Work:life balance,...just how elusive is it?

Week 2 and there's more than a little irony associated with my being asked to comment about work:life balance. There is a moral, I believe, to be learned by the end of this long effort.  Of all of the issues that I've struggled with my entire teaching career, this is amongst the biggest...maybe THE biggest.  Me, my character, is to a very large extent defined by what I am able to achieve/do/complete/whatever at work.  I'm a 50's kind of fella; of that, there can be no doubt. Workplace loyalty, being perpetually present and available, long hours, doing management's bidding (...not without question though. Of note, I have been on strike twice in my life and held a long and varied assortment of union and association positions..perhaps that's why I'm so popular..?!)...anyway, you've probably got a good idea about the workaholic that I am and you'd likely be right.

That said, not having a good work:life balance in the past has cost me...big. And it's even difficult for me to manage even today.  I judge myself to be successful, very successful.  Two undergraduate degrees, a graduate degree, 2 apprenticeships, and as of late, a diploma (in brewing) so I could continue to be useful in my current position.  After 30+ years in horticulture and agriculture, I switch gears and build a brewery, introduce a brewing program into the college, coordinate it and try and teach in a field that was for all intents and purposes, completely foreign to me. Brutal but incredibly exciting and 'accomplishing' and achieving new success doesn't begin to describe it. And we are successful, but not without a huge cost.

But, on the other side of the coin is my family. Six kids, second wife...missed out on a lot with my first 3 kids (daughters) due to full-time work plus a highly successful business,.. now trying to make up for past mistakes with my 3 younger sons...Scouts, karate, pond hockey, a loving, beautiful wife, building a life here in Alberta (still feels new despite 11 years being here) plus our past life and home in Quebec which we still own and retreat to each summer, for a while at least. Then juggling finances...you all know what I'm talking about and finally, developing a heart issue partly through some vile and evil bug that tried to take me down plus major painful, disfiguring just-plain-negative issues at work during the past two years.  A stint in  hospital, medication, being told I would croak if I didn't listen...it's all true.  So, as I survey all before me, what have I wrought and learned?  I remember a former student, Sue, a long time ago it now seems commenting that, 'Peter, you live to work, while I choose to work to live,' as I was giving her the gears for failing to submit 'something' on-time.  Methinks it must be somewhere in-between.  Just like nature: nurture, right?

Speak up..don't accept it, but before opening your mouth, make sure that you're being reasonable and be held reasonably accountable.  Learn to accept that you simply cannot be all things to all people, I suspect, not even part of the time...for me, my competitiveness and need to achieve/change/succeed needs to be balanced against other more important things. Be of service but recall that you get but one life.  My busy life, daytime and night-time, isn't going to change soon, so there's some measure of acceptance that I simply have to go with.  What have I realized as I take this course...the scheduling is off...I'm a coordinator with 4 courses (2 brand, spanking new ones) this semester, working in a not yet two-year old program that still needs lots of tweaking.  I'll carry on but my failure to appreciate just how rigorous my job is means that I won't get as much out of this short course as I wanted...but, maybe that's okay?  The content is always going to be available for me for future reflection, so I refuse to sweat it.  Fortunately, this course also a distraction, something new and different, so I find, despite my time limitations and all else, it satisfies a different need of mine.  Good. My overly optimistic timetable for study and submission of requirements is now by the wayside...change has come and I'm fine with it.  I figure that if I don't fret about that which may have been impossible to begin with, then I'll find a way.  By now, it turns out that I have more than a vague notion of what work:life balance is...so, I'll do what I can do and that shall have to suffice...not to the point of failure, but there are always costs, opportunity costs, associated with every choice that you make.  Just be prepared to live with and accept them...it's the choices you make that are most important.  I'll set a new and improved timetable for myself too, but it's not etched in stone...do what you can while you can.  Increase your resilience if it's not already there...just like toughening up your skin so that you can stand up and play to the madding crowd, your stamina will just have to ramp up.  Or, you'll determine that the job is not for you.  This isn't about the money, your early years will likely, if you're keeping count, have you making less than minimum wage.  Sorry, but very likely true.  It really is about being satisfied. If you aren't satisfied a good part of the time, then by extension, your work:life balance that we're all attempting to strive for just won't exist.  It is indeed a yardstick.

Thinking back about a Teacher.

...my first task....come up with a teaching example from the past that got etched into my mind as an example of good practice.  This should be pretty easy, right?  I mean, I'm surrounded by people whom teach a good part of every day and whom presumably honed their teaching skill through any number of first class terrors, multiple mind-numbing deliveries of Power Points, trying to master a subject and look very erudite, sometimes the night before teaching students that same information. Then there are Lord knows how many not-so eagerly anticipated course evaluations...and the myriad of puzzled faces on students whom just ain't getting it. We're a proficient bunch, we is!

Maybe this isn't so easy? But I have my favourites; that is, a couple of teachers across my educational career who just managed to do a fine job of helping us all get it each and every day.  I think especially of Dr. E.C. Lougheed or 'Sam' as he insisted we call him..I see him now, all those years ago at the U of Goo (University of Guelph for those sheltered souls...), teaching us about the finer points of Post-harvest Handling and Storage of Fruits and Vegetables.  Riveting. No, really, food preservation is just as important as growing the stuff.  I mean, what's the point of growing it if you can't keep it, even for a little while? But I digress. What I remember about Sam was that he was engaged...freakishly, almost excessively, feverishly in a way, but engaged he was. His calling, his love for what he was expert in, truly expert in, simply made you feel privileged for witnessing him in his element.  You knew you were getting something special when he was in 'mode.' The depth of his understanding, his tolerance for the vast majority of students some only vaguely with any notion, sitting there rapt. He was typically and characteristically unfettered. And he enabled each student by making sure that every student could find a way in, as it were.  No Power Points, I don't even recall any slides or plastic overheads, just Sam talking, engaging and making sure that we all felt a part of the class that day. No real or at least discernible pressure either...just this jolly, easy-to-laugh Konrad Lorenz type figure, the quintessential university professor.  And everyone has something to say in his class...no pressure, no problem.

Makes me smile as I recall him all these years later.  Yet my best, my favourite, memories of him as a teacher, an educator aren't confined to the classroom.  You see, Sam was accessible. Imagine, a teacher whom had the time, found the time to answer no end of what I'm sure upon reflection must have been some fairly imbecile questions. Every question merited his attention. And every question answered in a manner that left me with a yearning for more.  Damn that infernal, stupid upside down pyramid of knowledge!...learning leaves you realizing how much you really don't know or understand.  I hate that!

Thank-you Sam for that gift and every perspective ... plus each and every jolly moment because that's what it and they were.  Gifts. Indeed, his example is likely the example I aspire to follow most today...passion, availability, inclusive, humour, ever-learning, always striving to disseminate that knowledge that'll get someone, somewhere...still working on the patience bit but it's coming!  I said, it's coming!  All aspects that are laudable, but all non-confining enough to allow each person to be an individual because that's okay.  That's it.  Before each class, I should think of Sam..how would he do it?