Trust

One of the most stressful things in this job, and I assume, in every job, is when you can't rely on the people around you to do their job. That, luckily, is not a problem this semester.

There is now a group working together who understand the importance of sharing, doing their job, and being flexible about covering for each other. This means that not only is the day-to-day work easier on all, it also means that we can plan in certain luxuries, such as a three-week protected period for each of us, when we don't have any teaching or administrative duties towards the study. Time for research, writing, updating - anything we feel we need to do of those things which we feel can't be done while we are running back and forth between teaching, supervising and administrating.

We can do this and trust the rest of the staff to cover for us without trying to make us feel guilty afterwards. Of course, there may be other things intruding, but it is my responsibility to say: "no, I can't be at that board meeting, it's my protected period" when that becomes an issue.

And now, I am going to trust my colleagues even more. I am going to go home and stay home for two days. I will clean, bake, decorate and bake some more. When I come back I expect that the only thing I need to do is to proof-read the four (4) course plans I am ultimately responsible for this spring. Two hours ago I thought I was going to faint from stress. 30 minutes with the group I am working with, and the stress level is WAY down. Hopefully justified.

So that's the message of the day: you need to trust somebody. Lucky you if people you can trust also happens to be people you work with.