The Planning

The last month or so may be what is now commonly called, “A Teaching Moment”. Or maybe we can summarize it with the old Yiddish proverb, Man Plans, God Laughs. So let’s talk about plans, this week. A lot of us are involved in planning, at this time of the year especially. What are we going to do this year? What are the key things we have to get accomplished this year, in order to be invited back next year?

A lot of what we do here is based in the calendar. Schools starts here and it ends here. If you are doing anything that may affect either the students or the faculty or the facilities, it is probably most convenient to do it during a time when school is not actually in session. During Spring Break or at the end of the semester or during the annual holiday close-down.

If you are working on something dealing with the administrative arm or the staff, then there really isn’t a convenient time, but again, because of the product and service we provide, a lot of things will still turn out to be easier if they are done over the various breaks in the actual teaching and learning.

And then we have this last month. Filled with a bad economic news, awful travel news and more than our usual complement of awful weather. Stir in a little illness and maybe a family crisis of one kind or another and you have the makings of a perfect storm of broken plans.

We postponed most of our holiday plans. This was nice because we could. It wasn’t like a space launch where we get one chance today at 4:30 and then don’t get another for six weeks. There was nothing about us all getting together that couldn’t wait.

But there are other events that do have strict timetables. The first day back at work is going to arrive, whether our walks and driveways are good enough to get out and get there or not. Maybe you have a little vacation time banked. Maybe you have to take the bus, a cab or even walk to work if your car won’t start.

I have always been overly cautious. It’s one of the reasons I could promise my wife I would not die in an airplane crash. Nearly every lesson in aviation is backed up by some kind of platitude. One of my favorites: A good pilot may be disappointed in an airplane, but he will never be surprised by one. As I apply full power and gain speed down the runway, you’re looking out the window wondering what your house will look like, from above. I’m thinking “If the engine quits now, I’ll do… X. If the engine quits now, I’ll do… Y. If the engine quits now, I’ll do… Z”. I nearly always have a backup plan or two. What movie do we want to see tonight? What restaurant do we want to visit tonight? On and on….

We got snowed-in and spent three days in the same rooms together. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful, either. We had plenty to keep us occupied. In my little circle, I know people who camped out and worked on major software system upgrades, because they had to get things up and running before that first day back. I know people who had holidays ruined because of illness and because of car trouble. The best of them were able to solider on and at least accomplish something, because they had also sketched out a few alternatives.

So, what is it that you hope to do in the year ahead? Learn a new language? Learn a new program? Learn a new technology? Add something spiffy to all of your Web pages, or take something awful out of all of them? How detailed are your plans, and how detailed are your backups; your Plan-B, Plan-C and so on?

Good luck to you in the year ahead. But remember that things will always go wrong in ways large and small and often in ways we didn’t think we could foresee. I have always maintained that the mark of a true professional is not how they operate when everything is going their way, but how they work when nearly nothing seems to be going right.

It’s a new year. Let’s make the most of it.