and my job: It will be quieter, you won't have to teach class and you'll get "caught up."

This is now my fourth school break in this job (Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break and now summer). And every time I fall for the lie. I make a long list of things I want to get done work-wise, and before I know it the break is over and I haven't crossed off a single thing on my list. Yes, summer is longer, and I will actually get time away from daily production. But when I'm involved in production, it will be crazier than it is during a normal semester.

There are students in the newsroom during the summer. There are a lot of eager reporters, and a new batch of copy editors starting next week. But this also means we've hit the reset button, and there's a lot of teaching and training to do. After a bit of grumbling about this on my part, a co-worker said to me, "It's still the first week of the semester." I replied, "The problem with the first week of the semester is that it comes right after the end of the semester." In other words, as soon as you get a crew well-trained, you have to start from scratch and the juxtaposition of those things is hard.

But because we have fewer students, there's more time that I'm the only person on the copy desk. I'm working mostly dayside shifts, and I don't have students to delegate to. As I realized this week, I am pretty ADD at work, jumping between several different things, and if someone asks for help on something, it'll take hours for me to get back to what I was doing. But when you have students you can delegate to, it's easier to see things get accomplished, and I can focus on one thing at a time.

Basically what I am saying is that this week I have felt completely scattered and crazy busy. And that summer work to-do list is looking overly ambitious.

But in three weeks I will be in Ireland completely disconnected!

Quick update

Well, I survived the GRE, and I actually did much better than even I expected. All the work ended up being worth it, and I never have to do it again.

A huge weight has been lifted off, and I feel like summer has actually started now even though class has been out for a week.

It was wonderful to have a carefree weekend where I wasn't thinking about studying or vocabulary words. I even grocery shopped and cooked on Sunday.

I have some garden updates (the green bean and okra are actually coming up from seed)! But I haven't taken pictures recently to show you. So more blog posts to come this week.

A long way

This weekend I was searching the blog for a recipe I thought I had posted about. Turns out I never did. But I came across some of those early posts when I got my first co-op shares two years ago. Here's a sentence from when I got my second pick-up:

"I've almost finished off the asparagus (I know my family is shocked reading that)..."

It was an accomplishment to finish off asparagus. Now I'm lucky to stretch one bunch over two days. I guess I have come a long way since then. And with most of the produce I get now, I just want to eat it as simply as possible. I don't need a complicated way to make it taste better because I like it as is.

In other news, the semester is over. I have finished all the grading and will have a quiet week in the newsroom before the summer crew comes in next week. 

I had to say goodbye to some seniors and masters students graduating on Saturday. The constant churn of students can be exhausting, but it amazes me how attached I've gotten to the ones that stick around for more than a semester. A co-worker strongly urged me to go to graduation, so there would be some closure and a real goodbye to those that are leaving. And I am really glad I went; I think it actually meant more as a faculty member than it did it when I was a graduate. There were some that it's a miracle they got to walk across the stage and others I would have loved to keep around for another year. And still some I didn't know were graduating, so I wasn't quite prepared to lose them. But a new batch will come through, and the cycle will start again.


And my life will really return to normal on Friday evening. I take the GRE Friday afternoon and will be so relieved to have it behind me. So I either won't post at all this week or will post more than usual to procrastinate. But hopefully more regular posts will resume after Friday.

Weekend

The past few weeks and even months have been pretty crazy, and I've just felt like things around the house have been out of control. But after this weekend, I actually feel caught up, and I even got some cooking in. A few highlights:

I did some major house cleaning on Saturday. When you don't know the last time your kitchen floor was cleaned, that's a problem. But now I can walk barefoot through the kitchen and not be grossed out. I also attacked my shower/bathtub, which I bring up to share one tip. I found this on pinterest that says to mix up equal parts Dawn and white vinegar in a spray bottle and spray it on the shower/tub. I *almost* wished I had taken before and after picture, but then I would be showing how not yellow (its supposed color) the tub was. It took about three attempts (I said it was bad), but it worked a miracle on my tub. Now I've got to keep it from getting that bad ever again.

Even more exciting than cleaning was getting the garden planted. J did the raking and digging, and I put in the water/Miracle Gro solution and the plants in. He went back on Sunday and put in a fence around it to keep out the critters. I didn't think we had enough plants, but we actually filled all three beds and had some plants left over. Here are some photos:

There are tomatoes in the first bed; okra and green bean seeds and watermelon plants in the middle one; and zucchini, yellow squash, peppers, basil and rosemary in the last bed. 

