Thoughts on a quiet night of duty

I may have jinxed myself by writing that title. But then again, people told me on Thursday that I was jinxing myself when everyone insisted that this weekend would be bad (the first "warmer" weekend and students are back from Spring Break) and I insisted that it wouldn't be. I replied that it's not jinxing myself, it's positive thinking. If I believe enough that everything will be fine this weekend than it will be, right? So far it's been working. Thursday and Friday were surprisingly quiet weekend night and tonight, Saturday, I've only had two calls with questions so far - nothing I had to actually respond to. So let's keep our fingers crossed that it will stay quiet.

It's after Spring Break, which means the "endspurt" of the year has begun. After Spring Break, the semester always just seems to rush by. There is so much going on that you barely get a chance to breathe.

I've been really struggling with balancing my time lately. I think I do a pretty good job at completing all my job responsibilities plus working on one big project. But when I have several projects, it gets a little overwhelming. There's my Invisible Children event that's been going on for over a month now and of course I'm behind in updating the Web site with teams' points and touching base with team leaders to see how things are going. Then there's our RHA, who successfully bid to host a conference - which is so exciting and amazing but also means a ton of more work for me. And then there's my lovely learning communities that have lately been giving me a headache. The student leaders in those communities are great and while they have been taking up a lot of my work, I enjoy every moment I'm spending with them. But then there are also the staff working with it. I'm just getting really frustrated at not being kept in the loop. I'm trying to make plans for next semester, but the only way I find out about staff decisions that have been made for next year is through my students and rumors. It just makes planning so tough. *Sigh.

I am super excited for next year though. I think we've put together a great team of RAs. And I know we'll have a strong group of leaders on the Executive Board of our Learning Community Council (Elections are on April 6) - and then we're also adding a Learning Community Leader position and the students that have expressed interest in applying so far are going to be outstanding. I think, overall, there will just be a lot more excitement and activity in our building and I'm really looking forward to that.

Well, it's 1 AM, so I should probably leave the office and go home - where, most likely, I'll be watching TV and making more buttons for Invisible Children. And tomorrow I really need to update the team rankings on the Web site. And there goes my weekend...

But hey, at least in a week, I'll be at the ACPA Conference, which - yes - is still work but at least I'll get out of here for a little while and I'll get to talk to some other people. :)