Hi Professors!
Happy holidays! I hope that you are able to enjoy some much-needed time off during the final days of the year.
Before this year draws to a close, have you taken a moment to reflect on what transpired for you in 2023? Maybe it’s as simple as reviewing the photos that you’ve taken on your smartphone throughout the year. Or thinking about the big events that you have experienced—a wedding, a completion of a big research project, the death of a loved one, or a career transition.
For about a year and a half, I’ve been doing a regular coaching exchange with Dr. Jodie Mader, who is a wonderful coach. Recently, we did a very straightforward exercise of taking the time to sit with the various experiences, events, and lessons learned—month-by-month in 2023.
It was a good reminder to me that so much can happen within one year and that one often forgets some of the finer details that make up the texture of 12 months. Since we both take very detailed notes during our coaching sessions, we were able to offer one another reminders of events or experiences that we had individually each forgotten.
Reflecting on Your Transition from 2023 to 2024
You can certainly do this year-end review on your own, too. Nowadays, there are some really fantastic resources out there for doing this kind of reflective work. I’ll go ahead and link to some of those resources in the transcript (please scroll to the end). The best resource is going to be the one that best resonates with you.
For the past few years I’ve been using YearCompass—which is a free booklet that you can download from the YearCompass website.
You can go at your own pace while going through the booklet to reflect on the past year and also think deeply about the coming new year, while setting intentions. For example, in asking you to think about the past year, there are questions like:
- What are you most proud of in 2023?
- Who are the three people who influenced you the most?
- Who are the three people you influenced the most?
- What were you not able to accomplish?
- What is the best thing you have discovered about yourself?
- What are you the most grateful for?
You will need a few hours to work on this, but you can go take as much time as you need. The second half of the booklet is directed toward 2024, and setting your intentions and goals for the new year. There’s a bonus in that YearCompass is available in several languages, as well!
Another resource that I would like to share with you is one that I learned about from Dr. Katie Linder, who among so many other things, facilitates a Higher Ed Coach Training program that I participated in as part of my credentialing process to become a certified coach.
The exercise is to design a personal syllabus. Just for you.
And yes, I do realize that many of you may already be in the process of putting together your syllabi for the next term in January. I certainly remember this scramble at the end of every year after Christmas, patching together the readings and trying to determine the scaffolding and arch of each course.
I know that you are probably very seasoned at creating syllabi and you design fantastic courses for your students. And you put in a lot of time and effort into this process. But, what if you were to use this format that you’re very familiar with to design a plan for your own personal growth and development in 2024?
This could be very useful if you’re currently feeling stuck in your life and you want to make some kind of change. But you feel unsure about where to begin and what your next steps may be.
Or it could be a plan to finally pursue that thing you’ve always been curious about, but have previously never had the time to explore.
Creating a personal syllabus, by the way, is a very interesting idea for anyone who has recently retired from their faculty position. It could be a way of easing into the transition of retirement with some structured intentions.
So, here are a few key steps that Dr. Katie Linder has outlined for this exercise, which I will link to in the transcript for this episode:
Create Your Own Personal Syllabus for 2024
1. Choose an area where you’d like to deepen your knowledge or experience.
2. Create a short description of the area that you’d like to explore (this could be your course description, for instance)
3. Create a list of what you hope to learn through the exploration (your learning objectives)
4. A reading and/or resources list that you will use to deepen your knowledge
5. Potential “assignments” that will help you to check in on your progress
6. A rough schedule of your exploration
Dr. Katie Linder created a personal syllabus for her exploration of yoga, and on her blog post on her website, you can see how she mapped out her plan of personal learning.
Now adding a little twist to this, I’d like to suggest here that the practice of designing your own personal syllabus could be a powerful way of setting an intention and a set of next steps for where you would like to be at the end of 2024.
Even though you may have several ideas of how you’d like next year to be different for you, sometimes it’s just hard to get out of a rut. You can, of course, work with any number of higher ed or life coaches who can support you in this endeavor of trying to get unstuck.
But, you can also try this out on your own. Sometimes it’s the act of taking the time to commit your goals and plans to paper (or a Word document) that can help you to make the subtle shifts in your life. And these slight shifts can help to pave the way for bigger ones down the road.
So here are some questions that may help you to get started on your own personal syllabus for next year:
Ask yourself:
By the end of 2024,
• Where would you like to be in your life?
• What things would you have liked to have learned?
• What experiences would you have liked to have had?
As you might with a syllabus, you can work backwards from the “learning outcomes.” If there’s some kind of change that requires you to develop a new skill set or receive some kind of training, then build this into the syllabus and create a timeline for yourself.
Or if there are books, podcasts, or films that you want to engage with in relation to a topic that you’re exploring, then build in time for those activities as well.
Keep in mind that this suggestion is not intended to add further stress to your already busy life. Give yourself ample time to think about this. The great thing about the personal syllabus is that you don’t have to turn this in next week, post it on Canvas, put in a grading rubric, or for that matter, do any grading whatsoever!
This is a syllabus created by you, and for you. And it could be a draft document that lives in your folder on your desktop or that you print out—that you revisit during the course of next year during those times when you are feeling stuck in your life.
Feel free to let me know if you decide to try this on for next year, and how it works out for you. The personal syllabus could be a different alternative to setting New Year’s resolutions—which, to be honest, always seemed to fade away in March or so for me. And that was taking into consideration that I would sometimes reset my resolutions during Lunar New Year.
This personal syllabus, in combination with an exercise that reflects on your previous year, can be a meaningful way to move forward on ideas or actions that you want to explore for your own personal growth.
That’s it for today. I did want to say: Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the Rise with Clarity Podcast. This is the tenth episode and the final episode of 2023. I’m very pleased to report that a few weeks ago, Rise with Clarity surpassed over 1000 downloads with its first 9 episodes, which is really great.
I never thought that I would become a podcast host, but it has been a really great learning experience for me. And I hope to share more with you in the future.
Please stay tuned for more episodes next year. I have several topics that I’ve already been thinking about.
And feel free to reach out to me if you are enjoying listening to the podcast or if you have a topic that you’d like to hear discussed in the future.
And if you are interested in working with me next year, I do offer 90-minute strategy sessions as well as a 6-month Rise with Clarity Signature program for WOC faculty. You can find all of that information at my website: RisewithClarity.com.
Thanks so much! Happy New Year!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Additional Resources Related to Yearly Transitions and Intention Setting
Dr. Kimberly J. Hale’s “Strategic Planning for Faculty” article
Dr. Isabeau Iqbal’s “Reflection Questions for the End of the Term” blog post
Dr. Katie Linder’s “Starting to Plan 2024 Goals” podcast episode
Dr. Cathy Mazak’s “How to Write an Academic Mission Statement” article
Dr. Kerry Ann Rockquemore’s The Annual Clarity Retreat (with corresponding workbook). *Note: The Joy Collective that Kerry Ann founded will be closing in January 2024, but The Annual Clarity Retreat will stay open indefinitely.
Dr. Leslie Wang’s “Do an End-of-School Year Reflection” podcast episode