Hoping the fence will keep the bunnies out. I'm convinced there's a colony of them in my backyard.

Later we went strawberry picking. It was the best kind of strawberry picking because it was free! J's parents have a huge strawberry patch we picked from. And the strawberries are some the best I've ever had. I took this on Sunday after we had eaten some, but this was full when we finished:

On Sunday I decided a good way to use them would be over pound cake. That's a classic dessert at my grandparents' house. I used a recipe for sour cream pound cake out of Better Homes and Gardens. It required a lot of time with the hand mixer, but it turned out really well. Almost as good as my grandmother's. I also made a tomato pie (with tomatoes from the farmer's market) and roasted asparagus (also from the market).

Now that the semester is almost over (just a final exam to give and grade), and the GRE will be behind me in two weeks, I'm looking forward to the summer and spending more time cooking. Hopefully, I'll have vegetables from my own garden to cook with!

A garden update

I picked out my plants on Saturday. There was pretty much a monsoon on the way home, so the plants are hanging out my kitchen. Here's what I got:

Tomatoes (sandwich tomatoes, roma and cherry)
Zucchinni
Yellow squash
Sweet peppers
Watermelon
Basil
Rosemary

If they can survive the rest of the week in the kitchen, I think we'll get them in the ground on Saturday. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was much less expensive than I expected. The challenge now is keeping them alive and away from critters.

I'm kind of drowning in other stuff. My house is a wreck, and I barely have enough food to not starve. But all I can think about is getting through the end of the semester and my GRE test date. Life will return to some version of normal on May 19!

Quiet

I finished the book "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that can't Stop Talking" this week. I've always know I was an introvert, but it was during my time in Charlottesville that I learned more about what that meant, thanks to my friends' obsession with Myers-Briggs. Anyway because of that, I found this book fascinating.

The author, Susan Cain, covers it all — research about introverts/extroverts, the way the differences play out in the workplace, case studies of people and relationships. And then she talks about ways to function as an introvert in an extrovert world while staying true to yourself. She also addresses raising and teaching introvert kids, how to make a workplace conducive to introverts and extroverts, and how to balance a marriage between an introvert and an extrovert.

One of the research points that I found particularly interesting was a study of children. Four-month-old babies were exposed to stimuli in a new environment. Some babies were "highly reactive" to having a bunch of new stuff put in their faces. They flailed their arms, cried, etc. Others were pretty passive and weren't bothered by the new things and environment. Those babies were brought back at different ages after that for interviews and tests. What the researchers discovered is that the babies that were highly reactive were introverted as children. This seems surprising, but it makes the connection that introverts are sensitive in their senses (loud noises, bright lights) and to change.

I don't fit every stereotype of introverts, and no one really does. But I was not the laid back baby my sister (an extrovert) was. I don't handle change very well. I desperately wanted to go back to kindergarten when I was in first grade. And it always takes me time to adjust to a new environment (school, job, city, etc.), though it's been a faster process as I've made more moves. But I don't like fireworks or 3-D movies. I get overwhelmed in crowded and loud places. While I've always known these things were true about me, I had never really connected them to my introversion.

And a lot of introverted adults become pseudo-extroverts in different parts of their lives. But it is usually tied to something they are passionate about. And that's the case for me in my current job. Four days a week I sit out in a loud and busy newsroom. I have to be "on" for my students on the desk and when I teach class. And I actually draw a lot of energy from that and enjoy it mostly because I am passionate about the work. I love community news, and I love teaching students.

What I realized a couple of weeks ago is that I have found a way to balance that and provide rest for myself as an introvert. One week recently I had to cover some extra night shifts for co-workers that were gone. I also had eight individual meetings with students and two classes to teach. Because of the extra shifts, I had to give up my office day, the day I get to catch up on stuff and be out of the newsroom. By the time Friday rolled around, I was exhausted and my frustration level was high. I walked out of work that day thinking it was a miracle I didn't lose it with someone. While part of the exhaustion was the hours I was working, a big part of it was not having down time. I was always "on" and didn't get to balance it with "off" time. The next week I worked from home on my office day, and I couldn't believe the difference I felt. And this is a point Cain made in the book. She called it making a free trait agreement with yourself, recognizing that you can be a pseudo extrovert in part of your life, but you have to allow for down time to recharge. And you can give yourself a free pass from going to an event or social outing to get that time.

