The Briar Patch:  Thorny “Minor” Challenges for Directors

Email!!

Vic Pantesco, Ph.D.

 

The Thorn: It’s just impossible to keep up with it all.

We rely heavily on email in the clinic for announcements (anything from weather closings – it is New Hampshire after all – to conference room locations) and at times for reminders about policies.  There have been occasions where the Director had both need and opportunity to have an email rant, with one rather famous example involving a clinical note being left face up on a copier.

           Of course there is the non-clinic business involving teaching, dissertation advising, national groups, scheduling, family members and school mates from distance or time ago who finally found me. 

           But, it’s not only the volume.

         The email culture has created the implied insult or incompetence in not responding immediately.  The infernal red flag and the ping from the screen announce urgency.  To make it worse, I have noticed a proliferation in email stamped Urgent.  And, often the urgency is a reflection of the sender’s sense of self rather than objective reality. 

           Besides all that, there is the haunting heaviness of the accumulating red flags.  Inevitably the deeper compost pile (John Freeman’s wonderful image) of unattended red flags grows.  Eventually enough time passes so that we hope everyone has forgotten and  hold our breath momentarily, often amidst a purgative frenzy of deletion, and push the button. 

 

To Dull the Pain

I have taken to email voids, - times when I will not read or respond to email, and I write an auto response.  Here is one I use for Wednesdays when I supervise on the cardiac rehab unit: “Usual Wednesday off campus. No email. Vic.”  I do the same for weekends: “Weekend.  Limited-to-no availability to email.”  Now, don’t you feel better just reading that?  I do, each time.

           It has also been useful to solicit others’ help and understanding.  For example, for all my dissertation advisees, I send out an email roughly twice a year:  “Due to volume of email, if you do not hear from me in a reasonable amount of time, please re-send.”  And, so far, “reasonable” has not meant an hour. 

           Above you saw the author John Freeman.  I put his book on my Santa list last year, and Santa came through.  It’s a short, red (appropriately) covered book: The Tyranny of Email.  After I read that I not only felt justified but duty bound to reduce email writing and reading and responding.  This rebellion for me has become a more mature version of running naked at Woodstock .  Dude, it’s good for the soul.

           I know I am speaking out of both sides of my mouth, since I impress upon students it is their professional responsibility to attend to all (my) emails, but that’s one of the perks of being the Director, right? 

           And now, I send this as an attachment in an email of course, to Phyllis, who’d better read it right now!

 

 

Vic getting some much-needed therapy from his rock troll therapist on Block Island, RI