First, let's define our key term. By reflection, I mean the ability to look back on experience, process, or systems, and seek knowledge from examining them in light of perspective gained from time's passage.
Reflection can help us refine our practices. However, should we find ourselves in overwhelming circumstances, as many do in higher education in these busy times, the time and energy to engage in reflection may seem like a luxury that cannot be justified. This is a mistake I have made myself.
Higher education attracts people with a passion for problem solving. Fixers is the term I sometimes use to describe us. We love to fix things, or help make them better. I hate to admit this again...and again...but my father gave me good advice. He suggested I couldn't fix everything, and that I should put some reasonable boundaries on what I attempted, so that I didn't burn out. Are we all surprised that fixers violate this at every opportunity? Not really...
What happens then is a pattern that I should probably recognize by now. We accept more and more tasks, and eventually our load is greater than our ability to do a quality job at a more focused set of objectives.
This is where building in reflection as a systematic practice can pay off. The act of stopping everything and looking carefully at the effectiveness of the current set of efforts, and what effects one may or may not be having as a result, can redirect our passion where it can be the most useful to our organization and colleagues, and most healthy to ourselves. That is what will keep us making the strongest contribution we can to the success of our students over the long term.
Sometimes I guess I just need to repeat the lesson.
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