AUGUST 4, 2025
Greetings! How're you doing? I tell ya, I am feelin' good.
In a few weeks, I will be returning to campus from a sabbatical leave. Taking a sabbatical is a luxury for sure. It’s been wonderful and productive, and also relaxed and often unplanned. I’ve played a lot of great gigs and completed two separate book projects, and sometimes I get to take an afternoon siesta. The sabbatical was absolutely worth the pay cut to have the time to live as a musician.
I hope it's understandable that I have mixed feelings about the end of this time. On one hand, I’ve missed making music with students and colleagues. Theoretically, making music is the job of a college music professor, right?
But on the other hand, there is one aspect of my job that got me down: the hours I spent sitting at my computer doing email -- reading, contemplating, replying, composing. When strangers asked what I did for a living, if I were in a bad mood, I would just answer: "Email.” Once I’ve been sitting at my computer for hours not making music, I can no longer honestly refer to my career as musician anymore, right?
So, another amazing aspect of the sabbatical has been to reset my relationship with email. Last year, I set an auto-reply on my inbox stating that I was not checking emails while on break. The outgoing message said, essentially, “I’ll be back in 15 months.” Did I stick to that rule completely? Well, to be honest, no. But, in the past year, I did notice some problems with the way we use email nowadays. And since I have surely been a big part of the problem, I have reached some conclusions about how I will do this job from now on, in order to make life better for me and everyone else.
One of my realizations was that most emails are requesting I do a piece of work. I don’t mind working. It’s why I took the job in the first place. But while it may only take someone a moment to send an email, the task I'm being asked to perform can take anywhere between one minute and hours, days, or even weeks of work to complete. Some of those tasks feel like they're a fair part of my job. Others...? Ehh, not so much.
Another problem with our use of email is that we try to have conversations through Outlook. We have collectively allowed Microsoft to define a chain of emails as a conversation. But email chains are definitely not conversations, no more than a thread of comments in social media or an old-school snail-mail chain letter are conversations. Once multiple messages have bounced around a chain, or after days have gone by since the first thought in the chain, we as readers have to scroll through the entire chain to try to re-engage in the topic of this "conversation." Just the act of switching topics from the previous topic we were working on can take 15 or 20 minutes. Let me ask: Have you ever been CCd into a long chain after several days of back and forths have already occurred? Do you remember how long it took to comprehend the nature of that conversation? That is what our brains have to do with every email email in every conversation we get. It's exhausting.
So, I’ve made some vows about email. These vows are partially to myself, and partially to you. I’m going to do my best to stick to them:
- I will set aside one hour per day for emails, and when that hour is over, I will hit command-Q on Outlook.
- If a topic requires a conversation, I will have a conversation. I will not attempt to have that conversation through email. I will reply -- as friendly as I can -- that the topic demands a face-to-face conversation. So, let's talk.
- I will do my best to stay mindful that when I send you an email, I am asking you to do work. I will do my best to be sensitive to the amount of time it might take, and I will try to remember that the work should not entail re-reading a chain of emails as if it were an actual conversation. But if I forget, please remind me. Old habits are hard to break.
Where does that leave us? First of all, who are you?
If you are a prospective student, I’d love to hear from you. I love to meet people who are excited to learn about Ithaca. I know you have many questions, and I’m happy to discuss them. My reply will be something like: “I'm so glad to hear from you, and I’m gratified to hear of your interest in jazz at Ithaca College! When can you come to campus for a gratis jazz lesson, and for us to talk?” The restaurants and sights here are "gorges." And you’re gonna have to come to campus to attend IC anyway (See the PS below for a list of my favorite restaurants and sights), so you might as well come now, right?
If you are a current IC student, I’m happy to talk to you. My office hours are posted on my corkboard, or perhaps we can talk after class or rehearsal if I’m not too tired. Now that I’m solidly into my late 50s, my energy level is not what it used to be, so we might need to wait to discuss your topic, but I really do want to help.
If you're a colleague, I’m happy to work together. My office hours are posted on my corkboard. Or schedule a meeting using the Outlook scheduling tool (even though the meeting scheduling function is unfathomably buggy and quite annoying).
Got something else to chat about? Great! Let's talk.
I’m looking forward to making music with you-
-Mike, mtitlebaum@ithaca.edu
PS: Some of my favorite local restaurants, for when you come to visit:
Ithaca Ale House
Franco's Pizza
Maxie's Supper Club
Viva Taqueria
Gola Osteria