Saturday, February 7, 2009

It’s Time!

by Professor Nina Molinaro

Formal education is all about time. In the college context, quarters, semesters and school years all begin and end on a particular, previously established date. Classes start and finish at a certain hour on a certain day (or days) and they last during the same period of time across a series of weeks. Students complete homework and hand it in at a given time. They take exams and turn in essays and final projects according to a fixed schedule. Teachers complete their syllabi for the first day of classes. They have a certain period in which to evaluate student work, and they calculate and record final grades within a specified time frame. And the entire cycle occurs in a fixed pattern again and again.

One of the many goals of graduate school is to prepare future professionals and one mark of success is that s/he can establish, recognize and/or meet deadlines. Some deadlines are about practical issues. If we do not get our paperwork in by a certain date, we will not get paid; if we do not pick up our new keys before the lock shop closes, we cannot get into our offices; if we do not return our library books by the due date, our borrowing privileges are revoked and/or we amass fines. Some deadlines are about intellectual and pedagogical productivity. If we do not finish reviews, essays and/or books in a timely fashion, they may not get published; if we do not get our grant proposals (or our fellowship applications or our sabbatical requests) in by a given deadline, they will not get funded or approved; if we do not turn in our course proposals or course preferences by a given date, we may not get to teach the desired courses when we want or need to teach them. Some deadlines are about courtesy and respect for our colleagues and our students. If we participate on a conference panel and go beyond our allotted time, we will lose credibility with our colleagues. If we offer to give others feedback on classes or research by a certain time and we are late with our feedback, we have inconvenienced those we intended to help. If we are habitually late to committee meetings, departmental exams, review sessions or appointments, our peers will eventually make decisions without us, share information without us, build community without us and generally move forward without us.

We often want more time because we want to do more, do better, do differently. Deadlines are stressful because they force us to set priorities, often in response to what others believe that we should do. Deadlines also compel us to be clear about how we spend our time, even when we really don’t want to (or can’t) be clear. They make us choose and take responsibility for our choices. Deadlines involve denial—of perfection, of forever, of stasis, of possibility. They are about measurement and where there is measurement there is often the possibility that we--as intellectuals, as teachers, as students, as human beings--will fall short. And no one wants to fall short. Above all, deadlines represent change. They force us to finish, let go and move on. It’s time.

No comments:

Post a Comment