I Like Spreadsheets, But You Might Not. And That’s Okay

I spent my day doing the administrative work that goes into planning and keeping up with:
• First Friday Festivities (which include a morning food component and a night-time activity),
• Secret Pal,
• Eaglet Trees (a school-wide class incentive program that involves tracking data, displaying it on a bulletin board, and communicating it to PTO), and
• The Morning Announcements (for which I must compile a list of everyone’s birthday, make and distribute a schedule for classes to help with the announcements, set up a template from which to read the announcements, and make up writing/drawing prompts for each week).
I then went to my first class of my Master of School Administration program and proceeded to stay after class to work on my school webpage for a couple of hours (https://sites.google.com/a/harnett.k12.nc.us/deaton/home). I have no idea what possessed me to work on my school webpage, but working on it forced me to complete some of the work that I didn’t complete during the school day, so I am grateful.

Before school started, I attended a PTO meeting. Something came up about budgeting, so I showed the treasurer my budget sheet. She said, “Is that for your personal records?!” I sheepishly said, “Yes.” She said, “Wow. I feel dumb!”

As I was updating the school phone list yesterday—it comes alphabetically but I like to reorganize it by grade level/team so that I know who works with whom—our administrative assistant looked at me and said, “I don’t understand this. You’re an artist. You’re not supposed to be so organized.” I chuckled and said, “I’m a musician and music is very structured, so I guess my brain is, too.”

My family picks on me because I make a spreadsheet every chance I get. My aunt needed to write on a calendar to visualize our Scandinavian Adventure. I needed to make a spreadsheet.

I thought my assistant principal was crazy yesterday when she said she enjoyed making the master schedule for the school. While glancing at the master schedule to isolate just the music schedule is a bit overwhelming to me, I found myself today feeling a small bit of the enjoyment that my assistant principal feels while I created the master food schedule for First Fridays. I was stupidly content systematically copying and pasting group names into different rows and columns.

I suddenly think about Barb-The-Art-Teacher-Who-No-Longer-Works-With-Me-But-Who-Will-Always-Be-My-Art-Teacher-In-My-Heart and about how just the thought of making a spreadsheet makes her cringe. I bet many of you have cringed while reading this note. And I smile.

I’m having a moment similar to the moments I have when I go to the dentist:

To put it simply, I am so thankful that each of us is different and that, in large part, we have the opportunity to live into those differences and build lives around work, activities, and routines that fit with who we are.

Yet, I’m thankful, too, that as Maya Angelou says:

[There are] obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.

Maybe I should go make a spreadsheet of oxymorons.