(Huge sigh!) Well! My job at school is changing and I’m excited! My school is making the move to a 1-to-1 laptop program for our students and since October, I’ve been campaigning (begging?) to be the technology coordinator for this and I got my wish! So the first part of my job has been to teach the teachers how to use a Macbook Pro – which means I learn stuff myself about a week before I teach it! I’ve been teaching classes 2 days a week and along with that, I started a daily tip blog for them and I spend my days creating “how to” instructions for the next week’s class.
Bottom line….the summer that I THOUGHT would be 100% genealogy research has turned into ZERO percent research! Earlier this week, I realized that while I love what I’m doing and while I’m really excited about this fall, I think I’m going to regret being totally immersed in school work all summer. I can see burnout in my future if I keep up this pace.
This week’s Mac class was the most difficult and time consuming one that I’ll teach all summer, so looking ahead to these last few weeks before school kicks in again shows me that I have opportunities to research if I force myself to take the time. It sounds ridiculous to me that I’m saying that I have to FORCE myself to do research, but it’s true. Because of my new responsibilities at school, the administration has reduced the number of math classes that I’ll be teaching – but one of them is a new class for me. So whenever I sit down with time to work, I’ve been preparing for that.
Today, I will pull out my John Smith notes and head to the library. I usually find that whenever I get back into research after a break, I see everything with new eyes and I find quite a bit of new information, so I’m excited! And it will be a good opportunity to see how my current system of writing notes is working. I SHOULD be able to pick up my information at any time and dive right in – but will I be able to?
Time to find out!
