3, 2, 1 fade to black…
That is how each Tuesday ends for me. A graceful glide into sleep.
Of course, my four kids would say that that reality looks more like an old man slumping in his chair mid-sentence.
Teenagers really can keep you humble.
Regardless of how I actually fall asleep, the point is by the end of the day, I’m exhausted.
How does it happen?
Most days, I wake up at 4ish. This morning I first looked at the clock 3:43. Ouch, I had been awake for a while before I looked, thinking about an amalgamation of problems, issues, and opportunities related to work, home, kids, family, friends, Covid, elections, various body aches, and a whole bunch of other things I have no control over. That process can take a while, but once I look at the clock, it’s time to take action.
3:43
I get up and check my messages. There are a few issues that require some guidance but nothing on fire today. I know I spent a lot more time reacting during COVID than normal. Looking 3 months into the future feels like 3 years. I’m sure everyone is experiencing the same thing.
I look at my calendar and begin to plan my day.
Then…
5:05
Back to bed
6:25
I wake up, for good, when my wife brings me a coffee! She is enchanting. We get some quiet time together. Praying and reading the Bible. I used to be an atheist, but faith has become more important as my problems have gotten larger.
I skip the morning workout today because I don’t want to ruin my streak. ;-)
7:30
Leave for work
7:30:05
Arrive at work
Information Security at Lehigh University is many things and distributed. We oversee InfoSec, identity and access management, privacy, some compliance, and a little counseling. I am fortunate to have staff that proactively solve problems. My messages (still not sure why the solution to email is 6 other platforms + email) usually advise me of active situations and their prescribed solutions. Any urgent messages have been addressed in the insomnia portion of my day, so this goes quickly.
My focus in the first part of the day is to prepare for upcoming meetings. The schedule is fairly light today, so I get an extra cup of coffee and make silly faces at my boys while they sit in their Zoom classes. Judging by their expressions, Zoom classes are worse than Zoom meetings. Empathy moment for the students we serve…
9:00
College of Health
Fall 2020 was the official launch of Lehigh University’s new College of Health. The College of Health is the first in the nation to offer an undergraduate and graduate degree in population health, focusing on health innovation and technology. This means they don’t train nurses, doctors, and other health care providers, just data scientists doing data science. They have a BHAG to create a Population Health Data (PHD) warehouse, including data from “cell to society” in partnership with industry, government, nonprofits, and academia.
https://www2.lehigh.edu/news/college-of-health-to-launch-population-health-data-warehouse
Image: Wilson HGA of Boston
This vision is exciting and scary. How to make it usable, accessible, secure, protected, and regulated is the challenge we have been working on for the past year. A great team, including CoH leadership, IT, Security, Legal, Research Computing, Sponsored Research, and librarians. We offer different perspectives and challenge each other. The project is simmering in the background now but, as with everything else, we know that it will be a sprint to the finish at some point. The year we spent working together will pay dividends then.
9:55
After the meeting, I dive into my pile of overdue contract reviews. Implementing pre-purchase security reviews of technology is critical, but there are more interesting ways to spend an hour. More coffee.
11:00
CTO Leadership meeting I’m invited to the CTOs weekly Directors meeting. The CTO and I work closely together, both reporting to the VP of Libraries and Technology. I have a small staff, so each of these Directors is critical to the success of Information Security.
Everyone is grateful to have navigated through the Fall semester and they are focused on improvements for the Spring. In my opinion, higher education has always focused on making incremental improvements year over year. Moving from the crisis period in the Spring to the ‘new normal’ in the Fall, we lacked our usual points of reference. From top to bottom, we have been challenged to react to situations and respond to our customers’ needs. We’re exhausted from experience but excited for the future. We now know we can transform the academy in days and weeks in response to situations and needs.
14:00
LUAPPS — A couple of years ago, a team was formed to deliver applications virtually. The effort was launched just before my arrival on campus (2018). It was successful before the pandemic and critical afterward. They meet weekly now to manage the load and plan for additional services.
15:55
As I wrap up my ‘day’ job, I take one last jump into my messages. I do a ‘brain dump’ of all the urgent items I didn’t get to onto a spiral-bound pad on my desk. My handwriting is epically poor, but it just feels right to write it down. Sometimes it is a long list, long enough to wake me up in the middle of the night. Today it isn’t too bad, now I get to do my favorite task.
16:25
Currently, I am teaching two sections in the School of Business. Introduction to data analytics through the lens of R programming. This is the first time I am teaching this course. It takes a lot of my time but, personally, I feel the only way to understand the academy is to participate in the academy. I could take classes, but I was never a good student.
The students at Lehigh are bright and engaged. We are in a Zoom classroom, so I try to remember the lesson I learned from my own children this morning. I try to bring as much energy to the stage as possible. Tonight I’m not as successful as usual, their cameras slowly blink off as the class progresses. I’ll need to ask them to keep the cameras turned on next week, but I sense they are carrying the weight of the pandemic, election, and general uncertainty. Grace tonight, enforce the rules next week. They need face-to-face engagement, so I put them into breakout rooms to work together on their projects. At 7:05, they finish up, and class is over, and so am I.
20:05
Dinner.
A nice IPA.
A comfy seat next to my lovely wife.
and…
