By Rick Cleary

Here’s a description of a student most of us have had at least once, and maybe once each semester. The student gets off to a good start, submitting homework on time and doing well on the first few assessments. But not too far into the semester, they start to miss a few classes, and their work suffers. As a faculty member, we do the things we know we should do: send encouraging emails asking them to come see us, then follow up with a note to their advisor, and perhaps send an official warning if their likelihood of passing the course seems to be falling. Finally, the student comes to office hours at a quiet time! We ask about their well-being and talk to them about the strategies that might get them back on track. The student says, “Yes, I’m excited! I’m going to come to all the classes now and study really hard and make up the missed work and do really well on the next project and…”

This sounds great, but as experienced teachers we think, “How about you just come to class tomorrow and do the homework due Thursday? That’s the first step that we need right now.” Because we know that if the student sets ambitious goals, as soon as it is clear they won’t meet them in full, they might give up entirely.

Most of us have been in this situation of working with students who set unrealistic expectations. However, we can be very slow to recognize this tendency in ourselves. I suggest that many academics, and perhaps especially mathematicians, are subject to setting the bar too high. A November 2021 discussion of time management on the MAA Connect forum prompted me to write down a few ideas that we might follow to avoid this barrier to productivity.

I frame these here as possible New Year’s resolutions… who says you have to make those on a particular date? You can call them “new semester resolutions” if you like! All have been useful to me in my career as a department chair, Associate Dean, MAA Officer, Committee Chair, spouse, father, and friend.

1. Lose any tendency to be a perfectionist! Mathematicians love precision. Many small tasks we are asked to do are really just ‘checking a box’ and should not get time devoted to them. A favorite example from my years as a department chair: The Provost writes and asks for a one-page ‘what’s new in your department’ memo to put in the materials the Trustees will get at their upcoming meeting. Well, the trustees get a HUGE packet and the chance they read our page carefully is very, very small. So, we don’t want it to be wrong, but there’s no need to form a committee or check with every colleague. Make a bullet point list of big initiatives, top research hits for the faculty, and always end with a “we could sure do more with more full-time staff!” just in case they read it. Thirty-minute job, at most, and the Provost’s staff is thrilled when you answer quickly!

2. Small steps are big steps… get started! When you are behind on a task or a project, make some small step, especially if it acknowledges stakeholders/co-authors. Sending an email saying, “I just re-read our project so far and I have a couple of ideas and I’ll try to work on it this weekend,” can get the ball rolling. This applies especially to work/life balance issues. I know people who bring their exercise gear to work all the time with intentions of doing a scheduled cross fit workout and then doing a run; but they get busy and don’t do anything. Take a 15-minute walk instead of going from big plans to nothing.

3. Give yourself credit for what you do that you didn’t know you had to do! This was especially useful during my time as chair/Associate Dean; but I think all faculty can benefit. We all have things that come up during the day; urgent things or pleasant digressions, but they still take time. I had a student not show up for an exam in the fall—someone who seems to be struggling—so I wrote the advising office and asked them to check in on her. I do keep a “to do” list in my calendar, and this wasn’t something I was expecting to do. But I wrote it on my list, and checked it off as done the same day. Then I added, “Respond to Deanna with a Math Values blog post” to my list and checked that off a few weeks later. Checking on the student was urgent, writing this note was a pleasant digression, but both are part of my job. Some days when I go home, maybe I’ll have done ten of the twenty things on my list; and eight of those were urgent things that I added during the day. This makes me feel a lot better than two out of twelve!

4. Having always been something of a “mediocratist” rather than a perfectionist, the resolutions above are not so hard for me. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t resolve something for spring 2022. I am aware that the practice of adding things to my ‘done’ list sometimes gives me a false sense of self-satisfaction when I convince myself that I’m making great progress while in fact big, important jobs are still looming ahead. So perhaps the resolution we should all undertake is to balance the urgent and the important, the big steps and the small steps. I hope that colleagues skilled in completing the ‘big jobs’ in a timely fashion will reply with some specific suggestions for me!

Rick Cleary has taught mathematics and statistics at every type of school from algebra at a community college through Ivy League graduate courses. He currently teaches at Babson College in Wellesley, MA, a school with an entrepreneurial mindset that allows him great freedom to teach electives both traditional (Linear Algebra) and innovative (Sports Applications of Mathematics.)