An unsuccessful (or perhaps successful) spring break (#1344)

Topics/tags: Overcommitment, unedited

Spring break at Grinnell is now over, or effectively over. It’s about 7pm on Sunday, 23 March 2025. Classes resume Monday. I think it’s fair to say that it’s over.

Right before Spring Break, I started to muse about my plans. Here’s how that musing started.

It’s Spring Break at Grinnell! And, as I’ve mentioned before, Grinnell has a two-week spring break! So many opportunities. So much time. So much to do.

Now that spring break is over, it’s time to look back at what I did and didn’t do. No, let’s reverse that. Let’s start with what I didn’t do. It’s better to end on a positive note, right?

I didn’t finish that initial musing about spring break. I also didn’t manage to muse each day, as I’d planned.

I planned to get paperwork in order: Taxes, medical receipts, receipts for the College, a balanced checkbook. Those kinds of things. I failed. The only success I had was in going through the giant pile of accumulated mail from the past few months. Oh, I also paid the bills in that pile.

I planned to build two bookshelves. The first step in doing that was moving two sets of bookshelves to make room. I got one of the two sets moved. I didn’t even plan the shelf spacing for the bookshelves.

I planned to clean off the dining room table, which is filled with all sorts of paperwork. That would have helped me with those other kinds of paperwork. Another nope.

I planned to play games each day with Eldest. Or at least a few days. We never got to games.

I planned to catch up on grading by Friday the 14th [1]. I didn’t even touch my grading. I updated that plan to catch up by Friday the 21st. Also didn’t touch my grading by then. As you might guess, I didn’t quite finish grading. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say I didn’t even come close to finishing grading. I thought I might catch up on Sunday. I was wrong. I’m not that worried; the main grading gets done promptly: Exams, quizzes, and weekly assignments. The outstanding grading mostly represents check off work that either the graders or I do: Reading responses (I typically review a dozen or two before class), lab writeups (I’ve been looking over their shoulders), and such.

I planned to check over the the next assignment I’m going to give in CSC-151. I didn’t. Fortunately, I’m not assigning that until the 28th.

I planned to check over Monday’s lab for CSC-151. As of 7pm on Sunday, I hadn’t. Don’t worry, I’ll get it done before I head to bed. (I also plan to head to bed at a reasonable hour.)

I planned to go to Iowa City and have coffee with a friend. I didn’t.

I planned to clean out my inbox. It’s still at over 112,000 messages.

I planned to make my work office a bit straighter. I didn’t even visit Noyce during the two weeks of spring break.

I didn’t write a planned mid-semester survey for my CSC-151 students. Oh well, that falls into the good ideas I didn’t get done this semester, along with showing off their projects to each other.

I’m pretty sure that I’d planned other things, too. However, as I said, I didn’t finish that initial musing, so I never ended up with a list. I never expected to write a complete list; but I’d hoped to write down more. I guess that’s okay. After all, it’s not like I would have completed any of the other tasks on the list.

What did I get done? Let’s start with the big things.

I had a minor surgery planned for Monday of the first week. Nothing to worry about; just what we thought was a subcutaneous cyst on my finger. I’ve had it for a few years, but it seems to be growing a bit. Finger surgery is often painful, so the wanted to do it in the OR, with me sedated. It turns out it was a lipoma, rather than a subcutaneous cyst. Nothing concerning.

For some reason, the surgery hit me hard. So I slept most of Monday. And Tuesday. I did work on Wednesday. At least I think I did. And then I went back to sleep for most of Thursday.

Which reminds me. One of my goals was to catch up on sleep and get rest. I met that goal.

We have a room on the first floor that used to be my home office slash library slash room to accumulate stuff. When Michelle came home from the hospital in July, we turned it into our bedroom. It still had lots of things from her recuperation there. A friend visited and we cleaned out most of her medical stuff. Her transport chair, walker, and commode went to health services. So did her green booties [2]. Her meds went to the disposal bin at Hy-Vee. I’ve forgotten what else we got rid of. It was sad, but I made it.

