How can I say that I can't do this work when it is so important? I thought.

Is it more important than your family? the interior response came.

I was 33 years old, a mom of 3 and early on in my career as a teacher educator. One of the reasons why I had switched from being a K-12 teacher to being a teacher educator was that I thought it would be more sustainable and compatible with motherhood. When I made the switch, I knew that both being a teacher and preparing teachers at the university level were full careers, but I thought the flexibility of higher education would make navigating career and family more feasible.

I was discovering that sense of relief was not necessarily easy and automatic. There are moments in life where we reach points of feeling stretched thin - of realizing that we have committed to more than what is sustainable long term. While it is important to take stock of life and consider to which extent sin is contributing to the sense of depletion, there is also the less clear cut layer of discerning between goods. Here are some tips I have learned and that have been reaffirmed in different seasons of my career that support me in being able to discern between goods in order to set boundaries.

Gaining Clarity

A first step in discerning between goods is to have a clear cut sense of ethical duty and obligations in one's current season of life. When it comes to tensions with career and family, it is valuable to consider which aspects of my career are actually required in order to fulfill what is outlined in my contract vs. which aspects are optional and extras that I am committing to. As a faculty member at a teaching college (rather than a research focused institution), my duties are to teach 36 quarter credits an academic year fall-spring terms and to account for the equivalent of 9 quarter credits devoted to scholarship, service to the university and community outreach.

The course credits are more clearly defined and based on the documentation of how many credits each course is composed of. Any teaching during summer quarter and any credits beyond 36 during the other three terms are considered overload and automatically optional and extra. When I was in the hiring process, I made sure to ask whether or not we had to do overload because I knew I was in a season of life in which I wanted to better prioritize my family. I wanted to reel in the time and energy I was devoting to my career. I wanted to make sure there was not an unwritten rule that I was expected to do overload or that I would not receive pressure to make a choice one way or another.

Determining Enough

The additional 9 credits are not as clearly defined. There are the three categories, but within that scope there is the slippery slope of the question - How much is enough? One of the main targets is formal review for progress towards and the accomplishment of tenure and/or promotion. There is an overall tone among the campus community for newer faculty to take on more opportunities in order to demonstrate that they are doing enough to be on track and to be recommended for successful review. Along the way I realized that system can be set up to prompt people to continue committing to more and more out of fear of whether or not they are already doing enough or whether a successful review is at stake.

While I receive some indications of what is actually necessary, I have found that I need to set some interior limits to let myself know what is enough and what is extra. This requires trust that even though there are not any guarantees, I have a sense of what will be deemed as enough when I get to points of formal review. Each successful review (both my own and having insight into the process of my colleagues) serves to strengthen confidence of what is and is not enough.

Aligning to Values

Once there is a sense of what I am doing to fulfill the minimum thresholds versus optional extras, it is important to acknowledge the role that career passion plays to impact my choices. Rather than saying yes to everything that I am motivated and excited to do, I need to consider the bigger picture. Within the broader scope, I need to determine what matters to me and a sense of hierarchy to guide how the different items on that list compare to each other.

At the core of my values are relationships and presence. I understand that saying yes to too much impacts my capacity to be present to those who desire my time and attention. At home, the way I am interacting with my husband and girls is my barometer, while at work, I base it on my interactions with students and colleagues. If I am too short with my girls or constantly telling them that I cannot do something with them yet, I need to consider whether I really need to be doing everything I committed to or whether there are extras resulting in unnecessary stress that become obstacles to relationship. The same applies for my students at the university. Over time, I have become more attuned to how I feel when interacting with them - whether I have space to be attentive to their needs and the quality of the instruction I provide or whether I am so overloaded that the quality of care declines.

Part of alignment to values requires an understanding of the role of money. In most cases, it comes down to my choices not really being about the money and more so about whether or not I have the capacity and desire to complete tasks, how my level of stress will be impacted, and in turn, how it will impact relational dynamics. Nonetheless, it is important to consider whether the optional and extra components are attached to more income, whether that income is even actually needed in my current season of life, and if so, whether the amount received is worth what is sacrificed in time, especially if saying yes is likely to conflict with my relational values.

Streamlining and Maximizing

Within aligning to expectations, it is common that there are many ways to align to expectations and that I can carefully discern and then communicate my preferences. For example, I determined that as a general rule, when it comes to program coordination, I only want to only coordinate one program at a time and that because the majority of my duties are teaching based, it makes sense for my program coordination to be aligned to my teaching load.

Gaining clarity, determining what is enough, aligning to my values, and streamlining and maximizing have each been foundational to my on-going career discernment.