“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
--Niels Bohr, Nobel Laureate in Physics
About The Dean's List
Hey ARC colleagues!
Whether you're a dean or not—if you work as an administrator in higher ed, you're part of a club. One thing all the members of that club have in common is a gargantuan to-do list governed by intense timelines and an overwhelming number of moving parts. We keep our heads down and power through — I mean who has time to talk about how we get it all done, much less how we feel about trying to get it all done?
Lockdown got me thinking a lot about both those things. And then I started wondering how you all think about those things. So I started asking questions. The Dean's List is a collection of those answers, along with some resources and maybe a little inspiration from others. Hopefully, you find something that helps you get it done, or at least something that lowers your blood pressure for a minute.
Here's how it works:
I'll interview anyone who is willing to participate. No pressure!
I ask everyone the same 20 questions about the tools and techniques they use to stay on top of the endless to-do list
Every Friday afternoon, I'll send out the answers to 3-5 of those questions, along with some content recommendations and maybe a quote from a management guru or, you know, some wisdom from a fortune cookie
The source of the answers will be anonymous. All kinds of reasons for that, as you can imagine, but mostly, I think we're more likely to hear about things we tried that didn't work, or hard but important lessons we've learned that have also really helped us
Along the way, we'll end up hearing a lot about how the job looks and feels to other folks--and I've found that's really helpful in terms of keeping it all in perspective when things get overwhelming