That friend and I also went out to lunch. It was great to catch up. I also had dinner with another set of friends. And I went out for beers with the normal Friday crowd twice. So I socialized.

I had a grant review panel. I won’t say for whom. I read nine grant proposals, wrote reviews, and then spent two days discussing the proposals. Grant reviewing is serverely undercompensated. It used to be that we’d get a free trip to Washington, DC (or at least Virginia), hotel, meals, and $200 per day. Now we just get the $200. And only on the days we meet. Nothing for the time spent reading the proposals. If I think back far enough, I recall a time in which we didn’t even get the proposals until we arrived at the meeting. At least I think we didn’t. More days. More pay. And a trip. Now? Bubkes. Or nearly bubkes. I estimate that I sent between 30 and 40 hours on the work. You can figure out the hourly rate. Nonetheless, it’s important service to the community. I just wish I had the old opportunities to meet and network with other reviewers. And to spend some time at museums. Oh well. Perhaps in the future. Perhaps not.

I reviewed two papers for a conference. Oh, crap. I didn’t. I reviewed one of them. I still have the other to review and it’s 7pm on Sunday. At least I’ve read it already. Yay! Another impediment to a reasonable bedtime.

I wrote some recommendation letters. I’ve had more letters to write this year than most. One likely factor is that I taught CSC-207, the third course in the CS major, for the past two semesters. Students often use CSC-207 to prove that they understand CS [3].

I read a bunch of books. Five? Six? More? I can’t quite remember. What kind? Mostly things that I’d call urban fantasy. The latest InCryptid novel. The Midnight, Texas series. Some other things. I miss talking to Michelle about these kinds of books. She would have liked the Midnight, Texas books.

I watched a little bit of TV. What’s a little? Season two of School Spirits. Two episodes of Ghosts. Or or two episodes of SNL. Probably more than I watched for the first seven weeks of the semester.

I brought a bunch of recycling to the recycling center.

And, other than my everyday tasks, such as making meals and doing laundry, that’s about it. Or at least that’s all I recall. Oh! I also attended one or two online meetings.

On Sunday, I did a lot of grading. Not all of it. Not even close. But a lot. More importantly, I wrote eleven problems for a take-home exam [4]. I wrote this musing. Okay, that’s not really true. I wrote most of this musing on Saturday. I finished this musing on Sunday.

At first glance, it was an unsuccessful break. I didn’t build the bookshelves. I didn’t complete important paperwork. I didn’t muse each day. I didn’t complete lots of smaller tasks. I even managed to forget some of the smaller tasks (and even some larger ones).

You know what? I don’t care. I’m going to call it a successful break. Why? Because it ended up being a genuine break, or at least for parts of it did. I rested. I read. I watched TV. I spent time with friends. I cooked. I slept.

Perhaps I should stop overplanning my breaks [5,6].

Postscript: I said I’d end on a positive note. I think I did.

Postscript: It’s almost April. I’ll need to spend next weekend on paperwork and more.

[1] That doesn’t quite have the ring of Friday the 13th, does it? Oh well, Friday the 13th fell on a Thursday in March.

[2] Nope, I’m not going to try to explain those.

[3] Back in my early days at Grinnell, we somehow sent a student to a master’s program in CS who had only taken CSC-151 and the old CSC-152 (very similar to CSC-207). They told me that CSC-152 better prepared them for grad school than most of their CS-major cohort. I’m not sure what that says.

[4] For context: I use a mastery grading approach for CSC-151. Hence, of those eleven problems, five are on topics that students have already had a take-home exam on (one is even a near duplicate from that first take-home exam) and three are on topics students have already been quizzed on. Hence, for some students, the take-home exam will have only three short problems.

[5] I can’t tell if Michelle’s spirit is laughing at that comment or saying I’ve been telling you that for more than thirty-five years.

[6] Historically, my post-spring-break musings have been titled something like Spring broken. I’m glad not to feel that way this year.

Version 1.0 of 2025-03-23.