I’m pretty aware of the idea of transition costs, and I’ve experienced them first-hand quite a lot throughout college. Moving into a new apartment comes with many potential transition costs. So does getting a new computer, or changing operating systems. These are all costs that I have some practice handling, and they don’t tend to bother me. In fact, the prospect of handling them can be exciting. But recently, I’ve been dealing with mental transition costs.
I’m teaching another summer camp through my work. Earlier in July I taught a camp for rising 6th graders in the afternoon for a couple weeks. It was pretty fun overall. In terms of the subjective experience of going somewhere else to work for the afternoon, it was nice to take a long lunch, drive out to the academy, and know that once class was over I got to go home for the day.
The proverbial script has been flipped on me, and my current camp — with twice as many kids, each one year younger than the previous camp I taught — takes place in the morning. This drastically changes my experience, causing this past week to drag on. One reason for this is that teaching in the morning session doesn’t jive with my typical work schedule. I like to work broadly in a window of 6:30 am – 3:30 pm when possible; getting the day done early provides the perception that I have much more “day” available to myself. I also tend to work best with the most focus right away in the morning.
However, the class starts at 9 in the morning, and I need to leave my apartment around 8 am to arrive in time to prepare before any students arrive. To still leave work at a justifiably early time in the afternoon, I work in the morning from home before leaving to teach. This has a psychological effect of making the day feel much longer.
The other main part of the drain is the psychological transition cost of going from teaching back to the office. I have minimal teaching experience as a teacher of record, so there is a lot for my brain to process while I teach. I need to consciously form the habits necessary for students to have a positive time in class. There are many little things a teacher can do correctly or incorrectly that change the subconscious experience a student has. Working on these takes a lot of mental energy, and requires a different frame of mind than I need at work, where I’m with other adults.
Once I’ve expended that mental energy, and have established this very adult role for over three hours, it’s very difficult to move back into a normal working environment. It’s much easier to give “what’s left” to the students, then go home at the end of the day, than it is to pace oneself in an ill-defined way, then rush back to work and try to focus there.
The issue is that students provide the stimulus required for certain processes. Whether it’s questions about what we’re learning, enthusiasm for an activity, or distractions that need to be addressed, I have the students demanding my attention. So, the part of me that needs to remain focused is not engaged, nor does it need to be; my brain is already directed at something and I couldn’t be distracted if I wanted to be. The other section of my brain that needs to think carefully about how I physically move around, how I talk, and other minutiae is on overdrive, causing mental drain since I’m just not used to it.
Then, I go back to work. I don’t have anything demanding my attention in the same way. I have distinct pieces of work I must accomplish, but they require the focusing part of my brain to reengage, while I can let my guard drop with regards to physical presence and speech. Switching between these states of mind still takes energy, exacerbating how tired I feel, which then makes it even harder to focus on my projects at work.
Now that I’ve had the time to sit down and process these transition costs, I feel I can better prepare myself for the upcoming week of camp. It also helps that I don’t have as many things in the evening this week (which caused more problems last week.) But the main thing these thoughts have provided is an understanding that I can teach, as long as I don’t need to do much immediately after. I’ll be teaching a 5th grade class all year, but it’s one day a week in the evenings. I feel confident that will be far more agreeable than the current situation.