October 31, 2026 – Reflecting on Workload

I’m not sure why I have chosen a food pic of delicious Miku sushi, but I think it attempts to depict what I am going to describe in this blog post. On this dish, there is an ebi sushi, a spicy tuna sushi, and salmon sushi. They are packaged somewhat the same and presented beautifully on the plate. However, their origins, how they are prepared, and how they taste are unique and different.

My job assignment this term is composed of three different components as well: (1) teaching EDUC 394; (2) supervising for final practicum; and (3) research. All three areas I love to do… but all three components require a different type of thinking, different time commitments, and different inputs and outputs. During my time at the university, I had often had two of the three, either teaching and practicum or teaching and research. This term, I have all three activated along with service work as well. Service has always been an underpinning of my work and often recommended to reduce my service contributions as I may be exceeding the 20% of my workload to service. That said, the teaching and practicum are part of my 70%, and I have 10% for research as a term member.

One of the things that I love about my work at the university is the autonomy and agency to determine how the courses are taught, what research you engage in, and the service choose to be involved in. For practicum, you are assigned a number of students, but my role is specifically titled, the Practice Evaluator, so my role is to “evaluate” student teachers during their 10-week practicum. Although I love all three aspects of teaching, practicum, and research, I am finding that each of these areas require different thinking and energy from me. It’s like juggling three balls in addition to service work in the background. I love all three. I love to teach, I love to see teacher candidates putting what they have learned together into practice, and I love learning via research that involves teamwork, writing, and conferences.

One the one hand, I feel very lucky to be doing all of these things in my career. On the other hand, I need to figure out how to switch gears effectively and efficiently so that I can maximize my work/thinking time without burning out or doing a poor job at what I would like to (and need to) do and accomplish. It’s a challenge, for sure. I am also balancing wellness, sustainability, and joy in what I do as well. I can’t get too caught up on the details, but I do need to be patient and compassionate with myself moving forward, and being reasonable of what can get done and still get 8-hours of sleep while eating balanced meals, etc. Sometimes I make mistakes. Sometimes I will be late on some tasks. And, sometimes, things may not get done in a timely manner. My ego will have to suck that up. What I do know is, I am trying and doing my best. That’s all I have. HAPPY HALLOWEEN. 🙂