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Teaching Tip: Avoiding End of Year E-Mail Burnout

I don't know about you, but the fall semester seems to end in high gear at high
speed, more careening to an end than coming to a stop. After the Thanksgiving
break, there's that first discombobulated class back, when students seem still
to be sleeping off the turkey and seem a bit dazed to find themselves awake in
the classroom again. In that first post-Thanksgiving class, we teachers either
try to reconnect to frames of references last made nearly a week ago or try to
salvage lesson plans that for one reason or another always seem to sputter after
the break. So the class is often a lost class, one of recovery, not of
advancement, of adjustment, not progress.  And then after that lost class? Four
or five classes remain at most, a few hectic weeks, and then bam!--the semester
ends in a flurry of final exams, portfolios, conferences, and an pleas for help.

And there's so much to do to get through all this. So much committee work to
wrap up, portfolios or papers to collect, read and evaluate, course grades to
figure, final exam sessions to ready, and increased social and family demands
that come during this holiday season. We all have at least one or two students
who suddenly realize time's up, no more room for extensions, that things are due
in all four or five classes that they have, and who come to us begging for some
kind of help or mercy. Most other students, even those in good standing, start
to stress too, and if we let it, their panic can infect our outlook.

The coming weeks are a time when we can all use a personal assistant, a personal
shopper, and on some days a clone so we can be at two places at once.

Since I haven't perfected the cloning thing yet, and so can't send directions on
how to replicate yourself so that you can have your own exceedingly attractive
and especially bright personal assistant, let me at least offer you some end of
year stress and e-mail workload management tips.

The Three R's of Email: Reduce, Reuse, and Refuse

Reduce
Reduce email to your inbox by setting nonessential discussion lists to 'no
mail. When you joined the lists you are on, you should have received details
on how to change your list settings. Find that message and look up the
instructions for setting the list to no mail. Setting to 'no mail' is also a
good thing to do if you're going to be away from email for a while, like over
the holiday break when you whisk off to Aruba for a month of tanning and drinks
with umbrellas.

Reduce your inbox so you can see new mail more quickly. Big inboxes with lots of
messages just visually make things look overwhelming. Use folders to sort
messages from specific senders, from specific lists, or by specific discussion
topics (so your curriculum committee email might go into one folder instead of
always sitting in your inbox). Delete old stuff.

Reduce the time you devote to class email. Remember when you first started
responding to student writing, when you wrote comments on those first batch of
student essays, and were shocked to find that you sometimes spent up to an hour
per 4 page double-spaced paper? You had to learn to set limits on time, which
forced limits on length and quantity of the comments you made. You learned to
give effective feedback without going overboard. Ditto with managing email. Set
time aside for it, and prioritize your reading and responding in the parameters
of that time.

Too often we think that because email is available 24/7 and literally delivered
at light-speed that we have to be available 24/7 and respond at warp speed (or,
if Star Trek's not your thing, make-the-jump-to-hyperspace speed). We don't need
to do this. In fact we shouldn't.  We should set limits on the hours and
priorities on the subjects to which we'll respond. We should, for example, tell
students that an email sent Friday afternoon not might get read till Monday
morning.

Reuse
Reuse old messages that still apply. I have one that says, "For any questions
about due dates, see the class Web site."  I sometimes reuse answers right away.
That is, when a student emails me directly, I often send a copy of the reply
back to the entire class via our class email list. No need to rewrite an answer
over again.

Refuse
Refuse to answer email outside your set hours. Treat email like office hours.
Conversely, after you set those hours for answering student email, schedule them
in your appointment book and don't give them up.  Everyone thinks because email
is flexible that working in and on it can be flexible as well. But taking that
approach leads to time creep, where other things intrude. We protect our face to
face office hours and keep them for our students; do the same with your email
office hours. And refuse, except for emergencies, to let them go. And if you do
let them go, reschedule them in your appointment book. Don't just say you'll do
them later. Later can too easily become anytime.

Refuse to log in sometimes. Have days or parts of days where you don't sit at a
computer, let alone log into email or class Web sites.  It's hard, if you do log
in and take a look, to keep from responding sometimes. If you respond to email
when you said you wouldn't, especially if the response goes to a class list, it
sends a message to your students that despite what you say, your time is always
theirs. So avoid the trap by staying off line.

One more R tip for you. Relax and recharge. Find time every day to walk without
a destination in mind. You might have to walk to and from class, up and down
stairs, from car to office. But if you can just find time to walk for the sake
of walking, you'll find it relaxing. Walking is also a good way to write and
plan. It's not like you'll be walking with your brain turned off. You can think
about a class, compose a memo in your head, mentally rehearse a discussion
you'll need to have with a student. But somehow, there's magic to walking. To
getting outside the office, away from the screen, away from the phone, away from
the colleagues who want you to fix their computer for them. Go out and get
oxygen, or what passes for oxygen in your city, into your lungs.

Then after the walk? Treat yourself to a double-fudge ice-cream sundae or
something equally as healthy.

In the meantime, enjoy your holidays, and best wishes in the coming weeks.

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