Four and a Half Day Work Week

I get half a day off this week, disguised as a full day off because I worked an additional half day last week and will be doing the rest of the half day as a 12-hour day this week. I am not really looking forward to it, but it is a necessary thing, I guess. It was easier when I had my church job on Wednesday evenings and worked the extra hours during the entire week rather than having to sit through mindless and irrelevant meetings with the faculty. Alas, that is no longer the case since my Thursday evening job has turned into a video interaction, so I don't even have that obligation to keep me safe from the mindlessness. Oh well.

During this four and a half day work week, I am going to be working on a new series of videos reserved completely for my co-workers' use. Since I cannot expand my services into individual sessions due to COVID restrictions and the schedule that I have for groups, I am facing lots of time just sitting being paid for doing nothing. This does not sit well with me. I want to be doing something when I am at work, and I want it to be more than just learning songs to play.

So, my interns and I will be producing videos that offer my co-workers some music enrichment experiences that they can include in their classrooms. Who knows if anyone will ever use them, but at least I will be doing something.

I am asking my interns to generate one video per week while I do three per week. I think this is a fair division of labor as they would usually be doing three individual sessions per week and I would be doing 10 per week. I am letting them select their treatment domains and I will be covering the others. I am hoping that our first videos are posted by next Friday so that we get into the groove of making video content that supports learning.

The problems that I have with this are that I enjoy doing these types of things, but I usually do them at home. I haven't spent time video taping at work, mainly because it is a bit difficult. I have to figure out a way to record things using one laptop and then transfer to another laptop (that in itself isn't very difficult, but it needs to be accomplished) for editing and uploading.

I am going to be spending some time making a task and decision tree this week. I will be going through the process of making a video including recording, editing, and uploading to the server to see how long it will take to do these things. I am hoping to have a task analysis to my interns by Wednesday so they can include this task into their office time.

I am pleased with this brainstorm because it will allow me to be occupied and still doing what I have to do as an essential healthcare worker. It will also give my interns an opportunity to get more comfortable in front of the camera for what I think will be their future - telehealth options available all the time now. It will also give me a curriculum to access if we have to be quarantined.

Speaking of the possibility of quarantining, I made the difficult decision this week to stay here for Christmas rather than heading home for a part of my break in December. I am having to deal with parental disappointment as well as my own disappointment about not being able to go anywhere to escape this place, but making this decision has made my life so much easier! There is no way that I can infect the CA folks with Kansas germs if the Kansas germs stay in Kansas. My father, who still believes that this worldwide pandemic will miraculously disappear the day after the US election, thinks that I am being silly, but I do not share any of his beliefs! 

SO, it is time to get moving into this work week with the full understanding that it will be long, it will be ridiculous, and I will get a long weekend at some point. Oh, make that Friday!