This weekend I decided it was time. Time to purge- and I do feel so much lighter ...You see I have said goodbye to stacks of papers from the last 8 years of University teaching here in the Coulee. These paper piles have graced the upstairs studio floor since my last retirement move 2 years ago...
Goodbye to 100's of hours of lesson plans, activities/ exercises for every Spanish grammar point and cultural lesson incorporated into probably 6 different texts. Goodbye to workshop handouts, lecture notes and the like. Just say goodbye.
Justification for not tossing these papers previously ranged from reasoning that one never knows when I/someone will need them. And heck, there may be tutorial sessions. Who am I kidding? There's the internet.
The time consuming sorting process to hold onto one copy if not the original's probably just plain stupid. Yeah, I know I shouldn't have bothered sorting.
In the meanwhile take a look at the first couple of days of work that will become fire starter... You didn't think I was just going to add it to the landfill , did you?
I've made a dent. I am far from done... There are still those binders to be emptied and then it's onto boxes from the previous 30 years of teaching. Be jealous, I even have faded ditto masters in those boxes.
AND the one thing I have is time as I just found out I wasn't assigned any student teachers for the fall semester. Do you think they knew that I was procrastinating purging?
If you can't find me outside in the garden, I'll be up in the studio going down memory lane right here in the End of the Rainbow Valley...
Happy burning to your next adventure
ReplyDeleteWhat is it about a life spent in academia that switches on the hoarder gene in us? I suspect it has something to do with how much time we spent in libraries of paper during our quests for all the degrees we needed to become "academics". Something in the mold spores, no doubt. For those of us who were born to teach, each lesson plan... each handout... is an artefact of our creative process and our passion.
ReplyDeleteDigital natives (born 1980 forward) will not have the attachment to paper that we do but let's hope their passion for teaching is similar.
I remember watching my huge pile of textbooks and all the papers from my academic life and my university teaching going up in flames in a single bonfire just before I moved to Seattle to begin my new life in '97. I had expected sadness but there was instead huge relief, release, and lightness.
You sound very ready for this!
After the papers... there are always closets and drawers.
ReplyDeleteLet the purging begin! It feels so good! Ooops, I sounded bulimic there for a minute...but you know what I mean!
ReplyDelete