November 28, 2023
Welcome back from what I hope was a restful week off. I don’t know about you, but I needed it, it’s been quite the fall. Hopefully everyone is rested and ready for the final push of the semester. Between here and winter break are papers, finals, events, and endless deadlines we wished we had paid attention to sooner.
One side effect of time off, at least for me, is the dread of return. It was nice to ignore email (more or less) and not have my calendar constantly reminding me I was late for something. But I fear Outlook took my attitude toward it last week personally and will exact some sort of cruel revenge.
In my experience, dread accomplishes little. Starting the work on the other hand gets the work done. As Desmond Tutu wisely remarked, “there is only one way to eat an elephant: a bite at a time.” We resolve the dread bit by bit - email by email, class by class, paper by paper, meeting by meeting, missive by missive. The whole can be daunting, but what’s in front of us is doable. Do the doable, then move onto the next bite.
Onward into the last few weeks of the semester, we got this.