End of the spring semester. I’ve been doing this long enough that I know it’s a stressful period. And even if I have everything perfectly planned or allow for flexibility, this is when I get the collective chaos full in the teeth. And when I lose the discipline with my stress mitigation strategies. These are:
- Exercise — critical for stress reduction and to get rid of rumination. Improves sleep too.
- Journaling. — stress and other localized stressors have been shown to lower when you write stuff down. I was pretty good about it till April and it went down the pipes.
- Friday shutdown — a calendar point where I file all paperwork and clean up windows and blog. You’ll note it has disappeared.
- Downtime — as in a day or even morning that isn’t structured to the hilt with tasks. Work has steadily eaten up more of the weekend. Contrary to my year goals.
- Multiplication of tasks — this is varied but most asks are lowballed. Just a small thing in the mind of the request asker. And because I’m overwhelmed already, losing track of what needs to be done and is nice to have I say no to nothing. Unsustainable.
So yes. Lots of things I know I should do for mental health and lowered stress and yet these all fell by the wayside. I’m not going to lie: the myriad of chaos now reigning at the Federal level have had real repercussions for my students. Graduate admission and research opportunities for undergraduates have all almost evaporated with drastically lower odds for those from small schools. Uncertainty regarding science funding and the sudden and chaotic change of university president all did not really help for a feeling of stability. Or the fact that only now I can return to my office on campus. I hadn’t one this semester. Oops.
So I can use the summer. I am planning a routine and a rough schedule. It’ll be exciting: my very first graduate student is getting his PhD!
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