A room with(out) a view

Maybe I revealed this secret in my past post, but I am caught up with grading. Now, that doesn't mean that I don't have grading to do. It just means that what I have isn't late getting back to students, and that I don't currently have any work that needs to get back in an unreasonable amount of time.

That does not mean that I am not busy.

It means that every time I sit to grade, I am working on a very big pile of work that I consider in the order in which it needs to be done.

This week I find myself uneasy admitting to others that I am not under some huge pile of work.

It sounds like some sort of backdoor brag, but it isn't. It's nothing to brag about, but damn if the looks teachers give me doesn't shut me the hell up.

A co-worker told me this week that people are afraid of the hard workers, and that I will actually be asked to do less if I am the kind of person who gets work done. While it sounds NUTS, I actually do understand what she meant.

The world seems to expect that every task will be completed with things still left undone. Complete no longer means the whole thing is done; it just means that you have come to a point where you have stopped working on it.

I'm gonna call bullshit on the world if that really is the case.

Is there a place where I can go where the fact that I am a job-completer will actually see me happier because I can finish instead of hiding and pretending that is now who I am?

Recently, I saw an ad for a job. The museum is hiring what are essentially fund-raising tour guides. They need someone with a BA and good communication skills as well as an interest in Art. For longer than I should have, i pondered that maybe this was the career change I had been waiting for.

How would that look on my CV? "10 years teaching post-secondary education, now employed as museum tour-guide." Would that raise some eyebrows?

Personally, I think that is the story worth telling at this point in my life.

There is just under a week of classes left and then a few days of exams. My desk is not bending under the weight of ungraded work, but my eyes are starting to look out the window and wonder.

Wait, my office doesn't have a window.

Back to work.