Welcome to Spring Break. I’m tempted to just post that last sentence and nothing else every day this week… But I don’t roll that way, especially when I see an unanswered question: What does “time off” mean to you? So that’s today’s reflection prompt: What does “time off” mean to you?

“Time off,” on the surface means that whatever is ones primary daily activity, such as going to school or going to work, is withdrawn and one is free to do anything else with their “time off.” For me, I turned off my alarm clock and stay up way too late Sunday night. So, first “time off” activity is trying to rest up more and not be so “on the clock.” But at the same time, while I’m not spending 7-hours for the next five days managing a roomful of students, I know that I need to plan as much as possible the daily schedule/curriculum for my three classes to help make the last ten-weeks of the school year function as smoothly as possible. Whatever time I invest this week will help deal with the challenges of the last ten weeks. Also, because I am planning on transitioning to different employment at the end of the school year, I need to put considerable effort into communicating with possible employers and collaborators. And I want to take all of the curriculum that I’ve been creating for the past couple of years and archive it so that I have full access to my work after I hand over the keys (and the passwords). So, in this particular case, “time off” isn’t just about sleeping in and/or watching Facebook or YouTube video ad infinitum. Also, I’ve never been particularly good about taking time off, unless I’m traveling. So hopefully my students are sleeping and spending the week playing, so that they can be all grumpy and sleep-deprived because they’ve adjusted to not getting up early and not having to shuffle from class to class every 50-minutes, 7-hours a day over 5 day work weeks. Yay, education in 2023! Hope you’re having a great week however you are spending your precious allotment of time.