The end of the book talks a lot about raising and teaching introvert children. It definitely made me question the way I teach my class. But I also reflected on the way I was raised (my mom is an extrovert and my dad is an introvert). Again I didn't take fit all the stereotypes, I am a risk taker and was even more of one as a kid. I was involved in a number of things, but my parents let me pick and choose what I wanted to focus on. They encouraged my imagination and eventually my writing from an early age, which was an outlet for me. When I would argue with my parents, I often needed down time to figure out what I really wanted to say. My dad was the same way, and my mom learned to give me space. Since I was pretty passive and cared a lot about others, my mom had to help me be assertive. Everyone in my family remembers the story of me getting the top bunk at camp. My mom and sister helped me role play to assert myself and get what I wanted. That's exactly the kind of thing the book encourages parents to do with introverted children.

My dad was also an example of how to succeed in business as an introvert. I learned that if you only talk when you have something important to say, people will listen to you. While class participation was always an issue for me, my dad didn't tell me I always had to be the most talkative student, but instead encouraged me to think through my thoughts and speak up when I had something to say. The teacher would recognize my thoughtfulness.

In the real world, I learned that I held a lot of power by only talking when I had something important to say. In meetings at the first newspaper I worked at, co-workers often talked just to hear themselves talk and others talked over them or ignored what they had to say because most if it was nonsense. But if I had something to say, everyone knew it would be important and the room would go silent. I gained the respect of those I managed by really listening and not making snap decisions. And those same things apply now. I have a wider view of what's going on because I observe and listen.

But after reading this book, I can also see why I was unhappy in my last job. I was never passionate about the work. I didn't really care about writing and editing stories for investment bankers. I worked with mostly introverts in a quiet office. I never had a reason to come out of my shell and be more than a passive employee. The exception was when I managed a team of employees located in Pakistan. I was an advocate for them and earned their trust and respect. But before I took over as their manager, they doubted I could be the advocate they needed because I wasn't that way in the rest of my work. And that explains why I was passed over for some other roles prior to that.

This book reinforced the idea that I'm only going to be happy in a job where I am passionate about what I do and the impact of my work.

One negative stereotype of introverts is that they don't like people. Cain says in the book that introverts are actually empathetic and care deeply about others. I saw a lot of myself in Cain's example of second-grader that worried about spending equal time with friends on the playground. Her friends were in separate groups, and she didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. I was the peacemaker and always worried about hurting others feelings. As an adult this translates into a dislike of small talk. Introverts want to really know people and have deep conversations.

There's so much more I could write about this, but I think it's better if you read the book. If you're an extrovert, it will give you insight into relationships with introverts (as a boss, co-worker, spouse or parent). And if you're an introvert, it will help you figure out how to stay true to yourself but not get lost in an extrovert world.

Catching up

Hello, I'm still here. As usual, blogging has fallen to the bottom of my list. But here's a few random tidbits from life to catch you up.

I got involved with my sorority alumni group here. Based on my experience with the group in Georgia, I thought it would just be going to movies, meeting up for drinks and dinner, etc. Basically, a way to have a social life in a new city. Not so with this group. Eight of us just organized and hosted what turned out to be a huge event (almost 400 people) for chapters in our region. I ran around like a crazy person on Saturday keeping the event going. While I enjoyed helping out, I was reminded that event planning is not my thing. But if you ever need to hire an event planner, ask if they were in a sorority because those girls are organized, creative and efficient. I also came back with more sorority stuff than I need at this point in my life.

I finished Beth Moore's James study. I hope to have a real post on that soon.

I am also very close to being done with the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts and definitely plan to blog about it. It is a fascinating book especially if you are interested in the introvert/extrovert dynamic.

I just have one more week of GRE class, and I take the exam three weeks from Friday. I am just ready to have this behind me.

And one more thing that's almost done: The semester! Just three more weeks. Now that I know I'm staying, I am ready for this semester to end and hit reset on everything. It's been a rough few weeks, and I'm ready for the switchover. The end of the semester also means I'm that much closer to my trip to Ireland and London. 

The garden has been tilled, though I don't get any credit for that. I'm going to pick out plants and get them in the ground next weekend. A groundhog and three deer were in my yard this evening, so even if I can keep the plants alive, keeping the critters out is going to be a challenge.

And remember this post? Yeah, it actually worked, so I've been pretty distracted lately if you can't tell. He also gets the credit for tilling the garden and allowing me to cancel my lawn service.