Coasting

As I was driving back from the gym yesterday afternoon, it hit me: I've been coasting.

I've been coasting in the classroom. Granted, I don't have much room for variety in my teaching schedule -- I'm pretty much locked into a graduate seminar in medieval and Classics of Christian Thought every fall, and Philosophy of Religion and the undergraduate medieval course every spring -- but that's not really the point. I'm still energetic in the classroom, and I still get great evaluations, but compared to what I could be doing -- compared to what I used to do -- I'm phoning it in.

I've been coasting in my research. I have all the freedom to go for broke, to try to write that really inventive book that will either fail spectacularly or actually make a difference to my little field of scholarship, but instead I keep writing the same sort of safe, competent, stuff I've been writing for years.

I've been coasting in the Church. I have a nice, safe place in a parish that asks me to do just the things I'm comfortable doing, and only as much of those things as I can easily manage on top of a full-time job. (And such is the nature of academic life that even when you're coasting, a full-time job is still a full-time job.) I could look for more things, or more challenging things, to do, but coasting is very pleasant and presents no possibilities for failure.

I dare say the coasting will stop soon, though. Maybe that grant proposal will find unexpected success. I've proposed the inventive book and asked for a year in which to write it. Getting that grant would certainly stop the coasting in my research. Then there's stuff going on in the parish that might mix things up, not least the impending departure of our Curate to be Rector of the Church of Saint Hezekiah in the Diocese of Far Far Away.

Teaching may remain stuck for a while, though. In fact, it will probably get worse, since at least this semester I have a graduate seminar in which I've gone out on a limb, teaching ridiculously obscure material with a most gratifying response from my students. Next semester, it's medieval philosophy . . . again . . . and philosophy of religion . . . again . . .

So, come to think of it, when I said that the issue wasn't really my treadmill of a teaching schedule, that wasn't quite true. How nice it would be to teach History of Ethics or Moral Theology or Ancient Philosophy or Anglicanism or History of Christianity!