Sphinx

One of the highlights of last academic year for me was a trip to the University of Toronto at Mississauga, to participate in a student-focused event; a lecture to undergraduates (they’d given me the general theme of ‘Authority and Nonconformity’, which I decided to interpret in terms of the historian’s duty to speak truth to power, Lucian’s idea of the historian as “apolis, autonomos, abasileutos” etc.) and an all-day workshop for postgrads (focusing on Varro, as I always like talking about Varro, and thence on wider themes of economic thought and social science ancient history).
It was great to have a chance to get to know Toronto (especially its coffee shops and brewpubs), as the only other time I’ve visited, I ended up spending all my spare time chatting to a couple of PolSci students and a postdoc. The hospitality offered by UTM colleagues was wonderful – I can especially recommend the amazing Boralia, with dishes based on aboriginal and C18-19 recipes, and the range of ciders on offer at Herfathers (though all a little strange to West Country tastes, due to the lack of proper cider apples in Ontario and hence the lack of tannin) – but it was all amazing. I was also impressed by the new hi-tech teaching rooms being developed at UTM, and their potential – especially as the one I saw was not an actual finished teaching room, but one of two temporary ones set up so staff could experiment with different technology and arrangements to see which worked best, before making a final decision about the design of the actual rooms in the building under construction. Such a difference from the usual “here’s the technology we now expect you to use, so get on with it” approach.

What most sticks in the memory, however – well, besides a particularly spectacular aged smoked beer – is the enthusiastic engagement of the students, especially at the undergraduate lecture; the discussion afterwards could have gone on for another hour, if we hadn’t had to move on to the reception, and the conversations during the reception could have gone on all evening if we hadn’t been heading off to dinner. And that’s where I started to think of this post in terms of the theme of excess and rationing. I tried to talk to everyone who wanted to talk, and to engage with their ideas and questions as they deserved – but I’m well aware that those two aims aren’t always balanced very well, not least given my tendency to embark on stream-of-consciousness mini-lectures in response to interesting questions. And all this depends on people pushing themselves forward; if anyone was waiting for a quiet moment to get my attention, they were probably out of luck.

It’s a matter of self-discipline, I suppose; if I was running a seminar, or chairing a session, I’d be much stricter in ensuring that everyone got a chance to speak and no one (especially me) talked too much – even with the risk that interesting ideas didn’t get discussed in sufficient depth. But of course the situations aren’t identical; there, the conversations can continue in the following lesson or informally (and I’d like to think that maybe some people in Toronto were still talking about some of this stuff after I left…), whereas this was a matter of my trying to give them their money’s worth, on a one-night-only basis, and not being sure whether to prioritise quantity or quality…

It’s an eternal problem – as is evident from the fact that I’m only now managing to finish writing this blog post, six months later. We have only so much time and energy, only so much capacity for attention (around the time of my trip, there were debates about the impact of social media in consuming too much of that, with damaging consequences), only so much to offer. I’ve spent much of this year feeling permanently over-committed and under-powered, so that everything is being done last-minute or late and I never seem to catch up properly on sleep or energy. I don’t for a moment imagine that I’m alone in this.

Some of it is externally imposed: tighter turnarounds on marking, for example, with ratcheting expectations on feedback and more time-consuming online systems. Most of it, however, is voluntary – or at least exists in a strange space where one is expected to do *something*, but there’s no clear indication of how much is enough or too much, or whether it’s the right sort of thing or not. The temptation is to try to do as much as possible, to ensure that expectations are met – but at the risk of not doing any of it well enough. But the alternative may be equally undesirable; stop doing things you actually want to do, to ensure that you do the things you *have* to do (or suspect you have to).

Take impact and engagement, for example. This is something that I’m wholeheartedly committed to, rather than an externally-imposed obligation; I have lots of different things I’d like to do, some of which I’ve talked about on this blog. There is a general approval of such activities within universities, so I can justify time spent of them as at least partly ‘work’; but at the same time there is an effective hierarchy of activities – crudely, is this going to contribute to an Impact Case Study or not? – and, crucially, approval of such activities in the abstract doesn’t necessarily translate into giving time for them, or allowing other things to be dropped.

So, I end up pursuing some things that wouldn’t be my own priority, because Case Study, and don’t pursue things that I’d really like to, because Not Case Study and time and energy are finite resources. And I feel conflicted about things like this blog and the @Thucydiocy account on the Twitter, because they’re never going to make a Case Study but I don’t want to give them up but they threaten at times to become a burden. But where else could I indulge in this sort of self-pity..?

There are similar pressures when it comes to research, lectures, publications etc. There are things I want to do which, realistically, are never likely to be REF-able, given the criteria for higher star ratings; they’ll be too slight or too discursive or too fuzzily experimental. My answer has always been to do them anyway, as well as the stuff that could be REF-able – but that’s what leads to over-commitment and exhaustion, and to a decline in the quality of everything, REF-able or not.

A particular issue here is the role of invitations, and how I respond to them. Basically, I have always tended to accept almost everything; partly because I often find it stimulating to develop something on the basis of someone else’s idea (which may reflect a certain lack of confidence in my own ideas…), partly because I feel a certain obligation to help with a project when I’ve been asked to do so, and partly because I’m so flattered that anyone has thought of me. Plus, in the case of lectures and conferences, it’s wonderful to have a chance to visit new places, and maybe I won’t get another chance.

It’s all too easy to accept an invitation for six months or a year hence, since that’s plenty of time in which to imagine the backlog of other commitments being cleared. The reality is that this almost never happens; there’s just the constant stress of trying to finish one overdue thing so I can get on with the next thing before I have to start on the conference paper – which then becomes another thing added to the to-be-written-up list in another six months. And as a result no one gets the best of me; everything is a last-minute improvisation, relying on some underdeveloped but interesting-enough ideas as a substitute for really solid research.

I think I have finally reached the point of feeling – not just knowing – that this is Too Much, sufficiently for me actually to change my behaviour rather than just complain about feeling tired all the time. If someone invites me to speak or write something, they deserve better than they’re currently getting, in terms of quality and, for publications, punctual delivery. Of course, what this requires – besides resisting the temptation of attractive foreign locations – is the development of enough self-confidence to turn down invitations without fearing that no one else will ever invite me to do anything, and at the same time a tempering of the arrogant assumption that I’m necessarily the best person for something. Yes, I’m going to be saying no more often, including to things I would actually like to do – but rather than feeling guilty at disappointing the person who’s asked me, I can make it a positive experience by thinking of the other people who could do it just as well if not better.

Maybe this will give me more time and energy for the things I really want to do, not just what other people want me to do. Maybe I’ll just do fewer things in a less slapdash manner. In the meantime, I’m just landing in Belgrade for another conference…