thinkfetti

For anyone working in academia, there is little to compare with summer break. Especially given the progressive insanity that manifests during the spring semester, the accumulation of fatigue, frustrations, and stupidities that are never quite resolved during the all-to-brief winter holiday, the ending of all the noise at the end of term is welcomed with silent fanfare.

The break is never really to be identified with “summer vacation,” which is what we enjoyed as students, particularly before we had to have our own incomes. The professional academic is generally active year-round, but the end of the spring term is when the university exhales - the students leave, and the faculty leave or at least aren’t always present. There is work to be done, yes: papers we meant to write, programs or concerts to organize, courses for the fall to plan…but there is a phase change in the daily schedule, a melting of regular deadlines into freeform.

On the downside, now we must come to terms with all of our scripted procrastination (”when the summer comes, then I’ll have time to work on that paper/presentation/course”). But if that’s a downside, I’ll happily accept downsides more frequently. Almost all of us work too hard all the time (I can think of exceptions easily, but even thinking of these people is not something I want to do during my summer), but I am happy to practice not working as hard, and this is the time of year I have given myself permission to practice.

So much of my reading is “constellation-ally” self-organizing: I have at any one time some well-defined themes of interest and some fuzzy themes just below my conscious awareness, and in my reading I pick up books in different disciplines without staying in any one discipline or genre.

The “sense” in my variety of reading selections comes - emerges - later. It’s an experience of definite, luminous (illuminating) connections arising between areas that seemed related before, where the relationships before were vague and incapable of generating new ideas.

Some of my reading now is in areas of leadership, problem-solving, intelligence vs. mindfulness, and fertile connections between Eastern and Western thought. I was reading in several of these areas in 2000 when I first started exploring ways to model creativity, and I have experienced a lot to enrich my thinking in this constellation of ideas and themes since then, particularly through failures and successes in teaching and leading.

It looks as though I may have some opportunities to reflect on these connections in the coming months, especially in the context of a new problem-solving course I’ll be developing (more on that later). One thing that I anticipate and hope will allow time and some mental headroom for this reflection is the end of the semester next week!