MindSpinner

This is a busy time of year, not one conducive to writing or indeed to thinking of anything but the to-do list. Conquering the to-do list is something like trying to put out wildfires with an arsonist on the loose. The yearbook’s done, but the list of add-ons has to be double-checked and the nameplates ordered. (I had sent a list, but it never made it to the right desk at the publishing plant.) Books are coming in soon, and those that are paid for have to be distributed while payment for orders with outstanding balances has to be collected, and another 60 or so books sold so that we can actually pay for the publication of the book. Arrangements for formal portraits of upcoming seniors need to be finalized. As senior sponsor, I’m in charge of both prom and graduation. I shouldn’t neglect to mention the senior luncheon, baccaulaureate arrangements, the senior picnic, and heaven knows what details I haven’t even envisioned yet. Let’s see, oh yes - I need to put together the senior class and yearbook budgets for next year, help hire a literacy coach for a Striving Readers grant for which I’m the District Contact, and complete 12 hours professional development before May 15, mostly in planning new curriculum for next year as we implement year-long block English classes. I must also whip up a course outline for Senior Topics, a course which has come into being within the last two days, replacing Speech and Drama, simply because I’m the only teacher who can teach something for the seniors third period. (Another teacher will teach drama another period. This is a tiny high school - scheduling is a formidable challenge.) I’ve got to remember, too, without fail, that updated scanner software has to be ordered on May 31, the first day the upgrade is out and the last day certain grant money can be used to that end (also the day of graduation practice). Teaching and paper grading, the concoction and photocopying of exams are also supposed to happen, of course, and the grass still has to be mowed at home and laundry washed and dishes done. I’ve really got to get my new license plate screwed on to the back of the car, too, before I get pulled over. I’ll be darned if I don’t have to buy some sort of dress I can wear to the prom, too, unless I want to make an entrance in one of my daughter’s party dresses, in which case I’d look as if I were misguidedly trying to seduce somebody.

In short, my brain is brimful of stuff to remember, and any number of systems for keeping up with it all are just too time-consuming and unwieldy to manage efficiently (including the Hipster PDA, however elegant a concept it may be). Hence once in a while I forget something, despite copious list-making. Or I wake up at 4:30 a.m. with a start, thinking, “Do hours parents put in working on Project Prom count as volunteer hours I’m supposed to report?” Orchestrating constant task triage siphons far too much mental energy.

I need an instantaneously updatable to-do list that alerts me as to what needs doing when, just to let my over-taxed memory off the hook a bit, and so I’m thinking hard about buying a PDA. I loved keeping an action list on AquaMinds NoteTaker, and that worked well, except that it doesn’t issue reminders. But I’m not carrying the new laptop (a gift) back and forth to school as I did the last one, and so NoteTaker can’t come with me until the Windows version debuts. (Even then I’d have to talk a school tech into installing it for me.) A computer-based program is less than ideal, anyway, because I need all sorts of information available (and editable) with me on the go, all the time.

The conundrum that annoys me is that I took on certain extra tasks in order to earn a salary on par with what I had at my last school (you know, before fuel prices went up). If I turn around and buy a Palm Tungsten E2, bring the kids meals I can pick up on the way home all too often, and buy a dress, then I’m spending a fair-sized chunk of what I was trying to earn.

The students are quite worth the investment of extra time and effort in and of themselves, and the school, too, but that truth in which I fervently believe does not make bills go away when I fritter away a chunk of the stipend to make life more manageable.